Live data from Hacker News

Bundeskabinett approves draft law allowing trojans on phones to monitor WhatsApp

afp.com

31–40 of 59 posts

Re: Bundeskabinett approves draft law allowing trojans on phones to monitor WhatsApp

#31
post #5

>Die Nachrichtendienste sollten in digitalen Bereich dieselben Möglichkeiten bekommen, die sie im analogen bereits haben translated: "Intelligence agencies ought to have the same capacities in the digital sphere that they have in the analog world." Going to be an unpopular opinion here but i agree with this. I don't think there is any precedent for impenetrable private communication legally or culturally. Capacity to…

> I don't think there is any precedent for impenetrable private communication legally or culturally.

Two people can communicate fairly trivially in person with a reasonable level of certainty that their conversation remains privy to only them and the most a 3rd actor might glean is that the conversation took place; not it's contents.

What you might be confusing is that historically there are inherent weaknesses in using a physical or radio or electronic medium to transfer information from one mind to another and that those have always been exploitable. That exploitation usually comes by "force", for some definition of force depending of the value systems held by the parties involved.

Re: Bundeskabinett approves draft law allowing trojans on phones to monitor WhatsApp

#32

This doesn't seem like it "allows" a backdoor; it seems like it requires one. (IANAL, etc etc.) So much for the EU's vaunted privacy rights...

>So much for the EU's vaunted privacy rights...

Do people really have such an impression?

In 2006 the EU passed a directive that obligated all ISPs to effectively save your browsing history.[0] They had to keep this for a minimum of 6 months. It took until 2014 for the directive to be found to be invalid. It worked until then though.

And that's on the EU level. My expectations are even lower when it comes to individual member states, particularly Germany.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

Re: Bundeskabinett approves draft law allowing trojans on phones to monitor WhatsApp

#34
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re being sarcastic but I’m actually not sure.

I am not, do you consider legal wiretaps bad?

No, but wiretaps typically have scalability problems that prevent their widespread use. There's a high marginal cost (labor + equipment) with physical wiretaps, but with digital wiretaps the marginal cost is effectively zero.

Re: Bundeskabinett approves draft law allowing trojans on phones to monitor WhatsApp

#35
post #13

What does this mean for Signal?

if the authorities gain physical access to your devices while you're not at home and pwn them with a keystroke logger that phones home + automated screenshot tool, all bets are off.

Who would leave their mobile phone at home?

Re: Bundeskabinett approves draft law allowing trojans on phones to monitor WhatsApp

#36
post #8
post #4

Note that this is not about backdoor requirements or abilities, but about QuellenTKÜ (english: source telecommunications surveillance), which involves getting a trojan onto end devices, either through hacking, like using a bought 0-day, or by breaking into houses of suspects. It already exists as a part of law enforcement in various German states. The proposed regulation is to allow this for a bunch of additional fed…

So this is something like planting a microphone into your house so they can hear your conversations (with a warrant)? That doesn't really sound too bad, it's targeted and you have to go through the proper channels to get authorization.

The problem with similar laws has always been that there are no proper channels. There were cases those were just flat out ignored. And in other laws released numbers showed that less than 1% of requests were denied. These requirements are for optics only, they are never in place in practice.

Another example is a police internal system to request information about citizens. That has been abused many times to spy on neighbors and even celebrities. Kind of a current topic in Germany.

Re: Bundeskabinett approves draft law allowing trojans on phones to monitor WhatsApp

#37
This might actually be good. It seems to be an alternative way to enable law enforcement instead of breaking encryption. EDRi has a document outlining solutions for law enforcement without breaking encryption: https://edri.org/files/encryption/workarounds_edriposition_2...

Re: Bundeskabinett approves draft law allowing trojans on phones to monitor WhatsApp

#38
post #37

This might actually be good. It seems to be an alternative way to enable law enforcement instead of breaking encryption. EDRi has a document outlining solutions for law enforcement without breaking encryption: https://edri.org/files/encryption/workarounds_edriposition_2...

There's always the $5 wrench for law enforcement, I suppose ...

Re: Bundeskabinett approves draft law allowing trojans on phones to monitor WhatsApp

#40
post #39

Genuinely curious. How is this different from China mandating visibility into all of their citizens' internet data ?

It's not about mass surveillance, it's about court-ordered surveillance of individual suspected criminals. As someone said in another thread, it's like a wiretap.
Post reply on HN