Austrian Ministers Wants to Look into Your Private Communications
January 2, 2017
Under the garb of curbing terrorist activities, an Austrian minister has proposed setting up of federal Trojan or an agency that can read encrypted messages over WhatsApp and Facebook.
DeepDotWeb in an article titled Austrian Government Wants a Federal Trojan to Patrol the Dark Web says:
Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka (ÖVP) is preparing to implement a “federal trojan” to patrol the dark net. With this state spying software, Austrian law enforcement authorities hope they can prevent cybercriminal activity on the dark web.
The minister is demanding that government should possess a Trojan or technology that will allow it to read what messages exchanged by people over WhatsApp and Facebook messenger. This ze feels is necessary to foil terrorist attacks in Austria.
The entire argument hinges on:
Multiple researches have proven that the Islamic State uses social media platforms and encrypted messaging for recruiting potential terrorists and for other communications. The German government is also working on a similar device by the Central Agency for Information Technology in the security area (Zitis). Currently, about 400 IT professionals are on the project.
This is the second attempt by the Interior Minister to get a Bill passed that allowed federal agencies to snoop on private citizens. The minister wants unfettered access to messages and other data of citizens; terrorists or not.
If the Bill is passed, it will have serious implications on privacy of citizens. However, what would be more interesting is to see how companies like Facebook, Google and Apple respond to it.
Vishal Ingole January 2, 2017
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