German Police Accused of Carrying Out Some Pretty Stupid Raids (bleepingcomputer.com) 145
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: Two privacy-focused organizations have this week accused German police of carrying out raids at their offices and members' private homes on some pretty shoddy reasoning that makes no sense and hints at the police's abuse of power. The first of these organizations is Zwiebelfreunde, a non-profit group based in Dresden that runs Tor relay servers and supports privacy and anonymity projects by providing legal and financial help. One of the ways it helps these projects includes collecting donations from European users into its bank account and then relaying the raised money to overseas projects. Today, members of the Zwiebelfreunde project revealed that German police had raided their Dresden office and the homes of three members located in the cities of Augsburg, Jena, and Berlin. The raids took place on June 20, and police told Zwiebelfreunde members they were in relation to the RiseUp project, a provider of anonymous XMPP and email services.
Going dark (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't like it when you as an individual "go dark", but they can't stand it when you start teaching others to do it too and will use all manner of "persuasion" up to and including "facilitating child pornography" just because you believe in communications that are both convenient and secure.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Why should you want to "go dark"? And why should you teach others? Europe is peaceful and democratic. Anyone who wants to hide is a malfeasant and should be prosecuted. End of debate.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Why should you want to "go dark"? And why should you teach others? Europe is peaceful and democratic. Anyone who wants to hide is a malfeasant and should be prosecuted. End of debate.
Sarcasm, right?
Joke lost to moderation.... (Score:3)
They {...} will use all manner of "persuasion" up to and including "facilitating child pornography" just because you believe in communications that are both convenient and secure.
Fuck you, {...etc...} PEDOPHILE!
It might be some random coprolalia-affected troll, but in the current context of this thread, there might by some "wooshing" sound that got lost somewhere.
Post should get some "+1, Funny" love by mods, in my humble opinion.
Tools used by child pornographer (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're "securing communications" for people who then use it for child porn, you are opening yourself up to being accused of that no matter your alleged altruistic intentions.
Hey, you know, what else those evil child pornographer are using ?
Digital photocamera, SD cards, computers, internet, printers, paper.
They might even sometime wear clothes, and eat food !
Ban all of the above, because pedo-peddlers might by using it too !!!~~
The purpose of tools like Tor, GPG, OTR, Axolotl, etc. is to help guarantee privacy and secure communication. It might be abused by people with nefarious intention, but it also has tons of legitimate reasons (think find a away accroos the Chinese Great Firewall, think protecting from corporate espionage, think whistle blower who want to help journalist report on a scandal, etc.)
These are useful tools.
You shouldn't deprive people from their everyday usefulness, just because the tools might fall in the hands of some criminal.
Re: (Score:1)
If you want to arrest Pedophiles, then start with imprisoning the tops tier of gov and nobility. Brussels is incredibly full of pedos at the top of society and government.
The "think of the children" excuse doesn't work anymore when you have everything from MI6 turning a blind eye to Jimmy Saville's pedo rape dungeon -- I'm sorry, SIR Saville, you know, because the Queen Knights so many pedos MI6 can't keep track of 'em all -- Or when you have FBI covering up for pedophiles in the Franklin Cover Up: A Senat
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
mm, so that means that all weapons and gun companies directors and employees need to be raided and prosecuted for aiding and enabling murder and genocide?
Doesn't sound stupid to me (Score:2, Insightful)
Just reading that brief description is enough to make me think that group is suspicious. Tor & money donations, overseas money distribution? It just smacks of money laundering to me. I doubt the police would raid on that alone they probably have some tip or informant that's backing up that suspicion.
Re:Doesn't sound stupid to me (Score:5, Informative)
They aren't accused of anything. They were raided as witnesses. Suppose you donate to Wikipedia, then someone publishes a threat against the president on a Wikipedia page, then your home is raided in order to seek information regarding that threat because you donated to Wikipedia, where the threat was published. Then they confiscate your 3D printed tiny plastic model of the Hiroshima bomb and claim that you were preparing to create an explosion (also because you have sodium persulfate for etching circuit boards).
Re: (Score:1)
EmpfÃngername: Riseup Networks
IBAN: DE41 4306 0967 1126 8256 06
BIC: GENODEM1GLS
Bank: GLS Bank
Land: Deutschland
There, now you have bank accounts for Riseup. Is it acceptable to raid your home now? Is your mom OK with that?
