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Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt in the Bundestag [Photo by DBT \/ Thomas Trutschel \/ photothek]<\/p>\nThe German cabinet approved a 700-page package of draft legislation on Wednesday massively expanding the powers of its domestic and foreign intelligence agencies. \u201cWe are turning our intelligence services into real secret services,\u201d Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (Christian Social Union, CSU) said of the reform in an interview with\u00a0Bild.<\/p>\n
Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt in the Bundestag [Photo by DBT \/ Thomas Trutschel \/ photothek]<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Verfassungsschutz\u00a0(Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, as the domestic agency is called) and the\u00a0Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service, BND), responsible for foreign intelligence, are subject to various forms of legal and parliamentary oversight. They may gather information covertly, but have no police powers\u2014for example, they cannot arrest anyone. Secret services, by contrast, may also carry out covert operations\u2014such as paramilitary missions, acts of sabotage, hacking and the destruction of computer systems, propaganda, and covert support for parties and individuals abroad. This opens the door wide to provocations and manipulation.<\/p>\n
The BND is not being given a \u201clicence to kill\u201d; its measures are not supposed to be \u201cdeliberately directed against the life or limb of individuals.\u201d But in future, BND operatives, Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) personnel and federal police officers will be allowed to take their weapons abroad without explicit authorisation.<\/p>\n
The new legislative package significantly expands the power to collect and evaluate data. In future, the secret services will be able to use artificial intelligence to analyse huge quantities of data\u2014including footage from public and private video surveillance cameras. Retention periods are being extended. Controversial surveillance methods such as covert online searches, surveillance of private homes and the creation of movement profiles are being expanded.<\/p>\n
Oversight of the secret services is to be exercised by the Independent Oversight Council, created in 2022. It consists of six judges with many years of experience in federal courts and is bound by strict secrecy. The Parliamentary Oversight Panel, made up of members of all Bundestag (parliamentary) parties, will continue to exist but will only be responsible for \u201cpolitical\u201d oversight. This means it will learn almost nothing about the operations of the secret services.<\/p>\n
The Society for Civil Rights (GFF), whose members include prominent legal scholars, considers the legislative package \u201cunconstitutional in large parts.\u201d The \u201cstrict separation between the intelligence services, which only observe and do not act, and the police, which then step in, is being torn down,\u201d the GFF says in its\u00a0statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n The new rules lead to a \u201cpolicification\u201d of the intelligence services and \u201cawaken desires for ever more new operational powers, since ever new \u2018gaps\u2019 can be found and used to justify supposed needs for intervention,\u201d the GFF argues. \u201cMoreover, the draft also blurs the separation between the secret services themselves, since the BND \u2026 is now also being given domestic surveillance powers.\u201d<\/p>\n The strict separation of police and intelligence services was imposed by the victorious Allied powers after the Second World War in order to prevent a repeat of Hitler\u2019s\u00a0Gestapo\u00a0(Secret State Police), which had spied upon, arrested, tortured and murdered communists, social democrats and other political opponents of the Nazis, as well as Jews and other minorities. This separation has been treated as a constitutional principle ever since.<\/p>\n The abolition of this separation is directly linked to Germany\u2019s return to an imperialist war policy. Hundreds of billions of euros in additional military spending, clawed back from social spending, the reintroduction of conscription and the construction of a \u201cwar-ready\u201d society all require a police state.<\/p>\n Interior Minister Dobrindt justifies the strengthening of the secret services with a supposed \u201chybrid threat situation, the attempts at destabilisation through sabotage, espionage, cyberattacks and covert actions by foreign powers.\u201d But this is propaganda. The real target of the burgeoning apparatus of surveillance and repression is the growing opposition to militarism, social cuts and unemployment.<\/p>\n No opposition from the establishment parties Among the parties represented in the Bundestag, there is no opposition to this construction of a police state\u2014or if there is, it\u2019s purely verbal.<\/p>\n As a governing party, German social democracy, which long ago ceased to be either \u201csocial\u201d or \u201cdemocratic,\u201d stands unreservedly behind the new legislative package. It is telling that it was approved under the chairmanship of Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Lars Klingbeil, who stood in for the vacationing federal chancellor at the cabinet meeting.<\/p>\n Green Party domestic policy expert Konstantin von Notz declared the reform and the \u201cmore robust powers\u201d for the BND to be \u201curgently necessary.\u201d He only criticised a few secondary aspects.