Electronic surveillance

Surveillance: German police ready to hack WhatsApp messages

According to an internal Interior Ministry progress report published this week by the independent news outlet Netzpolitik, a new version of the German police's Remote Communication Interception Software (RCIS) will be ready for use before the end of the year.

Unlike the first version, RCIS 2.0 is not limited to the surveillance of desktop computers, but can be used on mobile devices with Android, iOS, and Blackberry operating systems. It circumvents the encryption built into services such as WhatsApp and Telegram by hacking the phones themselves and reading the messages "at source" on users' screens.

Last month, the German government passed a law to hand police the power to hack into devices belonging to all people suspected of criminal activity and not just those expected of terror offenses. However, the new document shows that RCIS 2.0 has been in development since the beginning of 2016. In other words, the security forces have been applying some pressure to bring legal legitimacy to the technology that they were already developing.