German spies to get offensive powers, breaking post-Cold War taboo on ‘secret police’

Act instead of merely watching. Move from defence to offence. This is how German media have commented on a draft law through which the German government aims to make its intelligence services more effective. “We are turning our intelligence services into genuine secret services,” said interior minister Alexander Dobrindt. And while this may sound surprising, Germany has not until now had a genuine secret service of the kind operating in other Western countries. German media have described it as both a security revolution and a historic moment. “It is high time we positioned ourselves to be competitive and on an equal footing with our partner services around the world. This requires operational capabilities and active powers to tackle modern state terrorism and extremist groups more effectively,” Dobrindt said. The change has been prompted by the escalating hybrid attacks and sabotage the country faces. Germany was shocked only last week by the discovery of an explosive device on a drone near a Ukrainian Antonov aircraft at Leipzig airport. While German intelligence services have been cautious about identifying the perpetrator, US officials say the flying object most likely came from Russia. The Wall Street Journal reported this several days ago, citing unnamed US officials. On Thursday, Der Spiegel wrote that even German security authorities now have almost no doubt that Moscow was behind the attack. They consider other scenarios possible, but unlikely. If the suspicion is confirmed, the German government will have to respond more forcefully, experts agree — including by reforming its intelligence services more quickly. Russia’s attack on Ukraine brought the first major shift in Germany’s approach to security. Commentators say the Leipzig incident, which exposed serious security gaps, could prove to be the second such moment. Without a secret service “Every day, we are targeted by espionage, sabotage, cyber attacks and covert actions by foreign powers,” also said Dobrindt, adding that the aim of such activities was to destabilise Germany. Berlin has openly said that Moscow was behind many of them. The German government’s draft proposal for reforming the secret services runs to more than 700 pages. The general public and journalists often use the terms intelligence service and secret service interchangeably. German media, however, write that there are fundamental differences between them in practice. They point out that Germany has, in essence, not had a genuine secret service until now. “Until recently, German intelligence services were essentially only information-gathering services,” Peter Neumann, a professor of security studies at King’s College London, told AFP. “They have certain powers to collect information and provide politicians with a better picture, but they were very limited in what they were allowed to do with that information,” he added. Three intelligence services operate in the country. The first two are particularly prominent in the context of the reform: the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the domestic intelligence service, with offices in the Länder; the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), responsible for foreign intelligence; and the Federal Office for Military Counter-Intelligence (BAMAD). Until now, the agencies have focused primarily on gathering information covertly. But when it came to taking active steps and implementing measures, responsibility lay with others — the police within Germany itself. The separation of intelligence services and the police in Germany has historical reasons. Following the experience of National Socialism and East Germany, the country sought to prevent the re-emergence of a secret police force with extensive powers that could be used against citizens. German media therefore write that the intelligence reform marks a paradigm shift. Genuine secret services The government now wants to turn them into genuine secret services that would not only collect information, but also carry out covert operations. There is debate over whether such activities would take place only within Germany or also abroad. As the Tagesschau website warned, operations outside German territory could mean covert support for foreign political parties, as the US CIA has done in the past. The Federal Intelligence Service is headed by Martin Jäger, Germany’s former ambassador to Ukraine. The agency will gain new powers enabling it to counter threats from state actors such as Russia and China, with fewer restrictions and with the help of artificial intelligence. Both the BND and the domestic security agency will have greater latitude to collect, retain and analyse larger volumes of information over longer periods using AI. “We must be, and we will be, Germany’s first line of defence,” Jäger said in April during celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the BND’s establishment. Several weeks earlier, at the Munich Security Conference, the senior government official went a step further. He announced the introduction of wide-ranging measures against Russia’s so-called hybrid warfare in Europe. Moscow must be shown “that we are capable of doing very similar things, so that the other side also feels pain”, Jäger said. German authorities say the level of threat has risen sharply since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as agents linked to Moscow have allegedly carried out repeated sabotage, espionage, and hacking attacks against critical infrastructure and manufacturers of military equipment. The role of the “domestic” Office for the Protection of the Constitution will continue to be gathering intelligence, but in cases of an “exceptional threat” it may also be authorised to act operationally. This would include, for example, terrorist threats or intelligence operations by “foreign powers” on German territory. As Tagesschau lists, the domestic service could, under the new rules: redirect cyber attacks into a void without the attacker noticing; manipulate supply chains in order to prevent the production of weapons or explosives; provide potential attackers with false information about opportunities to commit a crime, so that their plan fails; render unusable technical instructions for producing explosives or information about vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure. Under the proposal, the foreign intelligence service would receive even broader powers, including the ability to “operate” against a foreign power from which a threat emanates. Members of the intelligence services operating abroad will remain prohibited from using force — which, critics say, will not bring the agency closer to the level of the US CIA, Israel’s Mossad, or France’s DGSE. Agents will, however, be able to carry weapons for self-defence more frequently and without explicit authorisation. Wishes fulfilled Experts say the proposed changes largely fulfil the wishes of both the foreign and domestic intelligence services. They have long complained that Germany was lagging behind both its allies and its adversaries.