Under certain circumstance and with the agreement of a judge the German police can wiretap private phone calls. With regards to wiretapping voice-over-Internet connection a big public policy discussions lasted over several years. In the end the German constitutional court finally allowed for wiretap capabilities for voice-over-internet connection like through Skype and the use of special police software smuggled onto a suspects personal computer for such purpose.

But the court sharply distinguished between the capability to listen in to phone communication and the capability to sniff through general content of a personal computer. It demanded that tools which provide the police with the first capability should not have the capability to do any other things. To do the second was a big no-no for the court and it judged such would be illegal as it would severe the basic human right to privacy.

So what did the police do? It, of course one might say, broke the law.

As the Chaos Computer Club, a 25 year old hacker organization which promotes privacy, found, the "Federal Trojan" software the police uses for sniffing into Skype calls allows full manipulation of the hosting PC. The software can install additional programs and it can upload, download and manipulate files.

"This refutes the claim that an effective separation of just wiretapping internet telephony and a full-blown trojan is possible in practice – or even desired," commented a CCC speaker. "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."

Even worse, the software is written on an amateur level, uses unsecured communication methods and, once installed, leaves the computer open to be manipulated by anyone on the Internet.

A scandal will now ensue and is likely to have political consequences. Someone, likely the head of the German Federal Police, will have to step down.

Politically this will help the German Pirate Party to win further political support. To the astonishment of the established parties the Pirates, pro-privacy and contra unreasonable copyright laws, captured 8.9% of the votes in the recent city/state elections in Berlin. They have the potential to top 10% in the next federal elections.

Vettel wins world-championship, the hawkish German federal "terror, terror" police will likely be decapitated and the content/copyright mafia will see more political resistance. What a nice Sunday.