I am way behind with my blogging due to my recent trips and my other writing obligations so this story may be a little dated. But I read with some amusement that the German police are complaining that they can’t seem to intercept Skype calls due to the strong encryption involved. I was amused because it is like the police’s professional ego is getting a little dented and they have to vent off their frustration.

The president of the Bundeskriminalamt said :

“German police are unable to decipher the encryption used in the Internet telephone software Skype to monitor calls by suspected criminals and terrorists”.

This both scares me and concerns me. It concerns me in that it really makes me realise that my emails and phone calls are probably already being monitored by the government in the name of national security and law enforcement. Anyone who thinks that Patriot Act-style laws only exist in the US are deluding themselves. It’s in full force here in Europe too. In fact the German Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, recently proposed that the German security services be given government permission to covertly install trojan horse devices in peoples computers to monitor their communications. Whether or not these trojan horse devices would be able to crack Skype I don’t know.

A suspicious part of me is wondering if this is a deliberate disinformation tactic on the part of the German police to pretend that Skype is uncrackable. Then all the criminals and terrorists would flock onto Skype to discuss their next job thinking that their conversations are secure. But in actual fact the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst - the security services) would actually be listening in. Mashable theorizes that the US National Security Agency has already planted covert back-doors in Skype’s encryption algorithims.

But it also scares me in that Skype could inadvertantly be providing a safe haven for terrorists to congregate and talk without the police and security services listening in. Strong encryption is all well and good but if I had to choose between an uncrackable telephone system and getting killed in the next terrorist attack, I’ll readily open up a conference call for the BND to listen in.

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