German secret services to get intervention rights. Reform also extends to car cameras

The German government approved on August 12 a package of laws that introduces for intelligence services a new type of so-called active measures — thus, for the first time, also the power to intervene, not just gather information. The Bundesnachrichtendienst will be able to penetrate computer systems of drone factories or chemical weapons laboratories and shut down servers of state hacking groups or disinformation actors. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt calls it a reform "toward genuine intelligence services" and in Germany it is spoken of as the biggest change since the creation of these agencies. According to a check we conducted in our archive of Slovak and Czech sources, it has not yet been written about here.

What the reform now allows

The cabinet approved a package of more than seven hundred pages that simultaneously changes both the law on the BND and the law on constitutional protection. The government published the proposal in early July, it was prepared by the Interior Ministry together with the Chancellor's Office and in agreement with the Ministry of Justice. Legal Tribune Online ↗

At the core are so-called active measures. According to the government, the BND should remain a service that gathers intelligence, but will receive a series of supplementary powers, called Annex-Befugnisse in the proposal, to avert immediate threats it encounters during its own activities — for example, to delete victim data when discovering a hacking group's system or to introduce a faulty component into a shipment. In the case of a specific threat, it should also be tasked with acting on it preventively, and for that a broad spectrum of interventions including penetration into systems of drone factories. beck-aktuell ↗

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, that is the internal counterintelligence service, gets narrower boundaries. It may intervene only if there is a threat of "serious unrest in large parts of the population" or "particularly severe damage as a result of intelligence activities of foreign powers," the intervention may concern only material goods and is permissible only when no one else can achieve the purpose. beck-aktuell ↗

Less is said about the data part, which is nevertheless more extensive. The BND will be allowed to retain collected data without prior sifting for six months for content and up to twelve months for metadata, so it will be able to retroactively find what no one had read before. Artificial intelligence is being added for evaluating large volumes and comparing biometric data with what is on the internet. The handover of data to other agencies and private entities is also being simplified, with the government particularly mentioning the Bundeswehr. ZDF ↗

From intelligent refrigerators to mobile phones — and to cameras in cars

Access to computer systems is graduated according to how deeply it intervenes. The government gives an intelligent refrigerator as an example of a minimally invasive intervention, and a privately used mobile phone as an example of a deep intervention. beck-aktuell ↗

Here is a point that affects most people and was barely mentioned in the main political debate about the reform. According to the proposal, automakers and auto repair services should be obligated to provide information about the data they have available. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung commentator Johannes Winterhagen summed it up by saying that the law is meant to disable German data protection precisely in this, and reminded that modern cars record their surroundings in high resolution and automatically save the recording after an accident. His own objection, however, is not panic: for millions of live streams, the volume of data would be too large anyway, but technology evolves and with it the oversight of services should also evolve. FAZ ↗

Why now

The reform has been in the works for longer, but the deadline is pressing. The Federal Constitutional Court gave the government a deadline until the end of this year to rewrite the rules for wiretapping at the border between domestic and foreign affairs. According to Karlsruhe, such surveillance is in principle permissible, but it requires adequate regulation, more effective control, clear rules for excluding purely domestic communication, and better protection of the privacy of foreigners abroad. To this is added what security forces describe as a significantly growing threat of espionage and sabotage, primarily from Russia. Legal Tribune Online ↗

How very concrete that threat is was shown in the same month. Investigators found a cache with two pistols in a forest near Berlin; the prosecutor general sees it as preparation for a serious violent act threatening the state, and Dobrindt does not rule out the involvement of foreign powers. The suspect was detained last autumn in Romania. Tagesschau ↗, Digi24 ↗

Read also: Germany opens anti-drone center against hybrid attacks

The cabinet approved the reform of this scope under the leadership of the vice chancellor — Chancellor Friedrich Merz was extending his vacation at the time. Tagesspiegel ↗

