Overview
- Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt publicly raised Germany’s terrorism threat to a “high” level on Sunday and presented a roughly 691‑page draft to broaden intelligence powers for cabinet consideration in mid‑August.
- The package would let the domestic Verfassungsschutz (BfV) and the foreign BND perform active measures such as disabling servers, rerouting dangerous packages, using deceptive information and, in acute cases, entering and searching homes.
- The government says arrests would remain the police’s responsibility and that an expanded Unabhängiger Kontrollrat would pre‑authorize some measures, but critics say the plan weakens the postwar separation between police and intelligence and reduces judicial safeguards for searches.
- Legal experts and commentators warn the draft risks breaching constitutional protections because intelligence actions would not follow the criminal procedure code that normally governs searches and coercive measures.
- Supporters point to recent infrastructure attacks, a foiled explosive plot and the need to operate on equal footing with foreign partners, while coverage divides along lines that emphasize either urgent security needs or threats to civil liberties and oversight capacity.