Operating System - HP-UX
1748030 Members
5330 Online
108757 Solutions
New Discussion

Re: Illegalization of admin tools

 
Ralph Grothe
Honored Contributor

Re: Illegalization of admin tools

Hi Pete,

many thanks for providing some links with comments on the new law in English.

These are a very ineteresting read.

Gathering from the interpretation of the law by the legal expert Marco Gercke it looks as if the wording indeed isn't all that clear and unambiguous as penal code should be, even for experts, and maybe only comprehensible by those.
The problem seemed to be that there was very little leeway for the German Legislator because of the tight European framework that with already considerable delay needed to be implemented quickly.
To disambiguate, so I interpret the expert,
it pretty much looks as though we need to have new precedence court cases.
The pitfall is that quite a few professional security experts and IT workers either relocate their offerings to countries that haven't been hit yet by similar laws,
or prematurely lapse into obsequious self censorship.
And there's yet another impact in further inflating our bewildering overregulation that even experts have difficulties to fathom
my country is so infamously notorious for.

Also interesting to read the expert's impression on an explicitly mentioned port scanner in his answer to the interviewer's final question:

Ok, but I have heard from multiple sources that one of the worst aspects of the new laws was that security tools such as nmap (a port scanner), would become illegal. Just having them on your computer will be enough. Is it true? Every detail about this topic would be appreciated...

Marco Gercke: The risk is there. Unlike Art. 6 of Convention on Cybercrime, Paragraph 202c Penal Code does not limit the criminalisation to tools that are primarily designed to commit certain computer crimes. Therefore it will be necessary to wait for the first verdicts. It is very likely that the courts will limit the application of the software with the result that the possession without link to criminal activities will not be punished.
Madness, thy name is system administration
jorgeTmp
Occasional Visitor

Re: Illegalization of admin tools

Ralph Grothe, it's pretty interesting information to consider. But I think that we already have enough of such court cases. And you can always simply hire a professional lawyer ( like of these: https://federal-lawyer.com/employer-defense/ ), if you would have any kind of jural issues with your past employers or present ones.