German lawmakers passed legislation Friday allowing the country’s intelligence agencies to hack foreign systems, sabotage adversaries’ supply chains and take down servers run by hostile state-backed hackers. In the biggest overhaul of the country’s spy laws of the postwar era, the Bundestag approved the bill by 308 votes to 190 — with 71 abstentions — months after Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s cabinet signed off on the draft. At the time the powers were proposed, Chancellery chief Nina Warken said they could allow the nation’s agencies to use cyber operations to sabotage drone factories or chemical weapons laboratories and to disable servers run by hostile state-sponsored hackers. Intelligence reform is a sensitive subject in Germany, where the shadows cast by both the Gestapo and Stasi remain within living memory. But, as with the country’s increased military spending following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the government has pointed to a rapidly changing threat environment to justify the legislation. Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt called the bill the “reform of the century” during the Bundestag debate, saying the new powers would turn the country’s agencies into “genuine intelligence services” operating “on equal footing with our European partners.” Rewriting the laws governing both Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, and its domestic agency for the protection of the constitutional order, the BfV, the government bill gives the BND powers to act against threats abroad rather than simply report on them. The BfV gets a shorter list of covert powers inside Germany, such as blocking or rerouting data traffic, but it remains prohibited from using force against people — something which remains the sole prerogative of law enforcement in the country. Both agencies also gain a legal basis to analyze large datasets with AI and to match images biometrically against material found online. Warken, who is responsible for the BND, told lawmakers that foreign powers target Germany covertly every day, disguising “sabotage as an accident, espionage as business dealings, and propaganda as an opinion.” The new reforms would let the BND act “when no one else can,” she added, for instance by shutting down the servers of a state hacking group stealing data from critical infrastructure companies. Berlin has grown increasingly vocal about such threats, something which officials have linked to Berlin’s support for Ukraine. Last December, Germany summoned the Russian ambassador over a cyberattack on its air traffic control authority that it attributed to APT28, and over a disinformation campaign aimed at influencing its federal election. During that campaign, fake videos were circulated which appeared designed to foment discontent among supporters of the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party, showing the AfD missing from ballot papers, or ballot papers marked in support of the party being shredded. The confirmed powers stop well short of those exercised by some of Germany’s closest allies. The bill bars the intelligence agencies from measures intended to endanger a person’s life or physical safety, leaving the BND without anything resembling the paramilitary capabilities of France’s DGSE or the CIA’s Special Activities Center. Amendments Lawmakers on the interior committee made a series of last-minute amendments to the cabinet’s draft this week, including providing both agencies with the authority to order telecom providers to “freeze” traffic data they expect to need, preserving it until the legal conditions for accessing it are met. The power is narrower than those available to the agency’s counterparts in Britain, France and the United States. Telecommunications companies can be required to retain communications data for up to a year in Britain and France, while U.S. government agencies can order providers to preserve records for up to 180 days without a court order under the Stored Communications Act. The BND will be allowed to retain metadata collected during bulk surveillance activities for 13 months rather than 12, and the BfV gains authority to investigate organized crime groups that support extremism, work normally left to the police. Other changes stipulate safeguards that limit the agencies’ activities — including protecting Germans’ messages and queries sent to chatbots and search engines from BND surveillance in the same way as person-to-person communication. The amendments also strengthen protections for doctors and other medical professionals, though critics note that journalists and lawyers are left with weaker safeguards. The agencies’ hacking operations and active measures inside Germany will need advance approval from the Independent Control Council, the agencies’ oversight body, whose court-like panel has been doubled from six to twelve members. One amendment drew fire from the far right, as it allows the BfV to restrict information-sharing with individual state intelligence offices if there are concrete indications that federal or state security interests are at risk. The move requires the agreement of a majority of state offices, although the BfV can act alone in urgent cases. AfD lawmaker Christian Wirth called the provision a “Lex AfD,” which he said was designed to cut off states whose governments the coalition dislikes. The BfV had classified the AfD as a confirmed right-wing extremist group last year, but a court in Cologne put that label on hold while it considers the party’s legal challenge. Until that challenge is settled, the agency is legally only permitted to monitor the AfD as a suspected extremist group, a categorization that limits both the surveillance it can use and what it can say about the party in public. Intelligence agencies in several of Germany’s eastern states, including Saxony and Thuringia, have separately labeled their local AfD branches as confirmed extremists. The party has never led a state government, although its support has increased in recent years. In September, the AfD won 43.8% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, its best result in any state election, though not enough for a majority. Two weeks later, it came first in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Saxony-Anhalt’s previous CDU-led government remains in office as a caretaker while other parties refuse to work with the AfD.
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