How threatened is the security situation in Austria? Interior Minister Karner on the return of the asylum crisis, inflation rage, Russian spies and a new Cyber-Cobra.
“crown”: Mr. Minister of the Interior, the number of asylum applications has tripled in the first seven months to 41,909 compared to 2021. Is the asylum crisis back?
Gerhard Karner: Fact is: the system has reached the limit of its resilience. The numbers are serious. It is therefore the responsibility of the Minister of the Interior and the police to prevent this. Through intensive border controls at national level against people smugglers, through mixed patrols on Hungarian national territory and by officials at the Hungarian-Serb border.
And we are looking internationally to come up with new regulations. We need to start the debate on how to prevent people from leaving, being taken over by smugglers and then drowning in the Mediterranean, suffocating in a minibus or dying in an accident.
You have just been to Denmark, where a socialist government has one of the strictest asylum laws in the EU. What can we learn from the Scandinavian country?
It is about looking for allies at the European level. Let’s take a look at how procedures work in third countries, for example. With the aim of preventing people from leaving in dinghies or being crammed into 50 trucks and dying a miserable death. It is much more inhumane to watch illegal immigrants fall into the hands of smugglers.
The pandemic is mounting, right-wing extremism is also gaining traction as a result of the war in Ukraine, Islamic terrorism is gaining traction again, Russian disinformation is in the spotlight over the federal presidential election and the Bureau for the Protection of the Constitution warns of violence in street because of the inflation wave. What is the threat level?
Everyone is obliged. My appeal: Society and political parties must keep a cool head to avoid a hot autumn. On the one hand, political Islam is a threat, on the other hand, we have a group that grew out of the corona denial scene.
A mishmash of many from the far right, but also from the far left; the State Security and Intelligence Directorate (DSN) is particularly vigilant here, together with international authorities.
Keyword hate on the net. In an internal letter you defended ‘your’ police in the case of the doctor who was practically hunted to death by radical corona deniers. Have the authorities really done everything right?
Many have done much to help in this most tragic case. What I absolutely do not do is sacrifice individual officials to the digital pillory. One of our biggest challenges is cybercrime – from hackers to deepfake videos and fraud to threats. There should also be a Cyber-Cobra in the fall as part of the reform of the criminal investigation to have the right technical options. We will also have to talk about punishments, we are in talks with the judiciary.
Your German counterpart warns of attacks on gas terminals. Are we prepared for attacks on our energy infrastructure?
We do everything humanly possible to prevent such things. There is a latent challenge.
Critics describe Vienna as a safe haven for Russian agents. Are there more espionage activities?
International cooperation is also crucial here. The newly established DSN very quickly regained the information connection we had lost from the raid on what was then the BVT. The issue of espionage is closely monitored.
Source: Krone
I’m an experienced news author and editor based in New York City. I specialize in covering healthcare news stories for Today Times Live, helping to keep readers informed on the latest developments related to the industry. I have a deep understanding of medical topics, including emerging treatments and drugs, the changing laws that regulate healthcare providers, and other matters that affect public health.
