German Government Smartphone Spyware Monitors Citizens’ Calls, Typing AND Sees Through Their Cameras

The shadow government is employing shadow spied Image source: middlemarketcenter.org

The German Interior Ministry has formally revealed that they have created a new “Bundestrojaner” or government trojan horse software that will enable security agencies to track the smartphone activities of anyone that inadvertently downloads it according to German media. We understand Chancellor Merkel’s government has also adopted an “off the shelf” tool from a company which is said to help authoritarian regimes track their citizens.

(Well we have tried to warn you of the direction the German government was travelling in when we started referring to The Chancellor as Hausfrau – Volksfuhrer Merkel, drawing a parallel with comedian Barry Humphrey’s character, “Housewife – Superstar Dame Edna Everidge. Though Dame Edna is not real, Merkel seems to have become similarly deluded.

The Trojan Horse software the German government is using disguises itself as something innocent like a free screen saver or game. Once the user opens the file the malicious code infects the target computer, often allowing a third party access to all kinds of information and enabling them to record keystrokes, browse files and even remotely control the computer.

The Federal Data Protection Commissioner Andrea Vosshoff has said that the testing of the software has been completed and that it will be used to follow the movements and actions of suspected criminals and others.

The government tried to reassure concerned citizens by saying that the software only has the capacity to monitor communications and not have access to sensitive files. Critics of the project, aware that the government has openly discussed the possibility of criminalising opposition to the government’s ‘open doors’ immigration policy and opponents of EU political integration, fear the malware could theoretically gain access to anyone’s computer files, personal sensitive information without the person ever being aware that they had been infected with the malware.

Green Party deputy head Konstantin von Notz said, “We do understand the needs of security officials, but still, in a country under the rule of law, the means don’t justify the end.”

This is not the occasion on which the German government has used a trojan horse program. In 2011 the government created similar malware in secret without the knowledge of the public. A hacker group called “Chaos Computer Club” discovered the plan and leaked details to the press causing a scandal. The lawyer of a person whose computer was infected by the trojan told the German press the government had planted it on his client’s computer as he was going through customs at Munich airport.

FinFisher Gamma-International is the company that has developed the latestsoftware called FinFisher or FinSpy. They are based in the UK and in Germany and specialise in developing spyware for governments and law enforcement agencies.

They have been at the centre of many civil liberties scandals when oppressive regimes have used their software to spy on political opponents and human rights activists. Egypt used the software during the Arab spring to help identify and ‘neutralise’ people critical of the Mubarak regime. Germany, which presents itself as a liberal Social Demoracy now joins countries like Bahrain and Indonesia who are alleged to use the software, according to a report by University of Toronto based Citizen Lab(but as anarchist intellectual Mikhail Bakunin warned Karl Marx in the 1870s, socialist governments will always become more oppressive that the old despotic monarchies).

Re-Branding Dissent – The Quiet Destruction Of Democracy

Many people, all the contributors to this publication among them, fear that democracy is being destroyed. OK, OK, hipsters will say but ‘we’ve never had democracy’, or, ‘it was destroyed long ago’, but left wing deceit aside, I think its worth actually thinking about how, many forms of democratic expression, effective dissent and peaceful self-determination are being outlawed and abolished in a sustained attack on free speech and civil rights.

In an article titled “The Next Crisis” the author argues that The Controllers, The Global Elite, call them what you will, have decided that Democracy is a threat to their wealth and power and have more than likely given some thought to how best to neuter it while appearing to do no such thing. It is expedient to retain the outward appearance of democracy in order to avoid frightening the frail of spirit, but there is a move to eradicate any substance from it, leaving us with an empty but colourful stage show.

The idea of a meritocratic global governance is about a hundred years old now, when first floated it was unworkable but now internet technologies offer government the ability to control information and thus manipulate opinion so that enough people can be persuaded to surrender their individual rights and liberties in return for protection from ‘existential threats’ that in reality, if dealt with properly, pose no greater danger to human life than a smelly fart.

And yet the elites keep pushing the idea that we are threatened by global warming, Islamic extremism, food and water shortages and a host of other problems from which only Big Government can save us. For example

3) professionalized Governance. Democracy can be and must be neutered, and an effective way of doing this is to insist that amateur, elected officials MUST take the advice of professional (read corporate) advisors. Expand current law to enforce this.

If this seems monstrous now, their argument, I suspect, will be that in an increasingly crowded, interconnected and globalised world we can no longer leave critically important decisions in the hands of the uneducated, in-expert and amateur. We must, of course, still be free to choose but must, from now on, be helped to choose ‘wisely’. And how can we choose wisely if we aren’t given wise choices to choose from? Oh, the Orwellian beauty of it! No prizes for guessing who will decide what is and what is not wise.

We cannot any longer allow you to choose unwisely! There is so much at stake and so much you and your representatives simply do not fully understand.

You only need think how much legislation is already written by these ‘advisors’ and how many ‘experts’ are routinely seconded from corporations in order to ‘help’ the government departments regulate those same corporations to appreciate how far towards this we have already come. Two examples of ‘expert advice’ spring readily to mind. Back in May 2014 Citi drafted, word for word, many of the ‘amendments’ to the Frank Dodd financial regulation law. While professional experts from J PM Morgan did the same for the new derivatives trading law which puts the US tax payer back on the hook for any really serious losses. In an essay <br />

<h4>The Next Crisis – Part two – A manifesto for the supremacy of the 1%</h4><br />

the author, award winning documentary film maker David Malone presents a likely manifesto for the subversion of democracy by a bureaucratic dictatorship appointed by political and wealthy oligarchs.

Interesting reading …

 

 

READ MORE ON: [German] … [Germany] … [Technology] … [Surveillance]

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The death of democracy
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Free speech abolished in Germany

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Back to Contents table

Democracy and corporate capitalism

Death of democracy

Democracies get the government they deserve?

Democracy being murdered by mainstream media

The Importance of Free speech

The Threat To Free Speech

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