German Police May Not Break Into a Suspect's PC

hweimer writes to tell us that a ruling in Germany's Supreme Court has made it illegal for the police to secretly hack into a suspect's computer. While some hailed this as a victory for civil rights, Germany's Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble is expected to push for changes in the legal framework to allow police hacking.

Oh, Germany...

...country of freedom and civil rights ;-)

Re:Oh, Germany...

And you live where, in the Land of the Free?

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No, in the land of chocolate, banks and watches.

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No, in the land of chocolate, banks and watches.

Japan? :D

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Odd guess.

I would have guessed Switzerland myself.

Re:Oh, Germany...

Yes. More free than in the US I'd actually say. There are some things that suck big time about germany, don't get me wrong. Bureaucracy is one of the things that come to mind. That's really bad over here. The weather is constantly so-so, meaning often rainy but without the british poetry associated with it. Another thing that is really depressing compared to other countries is the loads of post-WW2 architecture that is ugly and dominates lots of the cities. This goes on the Nazies account as they pissed everyone on the entire planet off which in turn had to bomb germany into chunky kibbles. Hence: Many a crappy architecture in many parts of town hereabouts. Another thing that really bugs me is the germans and their car crazyness. No matter how many children die in traffic each year, highway speed limit is of limits to everyone and any politician who suggests it automatically does a political harakiri. Germany spend 4,7 billion man-hours in traffic jams each year, but it doesn't stop them from clogging the streets in town with cars whatsoever.

On the upsides we still have above standard social wellfare - allthough that has gotten considerably worse with 'Hartz 4' it would be considered luxurious in the US and other countries. Contrary to popular opinion the germans can actually be very nice and well behaved folks and the general education leven is still pretty high which maintains a basic level of intelligence throughout the country. The 'show your teeth - keep smiling' attitude people know from the US is near to non-existant here and people in germany generally mean what they say. For most of the time anyway. A trait I've come to like. In social structures as in schools there is the ususal back-stabbing and such, but on a much more broader base of tolerance towards other opinions and ways of life. Even though poverty is increasing as we speak the level of wealth is still considerably high and life in germany can be very secure and pleasant. Germany in general respects and defends basic human rights - something like Guantanamo or Death Sentence would be unthinkable in todays germany - and deals relatively fair with it's citizens.

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No matter how many children die in traffic each year, highway speed limit is of limits to everyone and any politician who suggests it automatically does a political harakiri.

Those children usually don't die on the Autobahn, which is the only type of street

Autobahn != playground

I'll mostly aggree about the other points, but I'm not sure what the point about children dying and the highways is. We're not talking in the cities, we're not even talking fast roads as such, we're talking major highways surrounded by at least fences and usually walls (against noise) too in the urban areas. To actually get onto a highway, a kid would have to walk quite a bit from wherever their home is, and climb over / crawl under a fence. I'm not even aware of that ever happening. Even if I might have missed a case somewhere along the road, it's hardly reason to plan traffic around such an unlikely scenario.

Also, if we're talking car-crazy, I'd like to say that at least Germany is designed to at least _allow_ one to not have a car, pretty much anywhere they may live. Compare it to USA suburban areas where in most cases you can't even walk even if you wanted to. Not only there are sidewalks everywhere, there's also good public transportation everywhere, and most places have supermarkets every 1 km or less. (As opposed to concentrating everything in some mall outside the town that's not even practical or in some cases possible to reach without a car.) So if you want to walk or take a bus instead, at least you _can_. I actually have (well paid) co-workers who come by bus, and at least one refuses to have a car and supposedly burned his driver's license as a protest against something or another.

Also the suburbia craze hasn't hit here half as hard as in the USA, where the American dream seems to be that if you're white and even vaguely countable as middle class, you have to move somewhere away from other people in some place reachable only by car. I suppose that not having much of an inner-city crime problem also helps with that. Most of my co-workers (again, well-paid and including some managers) actually like living in a populated place, on account of being more a more social thing. Which again tends to create somewhat less reason for a car exodus daily. Not that there isn't one, but it could be worse, you know?

