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Abstract

The German Home Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has considered allowing police to use specially created Trojan horses for snooping surreptitiously. IT security expert Hans Gliss talks about why he thinks the idea is crazy.He points out that a snooping Trojan could be seen as a breach of human rights. Germany's Constitutional Court shared the same viewpoint and decided that the constitution and existing laws could not permit such a privacy invasion. Gliss also points out that fear of covert Trojans could convince cybercriminals to up their game and use cryptography or steganography to hide their activities. He believes authorities would have little chance of keeping pegs on computer misuse then.German IT security expert Hans Gliss discusses the dangers of his government allowing police to use Trojan horses to snoop. Gliss worries that criminals would only be encouraged to raise their game by such a move.