Google, Facebook, Chaos Computer Club join forces to oppose German state spyware

Plans by the German government to allow the police to deploy malware on any target's devices, and force the tech world to help them, has run into some opposition, funnily enough. In an open letter this month, the Chaos Computer Club – along with Google, Facebook, and others – said they are against proposals to dramatically …

[Anonymous Coward]

Stasi

That is all.

[Dinanziame]

Re: Stasi

Yeah, surprised to see this coming from Germany. They normally take that kind of things very seriously.

[GrumpenKraut]

Re: Stasi

> They normally take that kind of things very seriously.

The population in general, yes. But we do have a few politicians that are in favor of all the insane crap like forbidding (or at least back-dooring) encryption. Those, without exception, don't have the slightest idea about how cryptography works, to absolutely nobody's surprise.

Wanting to put spyware on computers is a bit low even for those arsewipes.

[Ben Tasker]

Re: Stasi

> we do have a few politicians that are in favor of all the insane crap like forbidding (or at least back-dooring) encryption.

Back in... fuck, 2009, they also had the "brilliant" idea of it being a crime to have "hacker tools" without an appropriate license, and proceeded to implement a definition so broad that it included.... Perl and Python.

El Reg wrote about it at the time https://www.theregister.com/2009/06/07/germany_hacker_tool_law/

So, yeah, no real surprise in this latest one

[T. F. M. Reader]

Purism phone

I like the idea. The spec doesn't particularly excite me (apart from the replaceable battery). I don't like the $2000 price tag very much.

But then again: maybe one should get used to paying through the nose to avoid being sold, body and soul, to the world and its sister?

[Dinanziame]

Re: Purism phone

Ouch. I thought it was going to be more expensive, I didn't think it would be so much. I'm afraid they'll have to find ways to make their freedom phone a bit cheaper, otherwise it's unlikely they'll have any success.

[iron]

Re: Purism phone

I'd rather be spied on by the Chinese than the FBI, they're less likely to tell GCHQ what they find and they charge less for the handsets.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Purism phone

the Librem 5 USA is assembled in the country

So it may be blessed with the attention of the NSA before shipping much like all those firewall appliances were back in the day

[Potemkine!]

spokesperson

see icon ----------------->

[Cuddles]

No problem

TikTok has quietly updated its terms and conditions to allow itself to collect biometric data on users, including “faceprints and voiceprints,”"

Fortunately no-one uses biometrics like face or voice to control access to their devices or private data, so there can be absolutely no problems as a result of this sort of data grab.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: No problem

"We recently updated our privacy policy to provide more clarity on the information we may collect," a TikTok spokesperson said.

Meaning, we have been doing this for a while, so we thought we'd better update the Ts&Cs before somebody noticed.