High technology seems to be too much for German police! According to Germany’s Federal Police Office’s president Joerg Ziercke, the police aren’t able to break the encryption used by VoIP service Skype and thus they can’t monitor the Internet phone calls made by suspected criminals or terrorists over the popular VoIP service.

"The encryption with Skype telephone software ... creates grave difficulties for us. […] We can't decipher it. That's why we're talking about source telecommunication surveillance -- that is, getting to the source before encryption or after it's been decrypted,” said Ziercke.

According to experts, Skype is very difficult to intercept because it doesn’t use such an old-fashioned, linear method of encryption. Skype, as well as other voice-over-IP calling programs, works by breaking up voice data into very small packets and switching them along thousands of routes. There is no constant circuit between two PCs and no traditional encryption key.

However, Joerg Ziercke did not ask for Skype to help German police to decrypt calls or to leave “back doors open” especially for the country’s law enforcement authorities. Ziercke said that the only solution for monitoring the suspected terrorists' activity would be to use Trojan horse spyware. This move would be adequate especially in cases where suspects know their Internet traffic might be monitored and choose to store information directly on their hard disk drives without emailing it.

But with spyware computer searches not being legal in Germany, as people in this country are very sensitive about police surveillance, the problem becomes even more complex.