Skype baffles German plod
Found on The Inquirer on Friday, 23 November 2007
At a police convention press briefing, Joerg Ziercke, president of the German Federal Police Office, told reporters, "The encryption with Skype telephone software ... creates grave difficulties for us."
He said, "We can't decipher it. That's why we're talking about source telecommunication surveillance -- that is, getting to the source before encryption or after it's been decrypted."
He also said that German police really need to be able to employ "Trojan horse" spyware.
Intercepting telephone conversations at the source or destination means using listening devices, that is, bugs. Sometimes the old methods are still really the best ones, after all.
That's what a lot have said before: current techniques provide good results. The minor increase of additional information does not justify total surveillance; especially when the bad guys can easily get around that. Besides, that trojan idea has been ripped apart by several experts already. Not to mention that anti-virus companies will add the signatures as soon as it's found.