Traffic congestions are a problem in some places, but then that's a problem in most of the western world. Cars in the 40's were still a luxury, so noone assumed we'd end up having _this_ many when they planned the cities. Short of demolishing half the city again and rebuilding it with wider roads, there's not that horribly much one can do. People aren't going to just give up their cars in Germany, but then again they aren't going to give up their cars in the USA either. And I was just reading a few days ago about Turkey having a traffic problem too, and a proposal to forbid more than one car per family in Istanbul. The Turks weren't happy about that idea, either. So that problem pretty much isn't a Germany-only problem by any kind of reckoning.

My take on Germany...

I'm an American, but I've been living here in Germany ever since I left the US Army in 1990. Some points I agree with, some seem to be more of a myth, however.

Bureaucracy in Germany is like much of the EU: there are regulations for almost anything. This does, however, have a silver lining as that means less legal battles. The courts aren't as bogged down since there are less "grey areas", so legal insurance is a lot cheaper. Some companies are returning to Germany because of the high cost of legal battles elsewhere.

Architecture is improving in Germany, as the butt-ugly buildings get torn down to make way for more modern structures. I would say that most larger cities now have spent a great deal to make their centres attractive pedestrian zones.

Car craziness in Germany is different than in the USA, but not any worse. The SUV remains an exotic animal, and fuel efficiency is playing a larger role. Move into the cities like Munich, and a car becomes a liability due to the lack of parking and the net of public transportation. That said, the sons of my neighbour spend incredible amounts of time washing and cleaning their cars, caring for them more than for their girlfriends. The elder one actually presses his GF into vacuuming the upholstery with him!

Social Welfare in Germany is still better than elsewhere, but it's also seen as a burden. Germans are born worrywarts, and the low birth rate means that the ratio of retirees to wage-earners is like a Sword of Damocles. The reforms currently being enacted are painful, mainly because for the first time social benefits are being cut, not expanded.

Education in Germany has one huge, huge problem, and that is the way it divides pupils at age 10-12. Starting then, children are stuck into one of the three secondary schools: the Gymnasium for future academics, the Realschule for vocational careers, and the Hauptschule for the rest. As a result, those kids that have the misfortune to only attend a Hauptschule will later have an uphill battle to get a decent job, and it's incredibly difficult to switch paths. The Hauptschule has become the school for "losers".

Human Rights, though, is one area where modern Germans are especially proud. Despite what the occasional beer hall pundit might say, only a tiny minority is really for the death penalty. Germans instead see themselves as better than the "barbarian" American justice system mainly because they don't have a death penalty. Human rights activists have more clout and respect in Germany than in any other country I have lived in.

Privacy was after the Nazi regime a sore point with Germans. That's why this case was so important, as it represented the digital equivalent of a secret search warrant. Germans are also leery of video surveillance, and those measure already installed in train stations and other public places have to follow strict rules. Herr Schäuble's populist clamour for new laws is not even supported by the police, as the current laws still allow for snooping in the internet, just not on the suspect's hard drive without his knowledge.

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Bureaucracy in Germany is like much of the EU: there are regulations for almost anything. This does, however, have a silver lining as that means less legal battles. The courts aren't as bogged down since there are less "grey areas", so legal insurance is a

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As a parent, I have to disagree on the strongest terms. The current system is broken not only because it often makes mistakes in the evaluation, but also because children learn in spurts. "Slow" learners can often have a huge spurt when that "aha!" moment

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Oh well... according to the quality of life 2007 website the united states citizens are much less free than the citizens of many other countries:

http://www.il-ireland.com/il/qofl07/ [il-ireland.com]

the freedom index of U.S. is 92, while Germany is 100 (still U.S. is 5th in

Parser error

No legal framework for secret police hacking exists at this time, decided Germany's Federal Court of Justice Monday in Karlsruhe

Is that:
(secret police) hacking
or
secret (police hacking)

Re:Parser error

It's secret (police hacking). Just like "real world" searches, computers may not be searched secretly. So far.

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Just like "real world" searches, computers may not be searched secretly.

Yeah, thank God for those "This call may be monitored for law enforcement purposes," recordings.

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In related news, there's been a sudden drop in convictions for burglary in Germany. Instead of secretly hacking into a suspect's PC, they could simply have it stolen, "find" it in a raid, clone the disk and get it back to the grateful owner...

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It's secret (police hacking). Just like "real world" searches, computers may not be searched secretly. So far.

