Merkel Backs Online Monitoring to Fight Terrorism

BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that Germany must allow security services to use the Internet to track terrorist suspects' online movements.

"It can't be that we create a space in which terrorists are completely safe and the state can't enter it," Merkel said in reference to the Internet at a conference in Berlin.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a member of Merkel's Christian Democrats, is pushing to get clearance for Germany's Federal Crime Office (BKA) to carry out online searches.

Germany's internal security has been under the spotlight since authorities arrested three men suspected of belonging to a militant Islamic group earlier this month.

Security services said the group was planning attacks on airports and U.S. sites around the country.

Merkel's Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners have said they are not opposed to online raids in principle, but stress that approval should be only granted when Germany's top court has determined when such searches were permissible.