Germany beefs up intelligence services as ‘foreign’ threats rise

The German government signed off on a major overhaul of the country’s intelligence agencies on Wednesday to give them broad new powers to conduct covert operations and take action against foreign threats.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt announced a “new era” for Germany’s secret services, which have until now been largely limited to gathering intelligence.

The services will get greater latitude to conduct non-lethal operations such as hacking enemy servers or conducting sabotage under the reforms that still have to pass parliament before taking effect early next year.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition has argued that more powerful intelligence agencies are needed to counter the threats posed by hostile foreign powers, terrorist groups and cybercriminals.

German officials accuse Moscow of waging a “hybrid” campaign of sabotage, espionage and disinformation against the country, which is among Ukraine’s biggest military supporters in the war with Russia.

“We are in the thick of a hybrid conflict not only with Russia but also with other actors,” Marc Henrichmann, chairman of the parliament’s intelligence oversight committee, told the AFP news agency.

He argued Germany’s cautious approach has left it “behind the curve” and unable to properly contribute to European security.

Henrichmann pointed to a string of recent incidents, including an explosive-laden drone discovered at Leipzig airport last week, to underscore the importance of the changes.

“We face adversaries who play without any rules at all,” he said. “They have no regard for law and order. Their goal is not merely to put the West, the EU and Germany under pressure, but ideally to bring them to their knees.”

No lethal operations

For decades, Germany has placed its BND foreign intelligence agency and the BfV domestic spy service under tight restrictions that rule out direct and potentially lethal operations as practised by the CIA of the United States or Israel’s Mossad.

Those rules were imposed in part because of the gruesome abuses carried out by the Nazi dictatorship and communist East Germany, as well as a strong German sense of privacy rights.

“The German intelligence services were essentially, until recently, information collection services,” Peter Neumann, professor of security studies at King’s College London, told AFP.

“They have some powers to collect information and give policymakers a better picture, but they are very restricted in what they were allowed to do with that information.”

Germany has invested record sums in rebuilding its military in the wake of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Henrichmann and others argue that an expansion of the spy services is likewise needed.

The reforms will potentially allow the spy agencies to carry out cyberattacks of their own, such as disabling foreign IT systems being used by hostile actors or blocking flows of payments.

Powers to collect and analyse data are also being expanded for both the BND and the BfV, including permission to use artificial intelligence to scan vast datasets and retain certain data for longer periods.

The legislative package, spanning over 700 pages, also regulates powers for controversial measures such as online surveillance and tracking.

In rare situations, the BND spy agency could also receive permission to carry out foreign sabotage missions, though assassinations and other lethal operations would remain strictly forbidden.

Dobrindt told a press conference that Germany was “catching up with what is possible in other European countries” where secret services have more latitude.

“We are transforming our intelligence services into genuine secret services,” he said.

Germany’s tight limits on covert action have sometimes made cooperation with allied intelligence agencies difficult and joint operations rare, Neumann said.

“It is about time for German intelligence services to have similar powers to other European democracies,” he told AFP.

Do the plans go too far?

But there has also been plenty of criticism over the draft law.

Greens MP Konstantin von Notz, vice-chairman of the intelligence oversight committee, said that “new and robust powers are fundamentally appropriate given the challenging current security climate.”

The Society for Civil Rights argued that the new digital surveillance powers would “deeply infringe upon fundamental rights.”

Criticism has also come from Left Party domestic policy expert Clara Bünger, as quoted by Tagesschau: “Anyone who gives the intelligence services operational rights of intervention, powers of sabotage and state hackbacks is planning a new German secret police.”

Bünger called this “oblivious to history and irresponsible.” The reform, she said, would push surveillance powers “beyond any level compatible with the constitution.”

FDP leader Wolfgang Kubicki takes a similar view: “What Dobrindt is planning is a historic taboo breach. Everything the conservative bloc has always wanted in terms of powers of intervention without overly bothersome legal hurdles is now to be handed to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. It is hardly conceivable that the Constitutional Court will not intervene here,” Kubicki told the ‘Augsburger Allgemeine’.

The Bundestag still has to approve the bill adopted by the cabinet after the summer recess.