I heard on German news that it is estimated that 20% of its population has hit by phone tapping, either because the line was tapped or because the people called someone else whose line was tapped. Germany doesn’t only tap what we would usually describe as criminals, it also taps phone line of political opponents, especially patriots.

Spying on people is perfectly acceptable in Germany since its a so called democracy. Germany is so obviously democratic, that who doubt it or who believe that Germany is a fascist country, can be sentenced to forced reeducation in jail, for insult to the state. (I’m sure that once they are released from jail, they will be convinced for good that Germany is indeed a democracy…)

Now germany is confronted to a new problem: Skype! It seems that they can’t crack the Skype encryption and thus cannot intercept peoples’ Skype conversations. The anti criminality cell of the German state of Bavaria, has conceived a remedy to this problem. From now on, Bavarian police will send spyware to its suspects to allow them to monitor skype conversations and SSL encrypted web traffic. To this time, the software will only run on Windoze 2000 and XP. Linux, Unix and Mac users should be safe.

Links:
https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/Skype_and_SSL_Interception_letters_-_Bavaria_-_Digitask

https://secure.wikileaks.org/leak/bayern-skype-interception.pdf

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/102485

http://www.gulli.com/news/nutzt-das-lka-in-m-nchen-2008-01-24/

http://www.esrockt.com/bayerntrojaner-hoert-skype-gespraeche-ab/

http://www.esrockt.com/skype-ist-zu-sicher/

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/suche/ergebnis?rm=result;q=skype;url=/newsticker/meldung/102375/;words=Skype

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/suche/ergebnis?rm=result;q=skype;url=/newsticker/meldung/102485/;words=Skype

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/tech/0,1518,510506,00.html