Germany moves to expand intelligence powers against sabotage and cyber attacks

Germany's coalition government has approved a draft law to broaden the powers of its intelligence services in order to better counter sabotage, cyber attacks and other hostile actions attributed to foreign actors and extremists.

The reform is intended to strengthen the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the domestic intelligence agency (BfV) and to reduce Berlin's reliance on information provided by partner states. Officials say the changes are a response to a growing and more assertive threat environment in Europe.

What the reform would allow

Under the proposal, which still needs parliamentary approval, domestic and foreign intelligence agencies would gain expanded abilities to access laptops, mobile phones, other devices and data storage. Officials also said the services would be authorised to take so-called "active measures" designed to disrupt hostile operations.

"Today, Germany is constantly the target of hybrid attacks from foreign powers and this is a real, very acute danger. We are simply too dependent on the intelligence services of other countries that support us, and at present this assistance is one-sided in far too many areas," said Nina Warken, head of the chancellor's office for Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the aim is to "develop our services into true intelligence services." He warned that Berlin faces daily threats: "We are a daily target of espionage, sabotage, cyber attacks and covert operations by foreign powers aiming to destabilise our country, damage our country and provoke political and social change in our country," Dobrindt said.

Warken gave examples of possible operational steps: "For example, the BND could replace working components with faulty ones before delivering some legal but security-sensitive devices ordered by suspects, access the IT systems of drone manufacturers or chemical-weapons laboratories to sabotage or disable them, or switch off servers used by hackers or disinformation agents linked to foreign states." Dobrindt also raised the possibility of "counter-sabotage" — substituting harmless substances for explosives in devices under surveillance.

Germany has long been cautious about intelligence powers because of data-protection sensitivities rooted in memories of Nazi-era repression and the East German Stasi. The reform has been months in the making, and authorities pointed to a recent incident at Leipzig/Halle airport — where a drone carrying explosives was discovered near a cargo aircraft loaded with munitions for Ukraine — as an example of the risks that motivated the proposal. The case remains under investigation and no responsibility has been publicly assigned.

Photo: Jan Kleihues (Stefan Müller, photographer), CC BY-SA 4.0, vi