Constitutional Court examines surveillance operation against encrypted mobile phones
In Vienna, the highest court is dealing with the legality of a large-scale surveillance operation on SkyECC mobile devices. Thousands of users in Austria were involved.
Constitutional Court examines surveillance operation against encrypted mobile phones
In Vienna, the Constitutional Court is currently dealing with a controversial surveillance operation. The subject of the proceedings is mobile phones manufactured by SkyECC, which allegedly promised particularly secure communication. Foreign security authorities cracked the messages on these devices.
As the responsible department in the federal capital announced, several thousand such devices in Austria were in the sights of investigators. On a global scale, the number of monitored phones was estimated at approximately 170,000. In the course of the operation, authorities succeeded in reading over one billion electronic messages.
According to reports, the surveillance took place between 2019 and 2021 and was controlled from outside the European Union. The highest court must now clarify whether such secret and comprehensive surveillance of a messaging service is fundamentally permissible.
The ruling of the highest instance could have decisive implications for whether the information obtained can be used in future criminal proceedings.
Source: Der Standard