Austria has announced plans to give prosecutors and police the power to monitor encrypted messages sent by suspects on messaging apps.
Gerhard Karner, Austria’s conservative interior minister, said on national television that he considered the measure “reasonable.” However, the final responsibility for this lies with the Ministry of Justice, Karner added. Currently, these surveillance powers were only planned to be granted to Austrian security services as part of the fight against terrorism.
Karner’s comments followed demands by the Austrian Prosecutors’ Association and the Federal Criminal Police to grant them the same supervisory powers in the prosecution of all types of crime that the government currently plans to grant to the Austrian State Security Agency for the prevention of terrorism.
After the school shooting in Graz on June 10, in which a former student killed 10 people, Austria’s three-party coalition government agreed to Karner’s long-standing plan to create a “federal Trojan horse.” This is a computer programme that will enable the special services to monitor the communications of suspects on social networks and messaging services.
Spying via WhatsApp
Since Austria lacks the legal basis for monitoring messaging services such as WhatsApp, the country’s main domestic intelligence service and police rely on allies with much broader powers, such as the UK and the US. The latter warn them of planned attacks and espionage. Thanks to this information, the police uncovered a planned attack on Taylor Swift’s concert in Vienna, after which all three of her concerts scheduled for August last year were cancelled.
“The aim is to make people planning terrorist attacks in Austria feel less secure — and to increase the sense of security for everyone else,” Jörg Leichtfried, member of the Social Democratic Party said at a press conference.
Under the new system, the monitoring of a person’s communications must be approved by a panel of three judges and should only be used in a limited number of cases. Interior Minister Gerhard Karner also expects that monitoring will only be used for 25 to 30 people per year.
If this number is higher, a parliamentary committee must request a monitoring report, said the government, which is looking into issues of mass surveillance and violations of privacy. “The police must have reasonable suspicion of a possible terrorist attack” in order to monitor a person’s communications under the new system, the government said in a statement.
Once parliament passes the relevant law, the authorities will issue a tender for monitoring technology. The process is scheduled to start in 2027.
New European Commission’s security strategy
In April, the European Commission presented a new internal security strategy that includes a roadmap for “lawful and effective access to data” and encryption tools. In particular, messaging app developers will be required to create backdoors for law enforcement agencies.
Earlier, the British authorities made a similar request to Apple, and the company had to disable encryption for residents of the country.
Meanwhile, the Swedish authorities plan to oblige Signal and WhatsApp to store user messages. If the relevant bill is approved, Signal will leave the country, the company has promised.
Against the backdrop of this news, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said in April that in its 12-year history, the messenger has never disclosed a single byte of users’ private messages. His statement came after the French Senate passed a law requiring messaging apps to implement a backdoor for police access.
