Federal Trojan Used In Germany

Last week, the country’s Chaos Computer Club published a detailed analysis of the state trojan used by different police forces for spying on suspects. The outfit pointed out that the trojan in question breached tight limits set by the country’s highest court.

Restrictions imposed by the high court limited any kind of trojan used by police and other intelligence services to surveillance of voice chats via Skype. Nevertheless, it turned out the police have simply ignored the order of the Federal Constitutional Court and kept using an insecure and shoddily programmed trojan that offered much more features than was allowed.

Aside from being badly programmed and insecure, the trojan also allowed to download and install different modules. In theory, investigators can go as far as to search HDDs and manipulate information. Meanwhile, commands transmitted to the trojan aren’t even encrypted, and only one single key was used for all the trojans. Information transferred from computers and commands is routed through a server located somewhere in the United States, outside of German law.

Different antivirus outfits called trojan R2D2 because of the inclusion of C3PO, R2D2 and POE into the code. It was developed by a German company named Digitask, whose CEO and founder was sentenced to almost 2 years probation and a 1.5 million euro fine a decade ago for bribing state employees at the Customs Criminal Office in Cologne. After this his company renamed itself and continued selling services to state agencies.

One of such trojans was sent to the club by one of the German lawyers: it turned out that Bavarian state police installed it on the PC of his client during the investigation on drug-related charges. The trojan forwarded screenshots to the police that were in clear breach of the legislation. However, later the court found out that the police had no legal basis to do that. The matter is that the Bavarian police couldn’t make use of a trojan to track this person, as the high court restricted not just the means of surveillance, but also in which cases a trojan could be used by the police. These cases are clearly limited to the most serious crimes, and the charges against the individual in question were not that serious.

By the way, Bavaria wasn’t the only region to use the Trojan – police of other states employed it to monitor suspects against facing an international arrest warrants as well. 

12 Filipinos Stuck And Discriminated Against In Frankfurt

MANILA, Philippines—Twelve Filipinos traveling to the United Kingdom on a Cathay Pacific Airways flight (CX275 from Hong Kong to London) have been refused entry into Germany and were held Thursday night at Frankfurt International Airport.

The Filipinos, all holders of UK visas, were en route to London when their flight was diverted to Frankfurt because of the volcanic eruption in Iceland on Wednesday. They landed in Frankfurt at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday (1:30 a.m. Friday in Manila).

Other passengers on the flight were accommodated in hotels by the airline but the Filipinos were kept in the airline lounge and had to sleep on floors and cushions because they lacked Schengen visas, according to passenger Kimberly Lim, 20.

“We had to wait for four hours with no food or water and were then told we could not enter Germany,” Lim said by phone. “We saw other Asian passengers from Taiwan and China—who also lacked visas—being allowed to enter. But the Filipino passengers were told they had to stay. We felt totally discriminated against.”

3-day visas

Lim said the German authorities were issuing temporary 3-day Schengen visas that were going to be paid for by Cathay Pacific.

She added: “[The authorities] took all the passports of our group, which consisted of Chinese, Taiwanese and Filipino passengers. The Chinese and Taiwanese passengers managed to get visas after a long while, and could leave the airport to travel within Germany.

“Then [the authorities] came out with our passports, handed these back and said they have decided that anybody with a Filipino passport wouldn’t be issued a visa.

“They didn’t say why; they just gave us our passports back...”

Another passenger, Jay Madronero, 37, said: “It was poor decision-making on the part of the German immigration officials with regard to issuance of visas in an emergency situation.”

Out of their hands

Local representatives seemed powerless to help.

In an e-mail, Klaus Muller, first secretary of the German Embassy in Manila, said: “The embassy has no influence at all [over] the decisions of the German Border Control Police.”

Cathay Pacific also said in a phone interview from Hong Kong that the situation was “out of [their] hands.”

The Filipinos are facing an indefinite period of being trapped with no bedding, luggage or proper meals in the small airport lounge.

Authorities have said the disruption in air travel could continue past the weekend, until the ash clouds from the volcanic eruption clear up.

Once a Nazi, always a Nazi.