When we meet our customers at trade fairs in Germany, we are always asked questions about legality of our tools. The reason for this is that German law on so-called “hacking tools” is very strict. At the same time the wording of the respective paragraphs is unclear and ambiguous.

On Friday, German Federal Constitutional Court dismissed a complaint of an entrepreneur that production and distribution of tools for capturing traffic data is against the law. The judges said that the constitutional rights are not violated by the use of “hacking tools” (§202a-202b). According to the court decision, legal penalty applies only in the case when the software was developed with illegal intent in mind. “Double-purpose” tools that are designed to be used by law enforcement and IT security officers are not regarded illegal.

Special thanks for Florian Hohenauer for sending us the link.