Thomas Hertweck schrieb:
> Michael S. Dunsavage wrote:
>
>> I'm confused. Can someone sum this up for me? I'm from USA.
>>
>
> Last Thursday, the German parliament passed a concept that had been
> proposed by the German government parties. The concept concerns the
> German criminal code and is meant to tighten laws against cybercrime.
>
> According to the new §202c, anybody who prepares a crime by building,
> supplying, distributing or making available passwords or security codes
> for data access or typical computer programs whose purpose is to prepare
> or commit such a crime, can be fined or sent to jail for up to one year.
> There were other changes concerning §202, but the one mentioned above is
> the one most criticized.
>
> Many people say that it's not possible to distinguish between programs
> that might be used to prepare a crime and programs that serve to detect
> vulnerabilities and secure computer systems (I personally agree with
> that statement). Therefore, §202c could criminalize many tools that are
> frequently used these days, for instance port scanners etc. There is no
> clear definition given in §202c and at the end of the day a German court
> might have to decide in individual cases. The intention of §202c,
> however, seems to be to criminalize only software that might cause a
> "damage".
>
> In order to become a law, the concept has to pass the German Bundesrat
> (upper house of the German parliament) as well. This could happen in
> July. Then the new concept would become a law shortly thereafter.
>
> It could affect openSUSE (in Germany) since the distribution of programs
> that fall into above mentioned category (yet to be clearly defined) is
> then forbidden.
>
> HTH,
> Th.
>
> PS: This topic is not of technical nature and should be discussed on
> opensuse-project.
>
>
>
I'm sorry for getting this on the wrong list, thank you for pointing
this out.
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