14 DAY TRIAL // The short story: a recent case reported in Germany concerns local authorities that tried to hack a suspect's computer to find incriminatory information stored in the system. A German court prohibited the police from using spying software solutions saying there is no legal context to allow the use of illegal material on certain computers. Although the Germany's Interior Minister Wolfgang Sch?uble tries to push a special law to allow the police to execute these activities, the authorities are still unable to hack suspect's computers to find incriminatory details.
The F-Secure security company started a poll on February 6 to ask the users if the police authorities should be allowed to hack suspect's computers in order to find useful information. "So this forms the basis for the question we'd like to ask you - Should legitimate law enforcement authorities such as the police be allowed to use applications that would in other circumstances be considered malware? Should they be allowed to use hacking techniques to investigate suspects?" F-Secure asked.
Today, the security company closed the voting session and presented the results that are obviously against the hacking activities meant to be used by the police authorities. From a total of 1020 votes, 65% were against the spying software solutions, 23.8% agreed while 11.2% were not sure if the police should be allowed to hack computers or not. F-Secure also added a graph for specific regions, Germany being the least approving country for the police intentions with 91% of the voters choosing No in the poll.
"There were 23.8% in favor, 65% against, and 11.2% that were undecided. Approximately 68% of those 1020 responses were from one of five locations: Sweden, Germany, Great Britain, Finland, and the United States. Germans were the least approving of police using hacking techniques, while Britons were the most willing. Finns fell somewhere in the middle. Kind of interesting results when you consider the geopolitical factors?" F-Secure reported.