309 to 190: Germany's intelligence services get powers to act, not just watch

For decades Germany’s intelligence services were built to be smaller than their neighbours’, on purpose, as a lesson from the Nazi regime¹. On Friday the Bundestag changed that. The reform of intelligence law passed by 309 votes to 190, with 71 abstentions¹. “Intelligence services become real secret services,” said Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, who called it a “century reform”^1,2.

The new tools are concrete. Under certain conditions the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution may secretly enter homes and act against explosives or weapons, disrupt attackers’ infrastructure with cyber operations, redirect data traffic, delete information stored for attacks or spread targeted false information¹. The BND, the foreign service, gets operational powers too, for instance to take down servers of state hacking groups abroad¹. Arrests and open searches stay with the police¹. The coalition cites a sharper threat from foreign services, above all Russia, China and Iran, and wants less dependence on tips from friendly services¹.

The objections were specific as well. The Greens backed the BND part but opposed the domestic-service law; Konstantin von Notz accused the government of taking “a decisive swig too much from the bottle”¹. A Green amendment to strike or limit several of the new domestic powers, including automated biometric matching of public images and the use of 16- and 17-year-olds as informants in exceptional cases, was rejected by 313 to 207 with 52 abstentions³. AfD and Linke called the expansion excessive¹. Doctors welcomed a late change giving them the same protection from the BND as clergy and lawyers, but the KBV says the domestic service’s original powers over medical practices still stand².

For you: the safeguard that matters is the dull one. An Independent Control Council of former judges is to check the legality of certain measures in advance¹. Its staffing, its caseload and its refusals will tell you more about this law than Friday’s speeches did.