Important detail that is missing in the article and that some are getting wrong in the comments: This is not about forcing messengers to add backdoors for mass surveillance or weakening the messenger/its encryption in general (although that indeed is the wet dream of some governments/agencies). It’s about infecting the phone/device of a suspect with spyware (either by hacking remotely or with physical access, although in secret of course) and sniffing their communication before it’s encrypted/leaves the devices (or after decryption for incoming messages). Every case must be individually approved by several judges so cops can’t just use this willy-nilly, the crime they’re investigating must be quite serious (punishable by at least 10 years in prison) and it’s limited to 30 cases per year.

As some comments here confuse this with mass surveillance - this is the opposite:

“The monitoring of encrypted messages is to be carried out by installing a program in the computer system to be monitored, which exclusively extracts sent, transmitted or received messages either before encryption or after decryption.” This officialese describes the official plan of the Austrian federal government to buy malware and use it to monitor citizens who are not suspected of any criminal offense – if other investigative measures appear futile.

(Source: heise)

I personally have strong concerns that infecting the phones of the suspected persons is a reasonable approach. It’s probably extremely expensive, sponsors a doubious (at best) business model and if anything, can be used to find a drug dealer’s customers.

Well then by definition, it’s no longer secure.

Oxymoron. If the government can “monitor” it it’s not “secure” messaging.

I honestly don’t know what they’re talking about. If they’re monitoring it then it is not and was never secure.