German authorities bungle wiretaps.

[Hadmut Danisch]

On Wed, Nov 06, 2002 at 02:24:18PM -0600, Steven Soroka wrote:
> Which prompts the question, what the hell for?

That's a pretty good question.

Police and Secret Services demanded wiretapping access
as absolutely necessary for catching criminals etc.

Some politicians agreed for some short time, to 
give them a try, but to ask for evidence later, whether
this is of real use. AFAIK there was no evidence.
It was simply forgotten to ask for evidence.


On the other hand, wiretapping is currently not a
german thing anymore. Requests to enable "law enforcements"
come mainly from the European Community and - since 
Sep 11 - from the United States. Remember that it was 
the German Secret Service who found the link to Bin Laden
after the Sep 11 attacks through wiretapping phone lines.
Current wiretapping laws are "Made in Europe", not "Made in
Germany".


Furthermore, it is pretty well known that by far more
wiretapping in Europe is done by the US/Canada/GB/Autralia
project Echelon, but since this is done the "illegal" way,
it obviously can't accidently appear on the phone bills.

But it's true, we have two problems at the moment.
First problem is that there is a lack of legal/political
control of "official" wiretapping.

Second problem is that there is almost no control
and no defense against the "inofficial" Echelon wiretapping.

Hadmut

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