A few thoughts: 1. This seems to preclude German police from doing a remote search (which would have to include malware or some way of exploiting a security hole on the target's computer) even with a court order. 2. In the U.S., the FBI reportedly has developed similar malware called Magic Lantern, which we've discussed here before: http://www.politechbot.com/p-03034.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Lantern_%28software%29 3. I can't think of any domestic case offhand when we know for a fact that the FBI has gained unauthorized remote access to a suspect's system. Can anyone? The Scarfo case involved physical access, and this remote intrusion case dealt with a computer in Russia: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-529917.html -Declan --- http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Computer-Searches.html?_r=1&oref=slo gin German Court Nixes Hard Drive Search By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: February 5, 2007 Filed at 1:42 p.m. ET BERLIN (AP) -- A German court on Monday ruled that police cannot remotely search criminal suspects' computer hard drives over the Internet without their knowledge. The decision of the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe bars police from using the online ''Trojan horse'' method, which involves using a computer program to search through remote hard drives over an Internet connection, unless parliament passes a law explicitly allowing it. Police will still be allowed to seize evidence from computer hard drives when conducting searches in person. [...remainder snipped...] _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/) ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]