BERLIN (The Thursday Times) — Germany’s parliament has approved a law giving the country’s intelligence services powers to hack foreign systems, disrupt hostile networks, and carry out sabotage abroad, in an overhaul the government says is needed to counter espionage and attacks by Russia, China, and Iran.
More than 300 members of the Bundestag voted for the bill on Friday, with 190 against and 71 abstentions. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, who championed it, called it the “reform of the century.”
For historical reasons, German intelligence has mainly gathered information rather than acted on it. Under the new law, the BND foreign intelligence service will be able to run covert operations abroad, such as shutting down the servers of state-backed hacking groups, disrupting disinformation networks, or interfering with weapons supply chains.
The domestic service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), will for the first time be able to act when specific threats are identified, including by disabling explosives or weapons, blocking or diverting data during cyberattacks, and deleting or falsifying data held for malicious purposes. Under certain conditions, and only with prior authorisation, its agents may enter homes covertly. The BfV remains barred from using force against people, which is left to the police.
Both agencies gain wider surveillance powers, including monitoring encrypted communications, and a legal basis to use AI to analyse large datasets and to match faces biometrically against images found online. The law rules out any measure intended to endanger a person’s life or physical safety.
“We are the target of hybrid threats,” Dobrindt said. “Germany is a theatre of operations for terrorism, extremism and foreign powers.”
Chancellery chief Nina Warken, who oversees the BND, told MPs that foreign powers disguise “sabotage as an accident, espionage as business dealings, and propaganda as an opinion.” The new rules would let the agency act “when no one else can,” she said.
The government has pointed to a string of incidents, among them a drone carrying an explosive device that was found at Leipzig airport in August near Ukrainian cargo planes. It failed to explode because its detonator was apparently faulty, and Berlin later said Russia was behind the attack.
Opponents say the reform blurs a line drawn after the Nazi era. Clara Bünger, security spokeswoman for the Left Party, called the law “a monster” and said the separation between the police and the secret service was “being eroded.” Dobrindt has said it is “madness” to suggest that Germany is creating a new secret police.
