NEW: 🇩🇪#Germany's top court says spyware severely violates fundamental rights. Bans spyware in cases with <3year sentences. Imposes tough proportionality tests. Restricts #spyware to serious cases. Very interesting 1/ www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/P...
2/ The Federal Constitutional Court says: capturing data at the source (i.e. on someone's phone) is maximally invasive. Especially given how much of our lives happens online. They also surface the security risks to systems from this kind of surveillance.
3/ Watching Germany's highest court grapple with spyware's invasiveness & rights violations is instructive. States wielding spyware without robust legal limitations and tight judicial oversight... are almost guaranteed to be violating their citizens' basic rights.
4/ In most jurisdictions, state secrecy & lack of effective legal challenges means spyware harms = happening daily Huge credit to digital freedoms organization #Digitalcourage for bringing case. Read more @therecordmedia.bsky.social by @suzannesmalley.bsky.social therecord.media/germany-spyw...
They said the same about Palantir. Which didn't stop the Conservatives of using it.
*from using it
They should criminalize the illegal use of spyware with 3 year sentences as well, for the officers who used it, and the ones who approved their use. Besides, spyware using undisclosed exploits should be a criminal offense in the first place. Because it puts everyone else at risk too.