Austria’s parliament has passed a law to legalise spyware for state use — despite strong opposition.

The new law would allow police to install malware on people’s phones or computers.
Officials say it will only be used to read encrypted messages, but experts are clear: there is no way to stop this malware from accessing other private data.

Civil society organisations and opposition parties have promised to challenge the law in court.

Read more: https://www.statewatch.org/news/2025/july/austria-legalises-state-spyware-amidst-strong-opposition/

@statewatch Politicians voting for things like this should have all content on all of their devices made public, even state secrets.

@statewatch

eliminating privacy for all law abiding citizens is very contrary to what should be their goal of eliminating crime.

maybe targetting criminal acts and the people who do them would be a better way to work.

and not wasting time aggressively stalking every single law abiding citizen in Austria.

@falcennial @statewatch targetting criminal is not possible, as they don't follow the law any tool that target them will never be used by them.

as such targetting everyone will only target good people as the bad one won't obey.

@heartshadows @falcennial @statewatch and the police seems to be too stupid to catch the idiot criminals who openly post their intentions on social media, even if they are known to the police because of previous crimes. So of course the logical conclusion is to give them more rights and let them spy on private conversations so they have more information when they fuck up next time

@heartshadows @falcennial @statewatch great point, but you missed a key outcome.

Good people who dont want to be spied on and refuse to give up their rights to privacy suddenly become criminals.

Laws like this do three major things for far right ideals and authoritarianism:

* Weed out dissidents: anyone not willing to bend their will and become well behaved sheep are able to be labelled criminals and identified.
* Fill prisons with free, legal slaves to use for corporate interests.
* Turns the remaining population into fearful sheep, unwilling to stand up when they are pushed down.

@Routhinator @falcennial @statewatch it seem i mis represented my tough, what i meant is illegal website will popup.

as such people who don't want to give privacy will inevitably go there.

As such those law will be useless, and even favorise illegal over website that maintain law rules, (removing bad content is one example).

when "good" is replaced by "bad", the child will not be protected and the "professional" that where protected will not be by the new "illegal" actor.

@statewatch
Avrupalılar yaparsa demokratik oluyor. Onlar için sorun olmuyor. Amerikadan silah alıyorsa suudi kralı demokrasi kahramanı olur.

@statewatch "only be used to read encrypted messages"

y'all Austrians went from 0 to 1984 km/h real quick there

*oops

@statewatch nazi country doing nazi things

@statewatch ID:

Austria has legalised use of intrusive spy software

The new law would let police install malware on people's devices, giving access to personal messages, photos, and more without genuine oversight or protection.

#ALT4you

@statewatch Who needs oversight... What could possibly go wrong LMAO

@statewatch is there a way this can even come true on projects like #grapheneos ? How could that be technically enforced?

In can see this happening with governments pushing (forcing) companies to obey, but I just don't see this for #foss projects in general.

Any clues?