Archive notice: This article was originally published on October 18, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The Austrian governing parties SPÖ and ÖVP agreed on Tuesday evening that in future the police may spy online on the private computers of suspicious persons. Autumn of next year was named as the latest date for the first legal use of the federal Trojan. Its use is, however, tied to conditions: The police may use the online search only when serious or terrorist crimes are suspected, Interior Minister Günther Platter explained to Radio Ö1. Specifically, this means offenses that carry a prison sentence of at least ten years.
Justice Minister Maria Berger explained that access to private computers was possible only if a concrete suspicion of a criminal offense existed. In addition, in the individual case an order from the public prosecutor with judicial approval was necessary. Furthermore, a legal protection officer would be brought in to monitor the online search. According to Berger, these requirements are intended to ensure that online searches in future are carried out neither arbitrarily nor across the board. She refers to the acoustic surveillance operation, which until now has been used once or twice a year on average. The draft will be discussed today, Wednesday, in the Council of Ministers and is finally to be submitted to a group of experts to clarify the further technical and legal details.
Online searches are carried out with the help of special PC programs. The computer is infected with a Trojan that makes it possible to scan the hard disks for suspicious material. The user’s Internet communication is also monitored. The discussion about the federal Trojan is currently being conducted in several European countries. In Germany, where the debate about the use of Trojans is proceeding similarly to Austria, no decision has yet been made, however. In recent weeks, IT experts spoke out who questioned whether a secret online search was feasible at all. “In fact, no possibilities are known for designing an online search in such a way that a target system cannot be effectively protected against it,” security expert Dirk Fox writes in his report, and he is not alone in his opinion.
Manufacturers of security software are also voicing concerns. “I do not believe that the federal Trojan will function in the way it is currently being communicated. In principle, the secret online search can function only if the security companies play along,” Thorsten Urbanski, spokesman for the security company G DATA, said in a conversation with pressetext. If manufacturers of scanner software were now obliged to build in vulnerabilities for state hacking for every European country, the firewalls would soon be as full of holes as Swiss cheese, Urbanski objects.
