Stage win: FinFisher is bankrupt
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Re: Stage win: FinFisher is bankrupt
#2I guess that's a justified case for Schadenfreude ...
But on a more serious note, the battle for transparency and accountability (and ultimately democratic resilience) relies a lot on the hard work by many, many NGOs (many of those listed towards the end of the article, such as the wonderful Citizen Lab from U of Toronto).
I find it scary that such important monitorial tasks are left to underfunded volunteers which may go away at any second. Well, the same applies to journalists to a certain degree ... In both cases, we need to care more about sustainable funding of these institutions.
Re: Stage win: FinFisher is bankrupt
#3It appears like they're just going through a "rebranding"
https://mobile.twitter.com/Pingu/status/1469314222349852675
Quote from the OP article:
> the public prosecutor's office wanted to secure the assets potentially obtained from an unlawful act by means of an asset freeze in order to be able to confiscate them if necessary. The group of companies escaped seizure through insolvency
So you know what's going on.
Re: Stage win: FinFisher is bankrupt
#4why do we even tolerate malware companies
Re: Stage win: FinFisher is bankrupt
#5I guess that's a justified case for Schadenfreude ... But on a more serious note, the battle for transparency and accountability (and ultimately democratic resilience) relies a lot on the hard work by many, many NGOs (many of those listed towards the end of the article, such as the wonderful Citizen Lab from U of Toronto). I find it scary that such important monitorial tasks are left to underfunded volunteers which m…
On the other hand, we need to strike a balance between "sustainable funding" (be it government or corporate) and true independence.
Re: Stage win: FinFisher is bankrupt
#6why do we even tolerate malware companies
Because this company was the developer of the "Staatstrojaner" malware government agencies used to hack into computer systems to investigate crimes. I think the original use case was just terrorism but I'm pretty sure it's been used against other crimes as well.
As to why the German public tolerate it: because there wasn't sufficient pushback and the government doesn't care about a few protests as most people will eventually forget about it and move on.
Re: Stage win: FinFisher is bankrupt
#7It appears like they're just going through a "rebranding" https://mobile.twitter.com/Pingu/status/1469314222349852675 Quote from the OP article: > the public prosecutor's office wanted to secure the assets potentially obtained from an unlawful act by means of an asset freeze in order to be able to confiscate them if necessary. The group of companies escaped seizure through insolvency So you know what's going on.
It seems a bit more complicated - there's a great post from netzpolitik [1] (in German, unfortunately) listing all the gory details.
Again, all of this came to light because of the hard and persistent work of a whole bunch of NGOs (GFF, netzpolitik, CCC and so on).
[1] https://netzpolitik.org/2022/nach-pfaendung-staatstrojaner-h...
Re: Stage win: FinFisher is bankrupt
#8why do we even tolerate malware companies
Because this company was the developer of the "Staatstrojaner" malware government agencies used to hack into computer systems to investigate crimes. I think the original use case was just terrorism but I'm pretty sure it's been used against other crimes as well. As to why the German public tolerate it: because there wasn't sufficient pushback and the government doesn't care about a few protests as most people will ev…
Seems to me like the government should internally own their malware rather than tolerate a company that presumably sells to other governments or private entities. Mine was a rhetorical question of course.
Re: Stage win: FinFisher is bankrupt
#9It appears like they're just going through a "rebranding" https://mobile.twitter.com/Pingu/status/1469314222349852675 Quote from the OP article: > the public prosecutor's office wanted to secure the assets potentially obtained from an unlawful act by means of an asset freeze in order to be able to confiscate them if necessary. The group of companies escaped seizure through insolvency So you know what's going on.
https://netzpolitik.org/2022/nach-pfaendung-staatstrojaner-h... (German) reads like it is more than a rebranding. But there are certainly new entrepreneurs who will fill the gap
Re: Stage win: FinFisher is bankrupt
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because this company was the developer of the "Staatstrojaner" malware government agencies used to hack into computer systems to investigate crimes. I think the original use case was just terrorism but I'm pretty sure it's been used against other crimes as well. As to why the German public tolerate it: because there wasn't sufficient pushback and the government doesn't care about a few protests as most people will ev…
Seems to me like the government should internally own their malware rather than tolerate a company that presumably sells to other governments or private entities. Mine was a rhetorical question of course.
That would require the state to attract (and compensate) IT talent. As far as I know, they are trying..