14 DAY TRIAL // After the issue was covered by the media all over the world, many German states are coming forward to admit that they have been using the controversial R2D2.
According to Deutsche Welle, those who admitted utilizing the spyware, all claim that the tool has been deployed only in serious criminal offenses and they assure everyone that the way they acted doesn't break any legislation.
While many voices in Germany agree that the interception software violates the constitution, Bavaria officials, which were the first to admit that the Trojan has been used, state that even though they believe no laws were broken, they promised to take a better look at the culprit.
Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger asked for an immediate investigation of the matter which seems to be a stranger to federal agencies which did not know of such program.
"Trying to play down or trivialize the matter won't do. The citizen, in both the public and private spheres, must be protected from snooping through strict state control mechanisms," revealed Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.
Brandenburg authorities claim to have deployed the piece of software in a single investigation, while North Rhine-Westphalia made use of it in two cases, both times being approved by a judge. At the other end of the stick, Lower Saxony admits that R2D2 spies people for two years now, but they also state that no law was broken.
The scandal broke out after not long ago, a group of hackers called CCC published a paper in which they unveiled their shocking findings.
"Our analysis revealed once again that law enforcement agencies will overstep their authority if not watched carefully. In this case functions clearly intended for breaking the law were implemented in this malware: they were meant for uploading and executing arbitrary code on the targeted system," revealed the statement.
After concluding that the research is genuine, most security solution providers have marked the Bundestrojaner as malware, most commercial software applications detecting it accordingly.