German Court Decision Re-ignites Online Surveillance Debate

Wolfgang Schäuble is no stranger to controversy, having served once before as Interior Minister during the Helmut Kohl administration. As a leading member of the opposition party in 2004, he was a vocal advocate for upgrading communications between intelligence services throughout Europe and with the US as well, calling for expanded sharing of information that could be used to stop terrorist plots.

A strong supporter of NATO, in August 2005, he declared the US to be Germany’s most important ally – at a press conference held in, of all places, Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin then refused to meet with Schäuble afterward.

Last month, Schäuble hosted a meeting with his counterparts throughout the EU to discuss a possible expansion of the Prüm Treaty of 2005, which set forth guidelines for police and security services throughout Europe to share data. Citing a heightened exchange of information between German and Austrian sources as responsible for the discovery of no fewer than 2,900 leads in unresolved cases over a six-week period, Schäuble declared it critical that all EU member states begin sharing their criminal databases.

“These figures are proof that the idea behind the Prüm Treaty to create a network of existing national databases is a simple, yet very effective means to fight cross-border crime and international terrorism,” stated Schäuble. “The exchange of information under the Prüm Treaty also extends to granting other Member States access to national fingerprint files and motor vehicle registries.”

Thus it seems likely that, if Schäuble’s efforts to codify online surveillance methods are successful, not only could German officials use malware to search computers outside of German borders, but the information they discover could be shared with agencies that also lie outside those borders – perhaps British, perhaps American.

That possibility has led at least one writer for Netzeitung to speculate on the possibility of whether Microsoft may have worked in cooperation with the US National Security Agency to leave certain secret, exploitable “gaps” open to surveillance agencies. Microsoft and the NSA have raised suspicions, the online news service writes (in German), as to whether the security agency secretly and knowingly inserted “gaps” into Vista, knowing it could rely upon them later on. Such gaps, it was implied, could be shared with German and other European officials should Schäuble’s plan become law.

UPDATE 7:10 pm ET February 7, 2007 - A Microsoft spokesperson this evening responded to BetaNews' request for comment on this issue with a single sentence: "Microsoft does not build ‘back doors’ into the operating system."

Earlier this month, Schäuble announced his intention to introduce a measure before the German parliament that would amend that country’s constitution to make it legal for its military forces to immediately shoot down airplanes if it was clear terrorists were using those planes as weapons. Since World War II, Germany’s constitution has restricted its capabilities to use military force without parliamentary approval.

Next: Could new German laws impact the world’s anti-virus software?