"There are several possibilities on the table. Electronic ankle tags for people posing a potential threat are definitely something to be considered," the center-left politician told the O1 state radio station on Tuesday. "I definitely think that it would be appropriate that they are monitored, that the authorities know what they are doing, whom they are meeting."
According to the leading Krone newspaper, there are currently just under 300 potential terror suspects in the country, with around a third of them returnees from Syria and Iraq, where they may have fought alongside jihadist militias, such as Islamic State.
Security tags can only currently be used as a part of the sentencing system, and Sobotka admitted on Tuesday that new legislation is necessary for a broader mandate. Previously, leading judicial figures said that it would be extremely difficult to prove that someone is a "threat" with no evidence of wrongdoing, and suggested that electronic monitoring contravened fundamental freedoms enshrined in human rights legislation, and could be challenged in a European court.
Doskozil has also called for widespread use of video surveillance, another Sobotka idea. There are approximately 1 million operational CCTV cameras in Austria, compared to over 6 million in the UK, according to police statistics.