Germany’s foreign and domestic intelligence services are to be given greater powers to combat espionage, terrorism and sabotage after the country’s parliament, the Bundestag, approved a major overhaul of its legislation.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, who championed the bill, has called it a “reform of the century”, necessary because of the increasing threats from foreign powers.
But the Left Party’s security spokeswoman, Clara Bünger, said Dobrindt was creating a new German secret police.
The legislation gives numerous new powers to Germany’s BND federal intelligence service, and its BfV domestic service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
In the Bundestag, 309 MPs voted in favour of the new law on intelligence services, while 190 voted against and 71 abstained.
For historical reasons, German intelligence has mainly focused on gathering information rather than acting on it.
In future, German spies working for the BND, which is responsible for foreign intelligence, will be able to conduct covert operations abroad, including sabotage.
This could include paralysing the servers of state-sponsored hacker groups, disrupting disinformation networks, or even disrupting supply chains for weapons.
Agents for the domestic intelligence service, the BfV, will no longer to be limited to gathering information. For the first time they will be able to take protective action against property and IT systems, if specific threats are identified.
That means they will be allowed to dismantle or break explosives or weapons, divert or block data flows during cyber-attacks, delete or falsify data stored for malicious purposes, and plant false information on those involved.