Re: (Score:2)
It's a familar approach, I'm afraid.
There was an infamous crackdown of "hackers" in the USA decades ago, coordinated by the US Secret Service. It was called "Operation Sundevil", and it was classic in its abuses of power, its attempts to harass "dangerous crackers" by doing unprovoked or justified raids on them, and it wound up raiding the game cmpany called "Peter Jackson Games" because they had a card game about computer hacking which was described by the agents as a how-to guide for hacking. I played the
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
For the state and the police of course it isn't (Score:5, Informative)
Because in all probability they will, as always, get away with it, while innocent citizens will perhaps even be prosecuted, instead of being properly compensated.
Reports in the German press made it very clear that those raids very probably were illegal, not the activities of the attacked group. Police even said the group hadn't been under suspicion in the first place, they allegedly were raided because they were thought to have evidence in a case against someone else.
And the group was using RiseUp as a platform for transferring funds only because one of the NGOs they were helping to collect money for uses only that as a payment option. There were and are no hints of "money laundering" whatsoever. On the contrary, groups like the one that was attacked here typically rather belong to circles which strongly oppose and help fight corruption and money laundering.
Re: (Score:2)
"...raided because they were thought to have evidence in a case against someone else."
Sounds like a valid reason to attempt to confiscate the evidence then. No? Did the group know they had evidence? Did they attempt to turn it over voluntarily?
Re: (Score:2)
On the contrary, groups like the one that was attacked here typically rather belong to circles which strongly oppose and help fight corruption and money laundering.
You cannot simultaneously oppose corruption and money laundering because money laundering is a way that people get around corruption as much as it is a way that people profit from it.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Who in their right mind names a group "Onion Friends", and doesn't expect a police raid...or maybe I got the translation wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, they could just be a support group for https://www.theonion.com/ [theonion.com]
Re: (Score:1)
These people are not accused of money laundering and such an accusation would be even more stupid than the raids, because it's all out in the open. Money laundering requires some sort of deception to work.
This is the usual stuff. (Score:5, Interesting)
Like all credible citizen movements the Chaos Computer Club has moved from being perceived as a smelly group of hippies to a respected independant organization that helps keep some sanity in the public debate on IT and laws concerning it.
However, that the police behave as a bunch of stupid douchebags when it comes to dealing with the CCC is classic stuff. We've had this since the 80ies and as someone who sympathizes with them I always keep a backup of my data hidden in some unusual place in case some idiot thinks that because I use the CLI I'm some evil hacker or something and comes to take all my hardware.
"Guns are real, blue uniforms are real, cops are social fiction." - Robert Anton Wilson
My two eurocents.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Like all credible citizen movements the Chaos Computer Club has moved from being perceived as a smelly group of hippies to a respected independant organization
They were better back when they were hacking banks.
Re: (Score:2)
They were better back when they were hacking banks.
The CCC should go back to their roots... start building dams and bridges again.
Re: (Score:2)
CCC-medien has a video about this: https://youtu.be/mGj5Hp354js [youtu.be] (in German)
I found it quite interesting because the speaker (the one who were raided) tries to also see if from the viewpoint of the police.
Re: (Score:2)
The first sane comment on this issue. Pug, what a relieve.
Re: (Score:1)
Get a better news source (Score:1)
Because the least you could've done was fish up the CCC press release and add that as a link.
Re: (Score:1)
Golly. You could have even done that in your rant/comment!
The German telco past (Score:3)
The Stasi could not trust their own workers politically and any existing law enforcement in the wider East Germany.
When East Germany was more confident in its ability to keep watch over people it allowed more select people more visits and trips from the West.
Why? The Stasi then had enough informants and their own new trusted surveillance in place to allow such meetings and visits.
Bait and as a trap under constant watch.
Before that the Stasi had to act quickly on any information. Just like the German police doing "raids" in 2018.
The German police are at point with new telco technology that they don't like and don't understand.
The work of the NSA, GCHQ, BND is well understood. Total collection, junk encryption used by computers in Germany.
The difficulty for the German police is they have too many internal domestic and very German political problems.
They cant trust their own staff as too many politically correct staff got hired on demographics have now entered the German police without any consideration for German security.
That has totally weakened decades of once West German and now German internal security inside the German police force. Nothing stays a secret within the German police as its own new workers walk information out.
