Germany takes the first step to spy communications through WhatsApp

Nearly 70% of those rated as relevant by security forces are mobile phone applications

   Germany took the first step to be able to spy on communications from terrorism suspects through messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram, which is not legally possible until now.

The conference of Ministers of the Interior, which brings together the German holder of the branch with those responsible for this portfolio in the sixteen federal states of the country, agreed in the city of Dresden unanimously to expand the possibilities of interception of communications of people called "dangerous" , limited at present to emails and SMS.

    "The authorities must be in a legal and technical capacity to be able to intervene these messages and evaluate them," said the German Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maizière, at a press conference at the end of the conference, which was held in Dresden. The agreement reached in the meeting should be reflected in the coming weeks in a reform of the rules that regulate the monitoring of suspects by the security forces.

According to data from the Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BKA) released on Wednesday, about 70% of communications rated as relevant by security forces is carried out through this type of mobile phone applications.

In this meeting, the first since the jihadist attack last December in Berlin in which twelve people died, it was also agreed to improve collaboration and coordination between the different regional intelligence services. The investigation that followed the attack showed communication failures between the different regional authorities because the author, the young Tunisian Anis Amri, was known by the security forces and was described as "dangerous".