Bavarian Police Seeking Skype Trojan Informant

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/17/1830230&

 

Gloomy tendency of Germany, the hidden uncrowned spy country nr.1 in the world, really bad outlook.

 

Since day one of telecommunications law enforcement ( in ALL countries!!) has ALWAYS eavesdropped on citizens without warrants.

They use the info for intelligence gathering purposes rather than legal ones.

Of course once one knows what is going on it is only a matter of fabricating a legally binding reason to get a warrant to gain access to ones "property".

Believe me if it was not for the over load of information gathered in this manner there would be many more arrests (legal or not) that are now happening.

Addendum: In the early seventies the FBI was denounced as using "KGB" and "Gestapo" methods of illegally monitoring phone line of U.S. citizens with otherwise impeccable reputations. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was accused of feeding president Nixon's paranoid need to "get" his enemies--all illegally, and was asked to resign by the speaker of the house. The freedom of information act has allowed confirmation of these activities.

In the post 9/11 world these snooping agencies now have the letter of the law allowing easy monitoring of whomever they wish. "1984" has been in existence ( in various degrees) since the earliest days of electronics.

The government has the cooperation of manufacturers to build in "back doors" into their products to make it easier to gain this access to peoples doings ( one example is the marking of all photocopies to be marked with the particular machine's serial number ).

I suspect that mainstream Operating Systems also have these back doors. Governments have always snooped on their people and it is in their (perceived) interest to do so. It is not only totalitarian regimes but all governments, some overtly (to curtail dissent) and covertly to catch illegal activities as well as run-of-the-mill intelligence gathering.

Internet snooping has been an ongoing policy by the National Security Agency long before 9/11.

I think it is safe to say that we are being watched on the internet and thus Security applications are for defeating ordinary malware but not governmental spying.