Germany not so worried about Gestapo wiretaps now
There are several examples of sacrificing liberty for security in a G7 country in the article below. Also the justification of "getting in line with other countries" is used for allowing civilian SIGINT practices previously banned. Thursday January 8 11:32 AM EST Germany to Restore Surveillance BONN, Germany (Reuters) - German political leaders agreed Thursday to allow police to bug apartments of suspected criminals, restoring a crime-fighting tool banned since abuses by the secret police in the Nazi era. Leaders from Chancellor Helmut Kohl's center-right coalition and the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) said they had reached a deal allowing police to plant microphones in private homes of suspected criminals for the first time since 1945. Both houses of parliament are now expected to quickly pass the long-debated measure, which police have argued was needed to better fight organized crime and bring the country in line with other nations that allow electronic surveillance. Germany, which reacted to the Gestapo's abuses with some of the Western world's most extensive civil liberties laws, has long resisted any relaxation in constitutional protections that have kept police out of private homes. Interior Minister Manfred Kanther said the agreement would give police the necessary tool to fight organized crime. "This is a decisive step toward more effectively fighting crime," Kanther said. "We can now keep surveillance on suspected gangster apartments and we will be able to better fight money laundering." The opposition SPD, which controls the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, said it would support the measure after the government agreed to partial exemptions for some professional groups such as priests, attorneys and journalists. Police will be required to obtain advance court permission for any surveillance. Previously, police were only given rare exemptions to the constitutional law protecting the private home. They were allowed to use listening devices or electronic surveillance only with court permission if there was concrete evidence that a serious crime was about to take place. Now authorities will have the power to use eavesdropping methods far more extensively and will also for the first time be able to bug apartments after a crime has been committed to obtain evidence. Germany's post-war constitution barred police from electronic surveillance, telephone taps and intercepting mail. The bans on telephone taps and mail intercepts were relaxed in the 1970s amid a wave of left-wing guerrilla attacks. ------------------------------------------------------------ David Honig Orbit Technology honig@otc.net Intaanetto Jigyoubu "How do you know you are not being deceived?" ---A Compendium of Analytic TradeCraft Notes, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA
At 1:18 PM -0800 1/9/98, David Honig wrote:
There are several examples of sacrificing liberty for security in a G7 country in the article below. Also the justification of "getting in line with other countries" is used for allowing civilian SIGINT practices previously banned.
Germany, which reacted to the Gestapo's abuses with some of the Western world's most extensive civil liberties laws, has long resisted any relaxation in constitutional protections that have kept police out of private homes. ...
I suspect this is only a cosmetic change, in terms of realpolitik. The BND and other intelligence/law enforcement agencies have very probably been using the available SIGINT and COMINT tools....maybe just not using the captured data in courtrooms. (As with the U.S., where illegal wiretaps and bugs are used for ancillary purposes, even if not sanctioned by the courts.) But this still signals a move toward a '1984' situation, with Germany likely now to relax some of its objections to OECD plans for crypto restrictions (recall that Germany was opposed to some of the key escrow plans). And now that Japan has fallen into line (e.g., by banning the export of the RSA chip so touted by Bidzos and NTT), the OECD/New World Order is set to make some moves in '98. (Things have been quiet on the crypto legislation/international agreements front, from a news point of view, but we can safely assume that all of these bad things are moving along behind the scenes, and will once again become cause celebres.) --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
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