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German Spyware

News clip on German surveillance software featured in Germany's late evening news

on TV, "Tagesthemen" on 5 December 2011.

Text copyright ARD - Das Erste/ Anne Ruprecht. Jasmin Klofta, John Goetz.

[Newsreader Carmen Miosga]: Following the dramatic revolutions in Northern Africa,

the world can easily be divided into good and evil, according to the west.

The recent movement for democracy and freedom is good - the former dictators are

bad. When the likes of Ghaddafi, Mubarak and Ben Ali et al. still held power, many,

and that also includes Germany, did not make such a clear distinction.

Showing solidarity with oppressed people pretty much stops where the money-

making starts.

Anne Ruprecht, Jasmin Klofta and John Goetz show how a German company,

assisted by the goverment, sold surveillance software, for example, to the Mubarak

regime who used it to spy on members of the opposition and to neutralise/ silencethem.

[Female narrator]: Egypt in March. When protesters stormed the central building of

the state's secret police, they got hold of many documents. Among those, a proposal

for a commercial offer for surveillance software FinFisher, manufactured by German-

British company Gamma. FinFisher attacks, amongst other things, PCs and

smartphones via the internet. This internet activist, whose work landed her on the list

for the Nobel Peace Price, was also spied on. She retrieved a dossier on herself,

containing intercepted emails and transcripts of chats/ phone calls.

[Israa Abdel Fattah]: This kind of software does not serve freedom. This software

helps dictators to spy on activists and to attack freedom.

[Female narrator]: Freedom is also under attack by products made in Germany. In

this promotional video, provided by WikiLeaks, the creators of FinFisher show how

easy it is [to install spyware on a computer]. Camouflaged as an update, the user

fetches the enemy onto his computer with one click only - made possible through a

security loop hole in the music service iTunes.

[Jacob Appelbaum]: And that is a very serious problem and Apple is responsible forit because it is possible to fix this loop hole which they did not do for a long time and

as a result they exposed their customers to a serious risk.

[Female narrator]: It took Apple about three years to fix the problem. To this day,

FinFisher continues to promote their products, for example at business expos like

Paris' MiliPol. Other German corporations, who have been critised for selling and

delivering such products, were also present. Companies like the Gamma Group,

Trovicor, Siemens, Nokia Siemens Networks from Munich or Ultimatico from

Aachen. The request for spying software remains high - also in Iran, Bahrain or

Syria. German technology is to have been used in all of those countries. Followingan enquiry by the Greens, the federal governments admits for the first time of

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covering exports of spying software with export credit guarantees.

[Highlighted word: export credit guarantees]

[Konstantin von Notz, German Green Party/ Alliance 90]: This means, as it seems,

that the federal government directly or indirectly supports the export of surveillance

technology abroad, German surveillance technology, and we are afraid, also to

dictatorships and regimes which do not follow the rule of law and, er, oppress their

citizens.

[Female narrator]: Following an enquiry by ARD, the ministry in charge, the

economics ministry, stated that they had no comment as there was no data on this

available.

[Newsreader Carmen Miosga]: Well, now there is data, following the investigations of

NDR media journal "ZAPP" [translator: NDR is a regional tv channel closely linked to

ARD].

[The newsreader then goes on on how an agency wire by dpa just came in stating

that Standard and Poor's might consider downgrading Germany and other European

countries and that, in parts of Germany, it had snowed for the first time of winter and

that this would be elaborated on in the weather forecast following the news].