Germany wants to spy on suspects via Web

Germany is proposing to use trojan horse software to enable surveillance of target computers. I have to wonder how effective this will actually be. They are talking about distributing it in an apparently official email from a government email address.

1. Now that the bad guys know this, it seems likely that they will take more care with the attachments from the government.
2. Anti-virus / anti-malware programs should be able to identify and block this software
3. If the anti-virus software makers are convinced to leave a hole for this software, it will be a huge back door for other hackers to use to deploy their trojan horse software.

In general this seems like a high risk operation for the Germans. I suspect that it will be used rarely and very selectively.

The Motley Fool has a nice blog post on issues involved in electronic filing of tax returns.

There are a couple of important points to be made here. First of all…

• The IRS has all your information and it will be in digital format (accessible by computer);
• You are exposed to some points of vulnerability when filing electronically, rather than on paper;
• The information on your PC is vulnerable to theft (whether you send it electronically or just use tax software);
• Your information is vulnerable on the Internet-accessible servers to which you upload your data; but
• On the flip side of the coin, paper returns are subject to loss, theft and mishandling as well, both in transit and within the IRS.

It is somewhat similar to using a credit card. You can risk online theft when conducting an e-commerce transaction, or real-world theft when handing over your card to a minimum wage worker over a store counter. Risks exist both ways.

At this time I think the jury is out on which is safer, but, for the record, I file electronically.