Klagenfurt Town Hall: Puswald: “There was no systematic query”

After the press conference by Deputy Mayor Philipp Liesnig, Mayor Scheider and lawyer Christian Puswald explained their views on the data leak.

KLAGENFURT. “Only data in the form of lines and numbers was handed over to the public prosecutor’s office; no addresses were found in it,” said lawyer Christian Puswald today at a press conference called at short notice, after Deputy Mayor Philipp Liesnig (SPÖ) spoke today about a suspected Spying affair in the Klagenfurt town hall. Liesnig sees himself as a victim of surveillance that, in his opinion, was not lawful.

“duty of care”

The fact is that a large amount of data and pay slips were made public in the magistrate. “As mayor, I have a duty of care, I have to clarify and stop this process, this data leak must not happen. That’s why a law firm and an IT company were commissioned to investigate it,” said Mayor Scheider.

“No systematic query”

“We only found out yesterday that the deputy mayor felt he was being spied on,” said lawyer Christian Puswald. It is not easy to explain which types of data and how data were forensically examined by the IT forensics company and handed over to the public prosecutor’s office. “It wasn’t a systematic data query; we weren’t looking for specific content, but rather for holes,” explained Puswald.

Two legal opinions

There are two opinions as to whether the data query and the passing on of the USB stick with data to the public prosecutor were legally clean. Liesnig’s lawyer Michael Pilz is of the legal opinion that passing on the USB stick is a legal violation. Puswald sees it differently: “Contents, names and addresses were not viewed – only logins.” In addition, we worked with the data protection officer of the city of Klagenfurt and the USB stick was sealed and handed over to the public prosecutor in the presence of a notary.

High costs without a city senate resolution

The public prosecutor’s investigation is ongoing. Scheider emphasized several times today that he is in favor of full clarification of the matter. Another accusation: The order was placed with the IT forensics company without a resolution from the city senate. The costs amounted to 63,000 euros; if the cost exceeds 50,000, a city senate resolution is required. “We couldn’t have known that in advance,” said Scheider.