German lawmakers voted on Friday to approve a major overhaul of the country’s intelligence agencies, granting German spies new powers to conduct covert operations and launch cyberattacks against adversaries. The reforms break from historical restrictions that limited intelligence services mostly to gathering and analysing information.
That traditional limitation stems from Germany’s dark historical experience with the Nazi Gestapo and the East German Stasi secret police. Security officials and national leaders argued that a more robust and powerful BND foreign spy agency is now essential to respond to mounting threats from hostile foreign actors.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt helped craft the new legislation. He told lawmakers in Berlin that the country faces severe security challenges from external forces.
"Germany serves as an operational theater for terrorism, extremism and foreign powers," Dobrindt said.
Russia looms largest among these external threats. BND spy chief Martin Jaeger warned that Moscow has been waging a shadow war against Germany through drones, espionage, sabotage, disinformation and other tools.
The legislative package gives the BND authority to retaliate with sabotage operations and cyberattacks of its own. It also expands the agency’s ability to intercept and retain data. Targeted assassinations, however, remain strictly forbidden under the new rules.
The domestic BfV spy agency will also see its powers expanded. The agency has historically been tasked with monitoring extremist groups and home-grown threats.
Dobrindt boasted that the BfV will now become a genuine secret service. Even so, the domestic agency’s operational role within the country will remain much more limited than the BND’s scope abroad.
Civil liberties groups and other critics have warned that the reforms could erode privacy protections. They argued the changes might sweep up the private data of innocent citizens in a form of mass surveillance.
The expanded role of the domestic BfV agency met with particular controversy. Opposition lawmakers from both the far right and far left expressed fears that it could evolve into a secret police.
Defenders of the legislation contended that robust oversight of the powers is in place. They noted that intelligence agencies in other European democracies already possess similar or greater powers.