Who is against — and why the word gestapo will be mentioned in Germany

The sharpest rejection came from the Left. Its defense expert Ulrich Thoden speaks of activism and reforms that "essentially only expand the competencies of secret services and executive bodies, while simultaneously reducing control". According to him, the principle of separation between police and intelligence services is "a bitter lesson from our history, above all from the Gestapo, which we had to learn and which our allies gave us as a warning on the way". He considers dual structures, where both police and services both investigate and intervene, to be ineffective and constitutionally highly questionable. ZDF ↗

The same historical comparison was used in the ZDFheute live discussion by criminal law professor Mark Zöller from Munich University, who questions whether the services even need such powers. FDP General Secretary Martin Hagen objects to something different: that the BND will be allowed to operate within the country against its own citizens, which is historically problematic and damages Germany's reputation as a liberal state under the rule of law. The Greens under the leadership of Felix Banaszak say the direction is correct, but the government won't get a blank check. The Social Democrats welcome the expansion and want to verify control once more in the legislative process. ZDF ↗

The defenders argue two points. Incumbent chairman of the Bundestag committee on interior affairs Josef Oster claims it is not about creating a secret police or abolishing this principle, but about precisely circumscribed cases where there is no other option. Chairman of the parliamentary oversight body Marc Henrichmann admits that "we are entering completely uncharted territory, and we are not doing this for fun, but because we live in times of real external threat, sabotage and disinformation". He also promises that the deeper the intervention, the more thorough the prior and subsequent control. beck-aktuell ↗

Security analyst Hans-Jakob Schindler goes even further and calls the reform a revolution. According to him, Germany has maintained one of the most restricted intelligence services in Europe for years, and compared to the Union it is merely catching up. The same argument is also in the coalition agreement. ZDF ↗

What journalists say about it

The layer that has barely made it into political debate concerns journalistic sources. According to Reporters Without Borders, the reform essentially eliminates the distinction between foreign-to-foreign communication and foreign-to-domestic communication, while unifying the thresholds for intervention at the lower level. The competencies of the so-called G10 commission, which oversaw this type of wiretapping, are being transferred to an Independent Oversight Board. netzpolitik.org ↗

The practical consequence was named by Maximilian Jung from this organization specifically. For a journalist communicating from Germany with a source abroad, it would no longer be necessary to prove that he is participating in a crime or its preparation. It would be sufficient for the service to place him in a broader context with a serious threat, because it assumes he exchanges information that interests it. According to him, the protection of journalists and their sources is thus systematically dismantled. netzpolitik.org ↗

What applies to Slovakia from this

Germany openly describes its change as catching up to the European average, which means the argument "others already have it" will be heard in other countries with reference to Berlin. Slovakia is in a similar threat environment, since drone incidents, sabotage, and cyberattacks do not stop at borders.

Also interesting is the contrast offered by those same August weeks. While in Germany there is a dispute about how much data the state may take, in Slovakia the state distributed its own data wholesale: making the business register records publicly available revealed personal data of business owners, including data of the head of the SIS Pavel Gašpar and the head of the office responsible for data protection. SME ↗

Read also: What Slovakia is writing about: Blanár met with Russian minister

Limits of this view

This is still a government proposal, not a valid law. The Bundestag must approve it, the Federal Council can initiate conciliation proceedings, but its approval is not necessary — the text can still change and some controversial parts may not survive. ZDF ↗

The sources of this text also have their angles. Netzpolitik.org and Reporters Without Borders read the proposal through the lens of press freedom, which is legitimate, but it is advocacy, not neutral analysis. Beck-aktuell and Legal Tribune Online are professional legal media — precise but not critical. And the text in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, from which the detail about cameras in cars comes, is a two-minute commentary from the Technology and Motor section, not a report.

The claim that German services were among the most restricted in Europe is the assessment of one analyst, not a measured comparison. And the question of how the Independent Oversight Board will be staffed and whether it will be able to handle prior review of all the most extensive powers has not yet been answered by any of the cited sources.

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