On 13 November, the Bundestag voted for a sweeping reform of the intelligence services, granting the agencies the right to actively combat hostile actors.
The new rules give the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) additional tools to counter sabotage, terrorism and espionage, European Pravda reports, citing Die Welt.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution will now be able not only to gather information and monitor people but, under certain conditions, to secretly enter homes and neutralise explosives or weapons. At the same time, arrests and overt searches will continue to be carried out only by the police.
Foreign intelligence will receive operational powers for active intervention. In particular, the agency will be able to block abroad the servers of state-backed hacker groups, disrupt criminals’ infrastructure, reroute data traffic, delete information or deliberately spread disinformation. The legality of such actions will be checked in advance by a special commission of former judges.
In addition, against the backdrop of the far-right party Alternative for Germany winning elections in Saxony-Anhalt, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution will be able to limit co-operation with certain regional agencies.
Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt called the adopted law a “reform of the century” that opens a new era for the authorities. He stressed that the intelligence services are becoming genuine intelligence agencies and need these tools to protect against enemies of democracy at home and abroad.
Previously, German intelligence services had significantly fewer powers compared with the United States and other European countries. Legislators introduced this restriction to ensure the rule of law in light of the historical experience of the Nazi regime. With this reform, the CDU/CSU and SPD governing coalition responded to growing threats from foreign intelligence services, above all Russia, China and Iran.