The government of Bavaria in Germany leaked a letter (only available in German) describing in detail plans for wiretapping Internet telephony (in particular Skype) of private residents.
Apparently a company has been contracted to write a Trojan that can either be installed by police officers who enter the domicile to set up physical wiretaps or via email. Ok, this won’t probably work for you guys who read this blog, but most people click on anything that moves. And who has an encrypted hard disk at home?
What strikes out are the costs for the Trojan. It only costs EUR 3 500.- (approximately $ 5 100.-) per month and person under surveillance. The reasoning is that this can only be worth it’s while for the company supporting the software, if its used often. I’m not so sure about this. It should be possible to create a quick and dirty Skype Trojan within a week. In the letter they speak about some advanced features like online update and removal or file transfer to servers out of Germany. This would take a little longer to implement, but not too long. If I were them instead of attacking Skype, I’d rather just grab microphone input and speaker output. This would allow to wiretap the room, and would also work with other VoIP programs.
It probably won’t take long until Germany is another black country on the map.
Picture of phone equipment by peterkaminski
Tags: Bavaria, Bug, Germany, Policy, Privacy, Security, Skype, Surveillance, Trojan, VoIP, Wire Tap, Wiretap, Wiretapping
