Austria’s government decides on Bundestrojan for Messenger monitoring

“The monitoring of encrypted messages should be installed by installing a program in the computer system to be monitored, which only expects only sent, transmitted, or received news before encryption or after decryption.” This official German describes the official plan of the Austrian Federal Government to buy malware and use citizens to monitor citizens who are not suspicious – if other investigative measures appear hopeless.

The government parties ÖVP, SPÖ and NEOS agreed on the corresponding amendment to the Spionage Act (State Protection and Intelligence Act), the Security Police Act, the Telecommunications Act 2021 and other standards. In the previous public assessment procedure Flood rejecting statements received to the projects. Not only encrypted messages, but also unencrypted messages and information, i.e. otherwise stored data, should be spied on.

According to official documents, the government pursues two goals: First, “prevention of certain, particularly serious constitutional attacks”, which are threatened at ten years or longer, or if it is necessary for espionage defense. Second, monitoring encrypted messages. The suspicion is not necessary that a crime has been committed.

Nevertheless, third parties are also obliged to secretly participate in surveillance. When the People’s Republic of China introduced such obligations of private authorities, it had criticized in western countries. In the case of Austria, private companies will have to spend around 2.5 million euros per year to support the surveillance measures, the government estimates – because network operators and operators of trade fair services should only be replaced by 80 percent of their effort.

Approval procedure

The Ministry of the Interior assumes to apply for the spying on unencrypted messages about 30 times a year and the monitoring of encrypted messages 5 to 15 times. Only when encrypted messages are spotted 30 times in a calendar year, the interior minister must inform the constant subcommittee of the National Council Committee. (The National Council is the directly elected chamber of the Austrian Parliament, note.)

The new methods for spying on messages and information must be approved by the Federal Administrative Court in individual cases. A legal protection officer even located in the Interior Ministry is also involved in the Interior Ministry. This will initially be given three working days to comment on an application. Then a senate is dealt with from three judges of the Federal Administrative Court. In urgent cases, a single judge can also grant approval, for which a judge journal service is introduced around the clock.

The administrative court may only approve the risk of confessions, editorial secret or lawyer secret if this seems proportionate. In this way, the doctor’s tasting is only protected in the mental field, i.e. for psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, probationists, registered mediators as well as recognized institutions for psychosocial advice and support.