Intelligence reform | Secret service reform: full legroom for agents

A fortress with radio masts in a palm tree look: The BND headquarters in Berlin. In the future, even parliamentary inspectors will find out even less often what the approximately 6,500 employees are doing. Photo: Imago/Imago The majority of the experts invited by parliament in advance had classified large parts of the federal government's planned intelligence reform as unconstitutional. Among other things, because this partially abolishes the inviolability of privacy and the mandatory separation between police and secret service tasks.

The Bundestag nevertheless passed the legislative package on Friday. The surveillance powers of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) will be massively expanded. However, politicians from the governing parties emphasized that concerns had been taken into account in numerous changes to the bill.

The package from the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which department head Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) praised as a “reform of the century,” received the required majority from the coalition factions with 308 yes votes. 190 MPs, mainly those from the Left Party and AfD, voted against it. 71 abstained and 61 were not present for the roll-call vote.

The Greens almost all abstained because their motions to split the vote and delete passages of the law were not passed. Their intelligence expert Konstantin von Notz nevertheless praised the reform: Many things were “successful.” But the changes to the Constitutional Protection Act can only be supported if the “constitutionally questionable parts” are deleted. Parliament rejected this with the majority of the government factions.

Von Notz complained that the changes to the law enabled the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to “directly intervene in the lives of citizens well in advance of danger.” The regulations are “completely featureless, without transparency and legal protection.” Von Notz is deputy chairman of the Parliamentary Control Committee (PKGr) for controlling the intelligence services.

The former anti-secret service party is in favor of expanding the powers of the BND anyway. Von Notz praised: "Today is a good day for security in this country." The Greens had "constructively supported" the legislative process because his party did not want "Putin to turn Germany into a Russian zone of influence." In the fight against the Russian “shadow war,” the secret services are the “first line of defense.”

Von Notz emphasized that it was his party that ensured that the exception to the debt brake in the Basic Law also applies to the equipment of the intelligence services as part of the “turning point”.

The Green politician didn't just criticize the AfD. He accused the left of a “complete denial of reality” because they did not want to recognize the hybrid threat. Given the security situation, the Left's "fundamental opposition" is a "parliamentary refusal to work."

"Today is a good day for security in this country."

Left-wing interior expert Clara Bünger countered that her group had repeatedly made legislative proposals to reform the secret services. What is needed is “real protection of the constitution,” which the BfV does not and cannot provide. This requires an “independent body” that documents “inhumane efforts.” The separation between police and secret services is not guaranteed in the revised legislative package, which is why she stands by her accusation that a new secret police is being created. If the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution enters homes secretly and without judicial control in the future and uses comprehensive AI surveillance, “an uncontrollable apparatus will emerge that tramples on fundamental rights.”

A Green politician, Ulle Schauws, a member of the SPD, Jan Dieren, and Saskia Ludwig, a CDU politician from Brandenburg, voted against the package. In the case of the latter, this could have something to do with her political and personal proximity to the AfD. The right-wing party had complained, among other things, that the so-called resilience clause, through which state offices of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution can be excluded from its information network, was a “Lex AfD”.

In the debate, most MPs followed Alexander Dobrindt's narrative of the enormous threat that made the reform no alternative. The Federal Minister of the Interior emphasized that Germany is an “operational area for terrorism, extremism, and for foreign powers.” In addition, the boundaries between state and non-state actors are becoming increasingly blurred. In order to “regain visibility” and reveal the events behind attacks, efficient intelligence services are needed. The Left Party and the AfD wanted to “weaken the Office for the Protection of the Constitution at a time when a shadow war threatens democracy.”

So far, Germany's intelligence services have primarily collected information. In the future, like secret services in other countries, they will also be given “operational” powers to ward off threats. In the future, the BND and BfV will also be able to carry out hacker attacks in order to manipulate or delete data. Officially, they should only be allowed to do this to defend against an ongoing cyber attack. In the debate it was logically said that it was about the “license to strike back”. For example, instructions for building weapons could be changed or IT systems in drone factories or chemical weapons laboratories could be sabotaged.

"The Left Party and the AfD want to weaken the Office for the Protection of the Constitution at a time when a shadow war threatens democracy."

The powers to collect and evaluate data are also being expanded. This also applies to the evaluation of large amounts of data using artificial intelligence and the comparison of biometric data through AI-supported online research. Under certain conditions, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the BND are allowed to secretly enter apartments and business premises in order to prepare surveillance measures.

Control of the services is to be concentrated in the Independent Control Council, which several MPs described as a “judicial-like” body.

Critics fear an erosion of data protection in medical practices, for example, possible interference with citizens' privacy and “mass digital surveillance”. The Hartmannbund called for “absolute protection of trust for doctors.” The chairman Klaus Reinhardt criticized the fact that doctors are disadvantaged in intelligence measures compared to other secret keepers such as lawyers, clergy or members of parliament, as the interest in confidentiality must be weighed up against the interest in information in individual cases. By Friday afternoon, more than 71,000 people had signed a petition calling for the protection of doctors and psychotherapists from surveillance.

On Thursday, 28 non-governmental organizations once again appealed to MPs in an open letter not to agree to the changes to the law. The letter was initiated by the Humanist Union together with the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, the Republican Lawyers' Association (RAV) and the Association of Democratic Lawyers (VDJ).

The authors of the letter complain about the weakening of the aforementioned separation requirement between police and secret service tasks as well as the expansion of the possibilities for surveillance and mass interference with personal rights. It is precisely through “extensive access to video surveillance of public spaces” and the AI-supported evaluation of enormous amounts of data that “a further step towards a surveillance state” is being taken, the letter says.

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