After sabotage attempts at substations: Brandenburg's interior minister is planning a "360-degree defense center"

There is a letter of responsibility for the acts of sabotage in North Rhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg.

A search is underway across Europe for the alleged author, who is apparently opposed to fossil fuels and the German arms industry.

The Brandenburg Ministry of the Interior is reacting with expanded powers for security authorities.

On Thursday evening, a “suspicious” object was found by walkers near a substation near Dormagen, North Rhine-Westphalia.

According to police, it was a launching device that was placed directly under a high-voltage power line.

According to a police spokesman, an attempt was made to “deliberately cause a short circuit”.

Already on Tuesday there were suspected attacks on the electricity infrastructure in two different locations: explosive devices were discovered at a substation in Turnow-Preilack in Brandenburg, near the Jänschwalde power plant.

According to police reports, there was at least one detonation.

There is also said to have been an attack on the energy infrastructure in Bergheim-Rheidt, North Rhine-Westphalia.

After a short circuit occurred at a substation, two coal-fired power plants owned by the energy company RWE were taken offline.

Investigators said six launchers were found in a corn field adjacent to the substation.

Bizarre letters of confession In two handwritten letters, a man confesses to last week's sabotage attempts.

What is striking is that the letters of confession are personally signed and contain information about the sender, such as the place of residence.

This is rather unusual for letters of confession.

On Wednesday, the daily newspaper taz, which itself was the recipient of a letter of responsibility, published the main contents of the letter.

The alleged author is Daniel V., aged in his late 40s, from Gevelsberg, near Wuppertal.

Surveillance, sabotage, data trading: Cabinet decides on reform of the secret services. V., who is currently unemployed, has had a hobby for many years: he is interested in technology.

In the letter, which is available to the taz, he is said to have described in detail how he himself wanted to have built the equipment for the acts of sabotage.

He claims to have built a device using pipes, rods, Silverster rockets and time switches with which thin wire ropes can be shot onto the high-voltage line in order to trigger a short circuit.

In fact, such devices caused short circuits in Bergheim and near Jänschwalde.

According to the taz letter, the motivation behind the acts was the use of fossil fuels, which would cause “immeasurable suffering”. “And because the media is doing a shit job of conveying the urgency of the situation and the state is not intervening to avert this suffering, I have to do this now,” the letter continues.

The author is also “not sad” if the power outages affect the German defense industry, especially as long as Germany “supports the genocide in Palestine.”

There is currently a search for Daniel V across Europe.

Even before a letter of responsibility emerged and its authenticity was verified, there was speculation about hybrid attacks.

For example, NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) stated that there was an “initial suspicion of unconstitutional sabotage” and that both sabotage directed by a foreign state and a “left-wing extremist” motive could not be ruled out.

It is very common for attacks on critical infrastructure to be attributed to a “left-wing extremist” motive without any reliable evidence, as the attack on the Berlin power grid in January demonstrated.

Since the author feared such attributions, he emphasized that he was acting as a lone perpetrator and had not told anyone about it.

He writes about the “left-wing scene”: “They have nothing to do with it.”

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The fact that attacks of this kind are a welcome opportunity for security authorities to insist on greater powers is nothing new.

That's exactly what happened this week.

In response to the alleged sabotage attempt in Jänschwalde, Brandenburg's Interior Minister Jan Redmann (CDU) announced a new security center and accelerated legislative proposals to protect critical infrastructure.

The “360-degree security center” is intended to combine the findings from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the police and fire and disaster control into a single situation report.

The municipalities and the KRITIS coordination list in the Federal Ministry of the Interior should also be involved.

Organizational preparations are already underway.

The acts of sabotage in Lusatia and in Bergheim in North Rhine-Westphalia showed how threatened the critical infrastructure in Germany is.

However, according to Redmann, it is “simply impossible to position a patrol car at every electricity pole”.

For this reason, they want to quickly pass the so-called “Lending Act”.

The Lending Act - a law that does not yet exist in any federal state in the Federal Republic of Germany - is intended to enable operators of critical infrastructure to organize the protection of their systems themselves. “Wild waters”: Brandenburg supports project against “left-wing extremism” But the Ministry of the Interior offers even more: The currently revised law on regulatory authorities should make it possible in the future to have “crime hotspots” monitored with cameras.

Location data from relevant systems - which are currently practically freely available - should also be better protected from misuse by saboteurs by adapting the File Inspection and Access to Information Act.

Redmann finds the same words that were recently used to justify the de facto abolition of the Freedom of Information Act: “Freedom of information is a valuable asset that we will preserve and protect.

However, when it comes to critical infrastructure, we have been too careless with our data in the past.

Enemy actors are now taking advantage of this.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to stop.” The Brandenburg Police and Constitutional Protection Act is also to be recast: For example, the state police are to be given expanded powers to defend against cybercrime, and the Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution is to be “even better prepared for the threat of modern technologies”.

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