Germans at it again (legal, regular, Obama, politicians)

[Neuling]

A new scandal is unfolding in Germany as their infamous spying, snooping, surveillance, and control mentality has resurfaced. (Maybe the ugly face of German perfectionism?)
Nazis, Stasi, and now a powerful spyware program (Bundestrojaner) that according to recent analysis by an established hacker group goes way beyond what the legal provisions allow.

I wonder where that distrust of its own citizens comes from It has never resulted in anything good, still they seem to be trying it again and again. And, like the violations of people's privacy in the US, justified by the good old war on terror

Funny that we have to be grateful to hackers for protecting us from the government No wonder the Piratenpartei hacker political party has gained so many votes in Germany...

Red Tape - Chaos Computer Club: German gov't software can spy on citizens

[evilnewbie]

The United States is already doing this... Started by Bush, continued by Obama... what a great country we live in when we can't even trust our own government...

[texdav]

The courts have long recognised legal wire tapping of all comminunications ;I see no difference really.That ios often what laws do is distinguish when somethig such as killig another ;for example;is legal by not being a crime.

[Neuling]

Seems the situation is escalating as an IT-oriented political party has officially sued leading politicians from the state of Bavaria where the scandal has originated How cool is that, someone is still standing up to the fascist political caste

[LuckyGem]

I guess you don't think the US govt is doing the same thing?

There is nothing you can do on the web where you can do it anonymously.

Someone, somewhere, some program is always keeping tabs on what you do.

You can avoid it by never logging on.

Problem solved.

[Boxcar Overkill]

I heard they were even committing extra-judicial killings of their own citizens.

Oh wait, that's America.

[Willsson]

The above. I don't think Germany is particularly alone in what we might regard as the violation of citizens rights and/or privileges.

Then, or now.

[Ferd]

we even have a very cool new TV show about it in America.

Person of Interest. Its pretty good.

[subsound]

Wow, every German till the end of time is now either "perfectionist" (which is an odd insult) or just like Hitler?

It's hard to find bigoted statements against Europeans here, but we have found a winner.

[Neuling]

Originally Posted by LuckyGem

I guess you don't think the US govt is doing the same thing?

There is nothing you can do on the web where you can do it anonymously.

Someone, somewhere, some program is always keeping tabs on what you do.

You can avoid it by never logging on.

Problem solved.

I know the US government uses such trojans, but than again, you have a different history. One might think the Germans would be tired of the tapping and surveillance crap given the past century
Maybe that is why in Germany there is still such fierce resistance that seems to be missing in the US these days. I saw a map that showed the states in red where such trojans are used by the authorities. Interestingly they are not used in former East Germany, only in the West. Maybe it has to do with the fresher memories in the East.

I don't mind so much when my ISP or Microsoft track my browsing to a certain extent, but since I distrust the government I don't want any of their crap on my computer. Not to mention that their programmers are not good anyway. It said in the report that the trojans they use are sloppily written.

There is an interesting discussion about whether or not antivirus software providers are allowed to remove the government's trojans just as if it were regular malware.