The German police have to act too quickly using very limited legal telco support services.
The tools allowed for the German police to work on domestic telco networks legally are not useful in 2018. Reports that end in a phone number and an ip range.
A modern pen register https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] so the German police never get too powerful, smart or political again.
German police need BND tools to enter computer networks in real time and see content not just get an ip range from a telco/ISP.
Nobody would detect such remote access and no raid would show any police work was done.
The result is German police can respond to an ip range legally. They know its not what they need but its all they can legally get.
When all the German law allows is to find an ip range, the police go back to look into every ip. Quickly before the information walks back to new staff who have filled the lower ranks of the German police.
What german police need is something like a new GCHQ "Spy Smurfs" for todays phone networks.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/... [zdnet.com] (Jan 27 2014)
Tracker Smurf for location.
Nosey Smurf for that live mic.
Dreamy Smurf to get power on when the user has selected "power" off.
With such modern tools the German police would never need to show anything ongoing by doing such raids.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, your post is complete nonsense. What actually is an "IP range"?
To wire tap a connection you need a court order. And if you have evidence for a crime or a crime in planning, you get that order and then you can record/analyze what the proposed criminal is doing.
More or less the same as in any "constitutional democracy" or "free government under the law"
Re: (Score:2)
"German police can now use spyware to monitor suspects" (2/26/2016)
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it is and the west always was. ...
Perhaps you want to read the link you posted?
It seems you missed the "court order" part
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ha ha ha ha.
In what kind of dream worlddo you live?
Re: (Score:2)
You need to contact the ISP to link a particular IP at a time to a user and that doesn't work all too simple.
Re: (Score:2)
Thats another problem for the German police in 2018. Telling a court, telco the police are looking at an account allows the person under investigation to get told they are getting police on their account.
The German police cant trust their own new police staff, the new court staff, the new telco workers not to sell/give information on police action to people at the start of all investigations.
"Seized objects" (Score:5, Informative)
They even found powdery substances in one room (for etching PCB), concluded that the CCC must be building a bomb and even seized a model of printed. Actually it was a 3D print of Fat Man and a few inches / cm long.
https://twitter.com/annalist/s... [twitter.com]
The print translates to:
"Offense: Inducing an Explosion with explosives
"Site of crime: Augsburg
"Time of crime: 2018-06-20
Object (diverse)
red, 3D-Print, likely model of an atomic bomb"
Yes, its true. No, it's not actually funny but police is framing the CCC as a criminal organisation.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
And with a *model* of a bomb, you can blow up... what, exactly??
Re: (Score:1)
And with a *model* of a bomb, you can blow up... what, exactly??
A model of a city.
Re: (Score:2)
+1 Perfect :D
stupid to whom? (Score:2)
One of the ways it helps these projects includes collecting donations from European users into its bank account and then relaying the raised money to overseas projects.
Uhm, that's just how basic money laundering works.... So that could certainly be a basis for doing a raid if it's not clear where the money came from.
Re: (Score:2)
They (and other people) have been raided as witnesses not as suspects.
And not in a case of money laundering but because the police figures that they have a connection or data on all other mailadresses @riseup.net.
Please stop justifying the raid by making things up.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't that a bit like being pulled over for a broken turn signal so that the cop can look for evidence of more serious stuff?
I cant believe this! (Score:2)
You tellin' me German police abused their power? Gestapo out of here!
Re: (Score:2)
German here. Our lawmakers tend to make laws, rules and procedures that promote abuse (or are abuse by themselves). For a really egregious example from the Nazi regime, check this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws [wikipedia.org]
Today things are not THAT bad, but recently there are tendencies toward a police state.
We don't really know if the reasoning was stupid. (Score:2)
Because we don't really know what the reasoning was -- only the target organization's claims about what that reasoning must have been.
In Germany, as in the US, to execute a search you need a warrant issued by a magistrate, specifying the places to be searched and methods of search to be used. They have to convince a judge that there's evidence to be found, but they don't have to lay out their entire reasoning to the target of the investigation.
I'm not saying that the warrants couldn't be based on stupid
Sensationalist Discussion vs Real Discussion (Score:1)
It's interesting watching a generally tech-savvy community (like us here) adopt so much wilful ignorance.
(a repost of something I repied to someone in one of the threads of this ost).
