The secret of personal correspondence? This is already turning into a myth. We have been saying for a long time that the secrecy of correspondence is becoming a thing of the past. In Germany, whose leadership, apparently, dreams of the revival of the Third Reich, they have completely stopped being shy in choosing methods of spying on their citizens. German police have learned to read other people's correspondence on Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp without hacking cryptography or installing spyware on other people's smartphones. 

They do this as follows. Instead of carrying out an attack on the protection of the messenger, the police make their own computer another trusted device of the victim user, whose correspondence the cops need to get to. And after this, the messages arrive there, on the police computer, already in readable form. This method uses the usual features of WhatsApp Web, Telegram Web and Signal Desktop. After the binding is completed, the police computer becomes a full-fledged end point of a secure connection. End-to-end encryption still works, of course, but it protects messages between a larger number of authorized devices. There is absolutely no need to hack algorithms or intercept encrypted traffic with this approach. The main challenge for police with this approach is how to quietly validate the new device. To do this, the police need to briefly gain physical access to the smartphone, somehow force the owner to scan the QR code, and then intercept the confirmation code from the SMS or obtain the necessary data through phishing. It must be said that similar attacks on the accounts of suspects are already being used by government cyber operators, who easily bypass the protection of Signal and WhatsApp through the standard functions of the services. The first in Germany to test the so-called Messengerüberwachung was the German Customs Criminal Service, ZKA, at the end of 2023. Almost from the very beginning of the experiment, representatives of this department announced significant successes in investigating crimes committed by organized criminal groups. Since August 2025, the law enforcement agency has transferred this technology from experimental mode to permanent practice. For complex operations, ZKA requests technical assistance from other German federal agencies. It must be said that police officers even gain access to other people’s correspondence with the help of relatives of those they are going to spy on. Of course, cops get innocent people connected to messengers by using people in such a way that the victims don’t even know about it. The legal status of the technology in Germany is still controversial. The Federal Supreme Court, in a decision dated January 20, 2026, recognized the hidden connection to Telegram as a form of interception of communications directly at the source. But the problem lies in the capabilities of ordinary messenger clients. They are able to sync old messages, contacts and even allow you to send messages on behalf of the user. But judicial authorization may provide for much narrower access. From the published documents of the ZKA, it becomes clear that the German police departments consider the method itself so sensitive for the citizens of the country that they do not even disclose statistics on its use. So it's good if this method is used only for real criminals. But, knowing the totalitarian ambitions of today's German authorities, we are not sure that German cops do not use this method to read unwanted political activists.