German spies granted sweeping new powers

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Parliament passes legislation months after a thwarted attack at Leipzig-Halle airport, which Berlin linked to Russia.

Germany’s parliament has approved sweeping new powers for the country’s intelligence agencies, allowing them to hack and disrupt adversaries under specified conditions as the government seeks to counter espionage and cyberattacks.

The Bundestag passed the legislation on Friday by 308 votes to 190, with 71 abstentions. The governing Christian Democrats and Social Democrats backed the reform, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Die Linke, or the Left Party, opposed it.

The changes expand the role of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), and its domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), beyond gathering and analysing information to actively disrupting certain threats.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt described the legislation as a “reform of the century”, arguing that Germany needed stronger intelligence services to confront terrorism and hostile foreign operations.

The government says the reform addresses a gap in Germany’s security system, as intelligence agencies to date could sometimes identify a threat but lacked the authority to intervene, including when no other agency was responsible or able to act.

Under the new framework, the BfV would be able to take technical measures against serious threats, such as deleting stolen information from an attacker’s server.

For the BND, the expanded operational powers would allow interventions against threats abroad, including disrupting the servers used by state-backed hackers.

The approval comes just months after German authorities found an explosive-laden drone near a cargo plane belonging to the Ukrainian firm Antonov Airlines at Leipzig-Halle airport in August, linking the incident to Moscow.

Berlin formally accused Russia of attempting an attack at the state-owned facility, with Dobrindt saying Germany’s intelligence community had determined that a drone discovered at the airport was consistent with Russian technology.

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