Austrian Government Agrees On Plan To Allow Monitoring of Secure Messaging

Austria's coalition government has agreed on a plan to enable police to monitor suspects' secure messaging in order to thwart militant attacks, ending what security officials have said is a rare and dangerous blind spot for a European Union country. From a report: Because Austria lacks a legal framework for monitoring messaging services like WhatsApp, its main domestic intelligence service and police rely on allies with far more sweeping powers like Britain and the United States alerting them to chatter about planned attacks and spying.

That kind of tip-off led to police unravelling what they say was a planned attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, which prompted the cancellation of all three of her planned shows there in August of last year. "The aim is to make people planning terrorist attacks in Austria feel less secure - and increase everyone else's sense of security," Joerg Leichtfried of the Social Democrats, the junior minister in charge of overseeing the Directorate for State Security and Intelligence (DSN), told a news conference.

secured messaging - monitored

[awwshit]

Yeah, no so secure after all.

Ehm, count me out

[JamesTRexx]

and increase everyone else's sense of security

Nope, knowing someone else than intended can read my private messages does not make me feel more secure. The smart criminals already know how to obfuscate their communication and actions.
Besides, I worry more about the greed of mill/billionaires screwing with my life than encountering a disturbed individual when I'm going out.

Re:Ehm, count me out

[pixelpusher220]

yep. the 9/11 bombers emails *were* monitored and they still entirely missed them. b/c the wiretaps were for things being *sent/received* and not for drafts so the bombers just wrote each other drafts on the same email account.

Giving up such fundamental security to the gov't makes no one secure.

Confused Australian reads slash dot headline

[devious_malcontent]

If our government wants to be able to monitor messaging services like WhatsApp or telegram, then it's going to have to make a significant investment in our Internet network infrastructure in order to even have the capacity to do so, still wouldn't surprise me given that we live in a nanny state!

Admission

[tiananmen tank man]

>>police rely on allies with far more sweeping powers like Britain and the United States

So this is an admission of what their allies can do?

Re: Admission

[Big Hairy Gorilla]

Sounds like it. Also sounds like WhatsApp, I'm assuming they are taking about, can "monitor" messages.

All very vague. I'm also assuming they are talking about meta data... because we all know the message content is encrypted, right?

Yeah, all the missing details matter.

Real headline...

[registrations_suck]

Austrian govt has agreed on a plan to make secure messaging insecure.

"Monitoring of secure messaging"

[PseudoThink]

That's some peak cognitive dissonance right there.

Meanwhile...

[Richard_at_work]

Any criminal gang with two braincells to rub together will simply download any one of the free and secure cryptography libraries, any one of the free and secure messaging protocol libraries, put the two together with a Bootstrap based UI, and ... enjoy secure communications while the rest of us have our messages read by some sweaty oik eating cheetos in a dungeon office somewhere in Austria....

Re: Meanwhile...

[Big Hairy Gorilla]

Are you implying the criminals must be nerds? Cause those brain cells, you speak of? I've heard that people sometimes even are naughty on Facebook or YouTube ... people really do tend to overlook risks when emotion and "need" kick in.

Re:

[karmawarrior]

Criminal gangs are notorious for how dumb they are and the mistakes they make. Most of them probably treat SMS as secure.

All of which said, my reading is that this is for extreme situations such as terrorism. But the same method could be used to monitor criminal groups, and in turn if the barrier lowers for that, dissidents etc are next. With politics drifting to totalitarianism in so many currently democratic countries right now, Austria might want to think twice about adopting something like this. Defendi

Re:

[codeButcher]

Criminal gangs are notorious for how dumb they are and the mistakes they make.

The ones that got caught. Sampling bias and all that....

Re:

[fafalone]

The PATRIOT Act powers that were passed for 'ticking-bomb terrorism' scenarios were used-- frequently-- from day 1 for routine drug investigations 99% of the time. Terrorism was somewhere in the odds and ends making up the last 1%. At best, you can expect these new powers to *maybe* notch a couple percentage points for routine CSAM possession, which at least is a malum in se, amoral crime. Use for terrorism will be a rounding error.

Really?

[jenningsthecat]

The aim is to make people planning terrorist attacks in Austria feel less secure - and increase everyone else's sense of security

So nice of them to take on the task of making average citizens feel secure by denying them access to private communications. I guess that means that they'll also take on the task of heavily propagandizing those citizens into believing that they have nothing to worry about.

Sadly, the propaganda will probably succeed. And the peeps will make like sheeps and go "Baaaaa".

Making secure communiction insecure

[sir_smashalot_3rd]

so you, the citizen, can feel secure ? Ok got it.

The OTHER excuse

[Bruce66423]

Usually the justification is the need to protect children.