Oh, they can be secretly searched alright, but only by the M$+CIA, and possibly other organizations like the RIAA+MPAA that have done a backro

just change the name

Germany's Supreme Court has made it illegal for the police to secretly hack into a suspect's computer ... Germany's Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble is expected to push for changes in the legal framework to allow police hacking.

Why change the legal framework? Just change the terminology. For example, while it may now be illegal to hack into a "suspect's" computer, they clearly never said anything about someone deemed to be an "enemy combatant". Problem solved. (/sarcasm)

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Eh, that's an American trick. Germans are too hung up on following the rules to try and bend them that way. They'll just get the rules re-written to make all computers not owned by the government be considered public.

Speaking of changing the name...

You misspelled "Muslims"... come on, it's the first half of the 21st century, not the first half of the 20th. Get your scapegoats straight!

(Don't worry, by 2050ish it'll be genetically tailored kids, or people with prosthetic something or others.

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Sheesh, you don't get it at all.

You take the person into custody and waterboard them until they confess to whatever crime you decide.

And the public agrees they must be guilty since you wouldn't have arrested them unless they were guilty.

---

Don't get too co

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You forget one important thing: Germany is not GWB's America. ;-)

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Yeah, that Schäuble really IS absolutely paranoid. He even called the Internet an "university for terrorists" and wants ANY data transfer to be logged.
Maybe he shouldn't have read 1984...

If THAT guy's actions aren't anti-constitutional, then I don

Sounds fine to me

This sounds right; it should be illegal unless/untill the police get a warrant.

Re:Sounds fine to me

That's exactly the reasoning of the Supreme Court's decision. The chapter 102 of the Criminal Court Proceedings (102 StPO) was very clear that for any search the suspect or at least an eyewitness has to be present, and exactly that was the provision of secret spying missing.
So the court likened this to wiretapping the phone or using secret microphones to listen to conversations in the suspect's home ("Großer Lauschangriff"), which both need a warrant.

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> it should be illegal unless/untill the police get a warrant.

Not quite correct. It is also illegal when the police gets a warrant (which they have currently done). The court judged, that hacking into a computer is not covered by the laws of wiretapping

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Actually, the decision goes further than this: the court decided that a judge cannot issue a search warrant that would allow hacking into a suspects computer. They basically say that since it is a clandestine police operation, it has to follow the much str

German Law

I have no understanding of German Law but (in most countries) wouldn't hacking into secretly someone's computer be the same as an illegal search?

I could be wrong, but as I see it tracking someone's activity online is similar to watching someone in a public space which is (somewhat) reasonable; and it could (hypothetically) be argued that any data being sent via the internet was like yelling across the field. Someone's computer (on the other hand) is private property and they have the right to believe that it is a private space (much like your house).

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Thats exactly the argument that made the decision of the court.

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Someone's computer (on the other hand) is private property and they have the right to believe that it is a private space (much like your house).

An expectation of privacy does not protect against bugs and/or wiretaps if a warrant is obtained.

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and they have the right to believe that it is a private space (much like your house).

I suppose people everywhere pretty much have a right to believe whatever they want ... well, maybe not a right enshrined in law but people will tend to believe whatever

Amazing: no twisted analogies

The court looked at various precedents and noticed that what the police were doing was *not* really like any of them, and so needed separate legal authorization and separate thinking-through.

Germany has stricter privacy laws, more passionately enforced, than the UK/US, but this decision is completely compatible with UK/US law that says the scope of a search has to be explicitly defined and minimal. Spyware on a computer fits neither criterion.

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Germany has stricter privacy laws, more passionately enforced, than the UK/US, but this decision is completely compatible with UK/US law that says the scope of a search has to be explicitly defined and minimal. Spyware on a computer fits neither criterion.

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Yes, as demonstrated by anti free speech laws and 50% income tax. Definitely respectful of individual freedom!

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Yes, as demonstrated by anti free speech laws and 50% income tax. Definitely respectful of individual freedom!

Would you kindly point out the anti-"Free Speech"-laws Germany has?

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Well this one for example:
http://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/166.html [dejure.org]

But there are more. I say freedom of speech is better protected in the US than in Germany. But Germany has better privacy rights.

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For example, in the US you can pretend the holacaust didn't happen. It's goofy, but you can say it.
In Germany ( and i think France), it's a crime.

Another issue with this...

