Germany invades hard drives

GERMANY'S director of the Interior Ministry's counter-terrorism bureau has defended a plan to secretly scan suspects' hard drives.

Gerhard Schindler has a list of reasons why it is a good idea to plant Trojan viruses into the computers of terror suspects. He said it was important to be able to scan files, photos, diagrams and voice recordings, record every keystroke typed and possibly even turn on webcams and microphones.

Speaking to the LA Times, Schindler said that terrorists are using laptops and computers, and it would have been helpful to track them down with online searches.

He said that the terrorist of today doesn't have an AK-47 under his arm, but he has a laptop on his lap. We assume he means one with Sony batteries.

However Schindler's cunning plans have been greeted with unease in a country with a history of government spying through the era of the Gestapo and communist rule in East Germany.

Sven Lueders, head of the Humanist Union of Berlin, told the Times that Germans fear is that the state can look into their PCs because almost everybody has something on his computer that he doesn't want somebody else to see.

The Chaos Computer Club, which has pledged to find and publicise the first government Trojan, said that snuffling someone's hard drive gives a far more detailed picture than a phone tap.

CCC activist Constanze Kurz said that if she is given your computer for one hour, she will know everything about you. Isn't that the idea?

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