“Monitoring of encrypted messages will be carried out by installing a program on the system to be monitored, which exclusively extracts the sent, transmitted or received messages either before encryption or after decryption.”
This official announcement describes the Austrian federal government's plan to purchase malicious software and use it to monitor citizens who are not suspected of any criminal offense.
The ruling parties ÖVP, SPÖ and NEOS agreed on Wednesday to amend the SNG Espionage Act (State Protection and Intelligence Service Act), the Telecommunications Act of 2021 and other standards.
Of course, there are endless negative comments about the Austrian government's plans, since it will spy on encrypted and unencrypted messages and information.
According to official documents, the government seeks to:
"The prevention of certain particularly serious attacks that threaten the constitution", the use of the software for counter-espionage purposes, and more generally the monitoring of encrypted messages, without it being necessary to suspect that a criminal offense has been committed.
According to information from heise.de about Austria's plan, private companies would have to spend around 2,5 million euros per year to support the monitoring measures, as estimated by the government.
The Ministry of the Interior says it will receive around 30 requests a year for spying on unencrypted messages and 5 to 15 requests for monitoring encrypted messages. Only if monitoring is required more than 30 times on the same person in a calendar year, then the Minister of the Interior will have to inform the National Council's standing Committee on Internal Affairs.
The new methods of spying on messages and information will have to be approved by the Federal Administrative Court on a case-by-case basis. A legal protection officer based in the Ministry of the Interior will carry out the procedure. This officer will initially be given three working days to process an application. However, in urgent cases, a single judge will be able to give the approval, and this can be done around the clock.
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