...is that there could be a form of entrapment if hacking into a personal system became legal for police to do, especially as it becomes a slippery slope, where blocking such searches is tantamount to a crime in and of itself. A technicnally savvy (but innocent) person could note the attack, take steps to block it, and then appear--in the eyes of law enforcement officials who "know" of his guilt--to be trying to avoid justice. One could imagine how this might be used as justification for a warrant to search, seize and confiscate the physical property, and perhaps dig into other private areas of the innocent party's life.

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is that there could be a form of entrapment if hacking into a personal system became legal for police to do, especially as it becomes a slippery slope, where blocking such searches is tantamount to a crime in and of itself.

Entrapment: that word doesn't me

A police account

That's why all my FreeBSD machines have a password-less police user account with a UID of 0. I just keep forgetting to allow root logins per ssh, but that's not my fault, officer.

Has nothing to do with Privacy

If you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. When will you privacy lunatics grasp that simple point? For once, could we stop and think of all the children this would save? You don't hate children, do you???

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No, no, no

AC, you have it all wrong. First of all, the problem is these activist judges supporting terrorism. It seems they have them in Germany too. Those darn activist judges don't trust the executive branch. It's just Un-German not to trust your pr

Now why would someone want to do that?

Putting aside the privacy concerns that I'm sure will be expressed by fellow Slashdotters, I truly don't see the point of the police hacking into a suspects' PC, at least from a forensic perspective. Sure, they might be able to find 'interesting' evidence by doing so, but at the same time, they risk compromising their whole investigation. If they successfully exploited a vulnerability to gain access to the suspects' PC, then what guarantees them (and eventually the judge) that someone else didn't do the same before them and that whatever illegal content/activity was found on the computer was not put their/committed by another hacker?

It seems that they are providing the suspect with plausible deniability for any illegal activity that took place. If I were the police trying to prosecute someone for some digital crime, I would be praying from the bottom of my heart that the computer used to commit the crime was secured according to best practices and free of any malware.

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Exactly.

I could easily load your car (or your computer) with enough kiddy porn in about 30 seconds to have you put away for the rest of your life. A trivial search would load your cache- a few right click/saves and you are toast.

Yet folks are being convic

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no - it's more like you left your car locked at night as best as you could, and police broke into it silently.

I'm going

Vincent: It breaks down like this: it's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it, and, if you're the proprietor of a software store, it's legal to sell it. It's legal to carry it, but that doesn't really matter 'cause - get a load of this - if you get stopped by the cops in Germany, it's illegal for them to hack your computer. I mean, that's a right the cops in Germany don't have.

Jules: I'm going, that's all there is too it, I'm farking going.

Vincent: Yeah baby, you'd digg it the most.

When there's a knocking at your ports at 3am...

...it won't be tall thin men in long leather coats and wide-brimmed floppy hats.

Seriously the politicos were, and still are, advocating what is being called a "federal trojan", i.e. secret, police-controlled spyware. Just how they plan to create such a mythical multi-platform wunder-creature is a mystery to everyone here, or they are assuming all criminals and other potential searchees are using easily-targetted Windows versions attached directly to the net and store all their data in easily-searched formats and locations.

obvious points

- if the government can legally hack my computer to obtaint evidence, said evidence might have been put on my computer by some (other?) hacker, too. I'm no longer responsible for what is stored here, since any of the contents of my HDD might have been planted^z put there by some 3rd party.

- I'm supposed to help cutting administrative costs, so I should use "E-Government" possibilities (websites, software, forms etc). Tax declarations can in large parts only be made online using some (Windows only) govt software. How could I possibly trust any software / website / form provided by the government if "online searches" were to be legal? How can I visit a public government website without fear of being 0wn3d?

- as German ministers announce - Schäuble, in this case - that whatever is ruled illegal by the courts will "promptly" be put into appropriate new legislation, how am I supposed to trust this government any longer? In their oath of office, German ministers vow "to avert damage from the German people" - I don't see that. I dont't fear terrorists at all, I fear our representatives! List goes on and on, but I'm tired and kinda drunk...

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how come? as soon as the word "german" appears... ...some folks can't help themselves but mentioning "hitler". reminds me of some dogs, a bell and an old russian man.

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Ah, that must be Vladimir I. Lenin and his troupe of musical capitalist running dogs?

Seriously, I'm from an English speaking country but have lived in Germany for yonks, and you quickly learn what you can get away with in terms of frivolous refer