In order to monitor encrypted communication, investigators will in future, according to the Senate draft and the Änderungen der Abgeordneten, not only be allowed to hack IT systems but also to secretly enter suspects’ apartments.
If remote installation of the spyware is technically not possible, paragraph 26 explicitly allows investigators to “secretly enter and search premises” in order to gain access to IT systems. In fact, Berlin is thus legalizing – as Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania did before – state intrusion into private apartments in order to physically install Trojans, for example via USB stick.
So what’s the threshold for this power to be used? It doesn’t actually say.
Is Heise a reliable source? There’s not much corroborating this ATM, and the legislation title returns nothing - maybe because it’s just a draft.
Edit: Also ironic that they make you sign away your full GDPR rights to view the privacy article without an account.
Heise is generally one of the most reliable tech source news outlets in German. (E.g. Netzpolitik.org
And yes,this has been reported on various other news outlets as well
Sadly this is actually not the main issue with that law - the use of KI and population data is far more problematic and overstepping boundaries. The installation of the remote logging software (“govermental trojan”) was already possible before, but not by the state,only by the federal criminal investigation office (BKA) and it still has pretty high boundaries (a judge needs to approve,approval is fairly limited in it’s timespan, there are limits what crimes it can be used for and how data can be used) While I am not happy about it either, personally I must admit I have far less problems with it than with the other parts of the law. Observation on high risk people has always been part of police work and tbh, it needs to be done if you want to tackle organized crime, violent extremists, etc. Back in the 90ies they tapped the phone of the Mafia associates, now communications have shifted so from my point of view it’s acceptable IF “imminent danger” is not routinely assumed regularly (that reduces the limits) and the judges look at it critically - which at least some of them do. And: It’s far far better than the alternative that is being pushed: Backdoors in all chats - as pushed by some EU countries on a EU scale. Far worse.
The AI, automatic number plate scanning,face recognition, etc. part of that law is the issue.
If you speak German: Page 25 ff. https://www.parlament-berlin.de/ados/19/IIIPlen/vorgang/d19-2553.pdf