Bundestag grants BND powers to counter-hack foreign attackers

A reform package approved by the Bundestag on Friday gives Germany's intelligence agencies wide-ranging new powers, including authority for the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) to answer cyberattacks by foreign powers with counterattacks of its own.

The range of permitted measures runs from deleting and manipulating data to disabling entire systems and, if necessary, destroying physical weapons such as drones that could be deployed against Germany. Under certain conditions the agencies may also enter homes and business premises covertly, for example to prepare surveillance operations. They will not be allowed to use force against people. An independent oversight board is to monitor the agencies.

Opposition lawmakers specialising in domestic policy warned against granting powers that are too broad.

The vote carries Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt's plans a significant step further. The CSU minister has said he wants to turn the domestic Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the BND into "real intelligence services". The package passed with the votes of the governing CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party.

Dobrindt insisted Germany intends to take an active approach to defending itself: "Anyone who attacks us in this way must know that we are prepared to strike back. They must know that their digital infrastructure, their server infrastructure, and their software will also be targeted by us."

At the Federal Criminal Police Office's (BKA) annual meeting in Berlin this week, its president Holger Münch said hybrid attacks are challenging the "separation principle", under which police conduct investigations while intelligence services gather information, with data exchange permitted only under strict conditions. Münch has long objected to that division and has called for expanded police powers and closer cooperation with the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

The separation principle dates to the Nazi dictatorship, when the Gestapo operated largely outside judicial constraints, and to the Allied decision after World War II that police and intelligence services remain institutionally separate.

Historian Sönke Neitzel of the University of Potsdam called the principle understandable in its historical context but "nonsense" in light of today's threat landscape, and said it was no longer necessary in a country that has been a constitutional democracy for decades. Dobrindt wants to preserve it in its essential form, arguing that even a more extensive exchange of data does not violate it.

BKA President Münch cited two statistics to underscore the scale of the threat: in the first six months of 2025, crime originating from abroad rose by 24% compared with the same period the previous year, and fewer than 5% of those cases are solved. "The state's promise of security can become fragile," Münch warned. "Confidence in the ability of its institutions to act effectively and remain steadfast is declining."