<\/p>\n Clara B\u00fcnger, the Left Party\u2019s domestic policy spokesperson, criticised the abolition of the \u201chistoric requirement to keep police and intelligence services separate\u201d and warned: \u201cAnyone who gives the intelligence services powers to intervene, to sabotage and to carry out state hack-backs is planning a new German secret police.\u201d This, she said, was \u201coblivious to history and irresponsible.\u201d<\/p>\n But wherever the Left Party assumes government responsibility, it strengthens the police and secret services. Even in Thuringia, where Bodo Ramelow held the office of State Premier for 10 years, it did not dissolve the state branch of the\u00a0Verfassungsschutz, even though it had promised to do so before Ramelow\u2019s election. In the years before that, the far-right NSU terrorist murder gang had grown up under the eyes of the Thuringia\u00a0Verfassungsschutz. Ramelow himself had been intensively monitored by the\u00a0Verfassungsschutz\u00a0for 25 years.<\/p>\n The Left Party parliamentary group defence policy spokesperson in the Bundestag, Ulrich Thoden, reacted accordingly to the new legislative package. Rather than calling for the dissolution of the secret services, he merely demanded better oversight by parliament and the data protection commissioner.<\/p>\n The media have almost unanimously taken on the task of beating the drum for the building up of the secret services. In the days before the cabinet decision, the discovery of an\u00a0explosive drone<\/a>\u00a0at Leipzig\/Halle Airport dominated the headlines. Although almost nothing is known about the drone\u2019s origin even a week later, it was hyped into a \u201chybrid attack\u201d by Russia\u2014the same justification Dobrindt uses for the new laws.<\/p>\n Whereas it was initially reported that the driver of an airport bus had spotted the drone flying low, shortly before midnight on 4 August, and brought it down with a kick, it is now said to have collided with the wing of a Ukrainian Antonov heavy-lift aircraft several hours earlier. The explosive, which did not detonate, is said to have been found not on the drone itself but some distance away.<\/p>\n In a press statement, the Russian embassy in Berlin rejected any responsibility. It described the incident as a \u201chastily concocted provocation\u201d that \u201cserves exclusively the interests of Kiev and the militaristic wing of the European political class.\u201d<\/p>\n According to some press reports, German security circles also consider it possible that the incident\u2014which caused no damage whatsoever apart from a disruption of flight operations lasting several hours\u2014was a Ukrainian provocation.<\/p>\n The regime in Kiev finds itself in a desperate situation. Two years after President Zelensky\u2019s term of office expired, he is refusing to hold elections that he would likely lose. Resistance to the war and to brutal forced conscription is growing. As a result, around 55,000 Ukrainians are sitting in\u00a0prison<\/a>\u00a0under inhumane conditions.<\/p>\n Only last week, the Trotskyist\u00a0Bogdan Syrotiuk<\/a>\u00a0was sentenced to 15 years in prison for \u201chigh treason.\u201d His \u201ccrime\u201d: he had called for the unity of the Ukrainian and Russian working class against the war and condemned the glorification of Nazi collaborators such as Stepan Bandera. He rejects the Putin regime just as much as the Zelensky regime.<\/p>\n Questions about this article? Ask Socialism AI<\/p>\n \u201cHybrid war\u201d<\/p>\n Zelensky is using every means available to keep the unpopular war going\u2014working closely with Berlin in the process. German imperialism, as in the First and Second World Wars, is once again using Ukraine as a bridgehead with the aim of breaking Russia apart and gaining control of its vast raw materials. The claim that Russia is waging a \u201chybrid war\u201d against Germany and Europe plays a central role in German war propaganda.<\/p>\n As early as 17 July, Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, head of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), and Lieutenant General (ret.) J\u00fcrgen-Joachim von Sandrart had published a guest article in the\u00a0Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung\u00a0calling for a rethink of \u201cthe concept of deterrence for the hybrid age.\u201d<\/p>\n Germany, it states, was the target of hybrid warfare, with Russia clearly identified as the aggressor. Merely building resilience against this was not enough. \u201cGermany must become capable of both defence and retaliation.\u201d Every aggressor must know \u201cthat a hybrid attack can incur incalculable costs for them.\u201d<\/p>\n The weapons Kleine-Brockhoff and von Sandrart propose include financial sanctions, the disruption of communication networks and, against disinformation campaigns, \u201crapidly implementable communication and action plans.\u201d Information warfare under the direction of the secret services is thus explicitly legitimised. The manipulation of public opinion is declared a weapon of war.<\/p>\n As an important step, the article cites the opening of the\u00a0Joint Centre for Countering Hybrid Threats (GAZ Hybrid)<\/a>\u00a0by Interior Minister Dobrindt in June. Here, the secret services, police authorities, cyber authorities, state criminal investigation offices, the Directorate General of Customs, the Federal Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office, the Bundeswehr and business associations work closely together.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786681575_688_00320551-90b5-4662-8c01-4280f38c1388.png\"\/)
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