Austria’s centrist coalition government has agreed on a plan to enable police to monitor suspects’ secure messaging in order to thwart militant attacks, but the opposition right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ) has warned that “total digital surveillance” is an “attack on all citizens.”
The aim of the new regulations, according to Jörg Leichtfried, the junior minister in charge of overseeing the Directorate for State Security and Intelligence (DSN), is “to make people planning terrorist attacks in Austria feel less secure—and increase everyone else’s sense of security.”
Under the new system, monitoring of a person’s messaging—on services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal—must be approved by a three-judge panel and should only apply to a limited number of cases. Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said it was only expected to be used on 25-30 people a year.
The largest party in Austria, the opposition FPÖ, has rejected the move, saying the government wants to spy on its own citizens who are critical of the state.