Let's suppose that it turns out that donations your site (this, wikipedia, whatever) collects end up, after some investigation, further downstream, actively funding fundamentalist, violent terrorism, or something less sensational but equally bad if not worse, putting more fuel in the furnaces driving mass migration.
Why wouldn't
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Nonsense, police abusing their power, with or without orders from above, is a perfectly normal police behaviour in capitalist states. They never needed help from people standing in whatever relation to one of the former so-called socialist states which sported their own brand of secret police back in the times.
Re: (Score:3)
They may be, but I fear that doesn't make them that much better... By the way, German law is continually being changed towards less restrictions for the police, towards police getting more protection against citizens, instead of better protecting citizens against unlawfully acting police, while the latter has more and more become normality in Germany (as about everywhere else). And government and politics – even the moderate German left – reliably come to their defence and tend to antagonize cri
Re: (Score:2)
"German law is continually being changed towards less restrictions for the police, towards police getting more protection against citizens..."
You may know more about it than I do, but I lived there for half a dozen years in the 80-90s, and the police appeared to have pretty broad authority back then.
Re: (Score:1)
In heaven, the Engineers are German, the Cooks are Italian, and the Police are British.
In hell, the Cooks are British, the Engineers are Italian, and the Police are German.
Re: Merkel (Score:2, Insightful)
And in non capitalistic states they just murder you
Re: (Score:1)
"capitalist states". I doubt that police abuse is confined to capitalist states. Are you seriously claiming police in say Russia and China are more circumspect. I have absolutely no knowledge of these affairs but collecting and re-distributing funds could easily be money laundering depending on the sources and destinations. As usual the devil is in the details - blanket claims of police misconduct or stupidity are hardly persuasive.
Re: (Score:2)
I have absolutely no knowledge of these affairs but collecting and re-distributing funds could easily be money laundering
It's easy to obtain that knowledge. Riseup clearly state [riseup.net] that:
the police looked at Riseup’s donate page and found we accept donations in Europe through a non-profit organization (“Verein”) based in Germany called Zwiebelfreunde. They decided this meant that Riseup was run by this organization (it is not), and so aggressively targeted this organization.
In Germany accepting donations through a non-profit third-party [cof.org] is not considered money laundering.
Re: (Score:3)
"capitalist states". I doubt that police abuse is confined to capitalist states.
Of course not, and it wasn't my intention to insinuate something like that. It's just my impression (and not just mine), that police forces in capitalist first-world states become more and more powerful, aggressive, fitted with more and more rights against the population, the less the capitalist economy is able to keep up widespread prosperity in those states.
Are you seriously claiming police in say Russia and China are more circumspect [...]
Surely not. Now, today Russia as well as China are capitalist states. But of course they weren't "more circumspect" earlier, either.
Re: Merkel (Score:2)
One of the cool features of repressive police states is that they're both heinously expensive to operate, and tend to severely retard the economy. So over a longish timeframe they are self-limiting.
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, but it's not like the Germans to employ Gestapo tactics.
Re: (Score:2)
Then again, in a truly capitalist state, if ever there were such a thing, the police would barely exist, as there would be very little public money for them. Sadly, such a place does not exist in our world.
Re: (Score:3)
Of course the police would still exist - they would simply be private police charged only with protecting and pursing the interests of their wealthy employers. Private property beyond what you can carry exists only with the threat of violence, and the wealthy aren't about to surrender their wealth.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Never heard of it.
I don't believe only the wealthy would be interested - but that only the wealthy would be able to afford a private police force sufficiently dedicated to their job to do any good.
Re: (Score:1)
You are correct that this species you have labeled "the wealthy" possess disproportionate resources to dedicate to protecting their belongings. Then again, they also possess disproportionate wealth to protect, so it kinda makes sense.
As you think all this through, please keep in mind that your local police force is mostly funded by your the local community. What this means is that cops who serve wealthier communities are better equipped, better trained,
Re:Merkel (Score:4, Interesting)
Honestly, I have no interest in any piece of fluff espousing capitalism as an ideal end goal. The entire concept of capitalism is that capital is the ultimate measure of value, which means that so long as inheritance exists, unrestrained capitalism can only end in a neo-aristocracy with minimal social mobility. The only chance for any other outcome would be a political system that explicitly and completely rejects any influence of money on politics - which I don't see how is possible.
Capitalism has much to offer, but only in counterpoint to something like communism, which enshrines the economic value of the common man. Either extreme on it's own is a recipe for disaster.
