Bundestag grants BND and BfV sweeping new powers to counter foreign threats

Germany's Bundestag voted on Friday to overhaul its intelligence legislation, granting expanded powers to both the BND foreign intelligence service and the BfV domestic security agency to combat espionage, terrorism and sabotage from abroad.

The bill passed with 309 MPs voting in favour, 190 against and 71 abstaining. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, who championed the legislation, called it a "reform of the century."

Under the new law, BND officers operating abroad may conduct covert operations including sabotage — such as paralysing servers used by state-sponsored hacker groups or disrupting supply chains for weapons. The BfV, previously limited to gathering information, may now take protective action against property and IT systems when specific threats are identified. That includes dismantling explosives, diverting data flows during cyber-attacks, deleting or falsifying malicious data, and planting false information on targets.

BfV agents will also be permitted to enter homes covertly under prior authorisation, and will gain wider digital surveillance powers, including monitoring encrypted telecommunications, conducting online searches, and deploying AI-supported data analysis and biometric image matching.

Dobrindt cited Russia, China and Iran as the principal sources of hybrid threats, pointing to an explosive drone discovered at Leipzig Airport in August — which German authorities attributed to Russia — as evidence of the operational environment the new powers are designed to address.

Critics pushed back sharply. The Left Party's security spokeswoman Clara Bünger called the law "a monster" and warned that the separation between police and secret services, a principle learned from the Nazi era, was being eroded. She said the BfV was being granted executive and police powers for the first time.

Sonja Eichwede of the governing SPD said the reforms would make Germany's democracy "robust and resilient."