Germany Monitors Skype, Google Mail, Yahoo Mail and Facebook chat
German Government has went a bit too far trying to be transparent and has inadvertently revealed that German police monitors Skype, Google Mail, MSN Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Facebook chat as and when necessary.
The revelations come as the German Government let out figures of expenses incurred by the Federal Ministry of the Interior following a parliamentary inquiry, which were spotted by the annalist blog. The pages contain a whole lot of tables and as many would find those boring, some pages reveal something very startling. On page 34 and page 37 of the report [PDF], line item 486 and 265 respectively, represent decoding software for Google Mail, MSN Hotmail, Yahoo Mail for prevention and investigation.
Similar is the case for line item 247 on page 37 which talks about a monitoring system for Skype. Further, money is also spent by the ministry on Trojan viruses known as and IMSI catchers which are used for "man-in-the-middle" attacks on mobile phones used by German police.
This gives enough concrete evidences proving that previous beliefs of German law enforcement agencies monitoring citizens were not entirely baseless. Germany is a country where privacy is a very sensitive topic and even in such a country internet snooping is routine.
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