Re: (Score:2)
All irony aside, you're kinda not wrong about inheritance. It's a problem. The problem with this problem, however, is that the solutions that have thus far been proposed have ultimately resulted in problems much, much greater than this one, and mostly don't actually do much to solve the issue, anyway. People who have enough money to care about where it wil
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps I will. Does it address how to manage assholes seeking to game the system? Without that any such discussion is pure fantasy.
Wealth taxes seem like they may have some of the answer - they perform the same investment-promoting function as managed inflation, without burdening the lower classes to nearly the same degree. Eliminating inflation also makes it much more difficult for businesses to hide the fact that they're continuously cutting their employee's pay.
Another bit would be to tax capital gai
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, and I ascribe only those attributes to"the wealthy that are clearly visible from their own actions. There are obviously individuals in any group whom such a stereotype unjustly tarnishes, but as a group the wealthy have shown time and again throughout history that they are the enemy of the people.
Re: (Score:1)
Regardless, I don't consider wealth to be a problem, really. Poverty... now that we could discuss.
Re: (Score:2)
When the wealthy grow their wealth by exercising their financial power to implicitly or explicitly support a system dedicated to transferring wealth upwards - they are active contributors to poverty. That is very much the case in the U.S., where real wages have been stagnant or declining for the lower 90% of the population for decades, while virtually all new wealth goes to the top 10%.
Re: (Score:3)
pursing the interests of their wealthy employers.
The bigger problem, is the wealthy are also not going to be willing to surrender their source of wealth, which is your wealth.
We've had private security forces in the US without much government oversight. They gave the Gestapo a run for their money.
Re: (Score:2)
You should look up the Pinkerton Detective Agency and how big they were in the 19th century, and then consider that they were only one of the multiple private police forces that existed.
By capitalist states, I'd assume the poster meant the west where we're supposed to have the rule of law and respect for rights. In the various authoritarian states, it is natural to expect heavy handed police actions.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
How does an economic model affect the brutality of the police?
Communist countries have a reputation of brutal police crackdowns as well with many other economic models.
Perhaps the problem is the economic model but some other factor. Such as groups trying to enforce their power over others.
Re: (Score:2)
behaviour in capitalist states.
LOL. Fucking troll.
behaviour in states.
FTFY.
Re: (Score:2)
Even in the most communist of communist states, there were people with more power than the rest.
There is no governmental organization of man that has ever existed that did not have a disparity of power. Next stupid question.
Re: (Score:1)
Nonsense, the police and justice is governed by the states, so in this case Söder is the main culprit. That is the man, that just tried to topple Merkel. The police and justice in Bavaria is also known for their close ties to the CSU and their willingness to go after all, that work against the CSU or their 'spezis' (people who bribe the CSU).
Re: (Score:2)
And the CSU is known to be close to 'braune' (brown = nazi uniform) sympathisers.
Re:Merkel (Score:5, Informative)
German Police is independent of the central government and run by the different states in Germany. Therefore, Merkel has nothing to do with it. Furthermore, would that be first the duty of the minister for the interior.
Re: (Score:3)
Furthermore, would that be first the duty of the minister for the interior. ...
Which is Seehofer, who just had a bitch fight with Merkel over some nonsense
Re: (Score:2)
The actual incident was in Saxony, if I am not mistaken. They have a rather different view of history. Especially, in politics. If you know what I mean.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah there are big controversis about Saxony, e.g. the police there wants to buy war weapons (like tanks and real machine guns), which is basically unthinkable in Germany.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Whereas ethnic groups are forming 'no-go zones' all around Europe
That is code for muslims.
I'll admit it's possible that you may not understand the background rhetoric of 'no-go zones' in Europe, but I think it's far more likely that you're just another shitstain trying to put a veneer of euphemistic language atop your racists beliefs.
Re: (Score:1)
The left:
"You don't need guns, the police will protect you"
"The police does a lot of unjust things" or straight "ACAB"
Now that's just not true. They never claim the police will protect you. They know that's a lie, everyone does.
They also know that if the public is armed they are much harder to take over with a force. The public can defeat them. I sometimes run into people that think the US Military would squash American citizens with guns. Then I point out how well the Iraqis did in Baghdad against that same military, and they were just about disarmed before we showed up. At home they're sitting ducks and they know it. At