Germany Rewrites the Rules for its Spies | Florian Flade

[00:00:00] Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords. This is Secrets and Spies. Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics and intrigue. This podcast is produced and hosted by Chris Carr.

[00:00:29] On today's episode, joined by national security journalist Florian Flade from Berlin, and we're discussing the changes that are coming up to the BND, which is Germany's foreign intelligence service. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. Take care. The opinions expressed by guests on Secrets and Spies do not necessarily represent those

[00:00:47] of the producers and sponsors of this podcast. Florian, welcome back to the podcast. How are you? I'm doing very well. Thank you very much for having me. Excellent. Two listeners, forgive me, I've got a bit of a cold, so my voice is not the best, but hopefully we can persevere. So, Florian, for the benefit of listeners who may not be familiar if you were, please could just tell us a little bit about yourself.

[00:01:17] Yes, I'm a German journalist working for the German public broadcaster WDR, and I'm working in a joint investigative unit with the NDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung. I'm mainly focusing on topics regarding national security and also more and more defense-related topics. And yes, I'm doing a lot of work about intelligence services.

[00:01:45] Thank you for that. So today we're going to be chatting about Germany's BND reforms. So for listeners who are not necessarily familiar with the BND and German intelligence services, could you just tell us a little bit about how the German intelligence community works, what the BND is, and how it all differs from Germany's domestic intelligence? Germany has three major intelligence services on the federal level. The first is the Federal Intelligence Service or Bundesnachrichtendienst, the BND,

[00:02:12] which is responsible for foreign intelligence, for spying abroad. Then there's the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or in short, the BFV. This is Germany's domestic intelligence service. And finally, there is the Military Counterintelligence Service, MAD. It's responsible for combating

[00:02:36] extremism, terrorism, also espionage related to the German armed forces. So in other words, it functions as the domestic intelligence service, especially for the military. Yeah, the BND has about 6,500 people working for it, and it has a headquarter located in Berlin. It's responsible for foreign intelligence, for intelligence gathering abroad, and also for

[00:03:05] strategic signal intelligence, including the monitoring of internet communication. The BND reports to the Chancellery only directly. It's also working for the other parts of the German government, of course, and it's doing analyses and sending reports to the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other parts of the government. But it reports to the

[00:03:34] to the Chancellery and it's the Chancellor's intelligence service. There's also one unusual feature. The BND is also responsible for military foreign intelligence, because Germany does not have a separate military intelligence service. We may come back to that point later. It's a special

[00:03:58] situation that we have in Germany here. So yeah, what distinguishes the BND from the domestic intelligence service, the BND monitors developments abroad. It gathers intelligence on foreign countries and foreign governments. This primarily includes information on conflict zones, war zones, foreign governments, terrorist organizations, also organized crime, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

[00:04:27] Then the BND also keeps a close watch on armed forces of certain countries such as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran. BND also watches migration happening to Europe and the situation in the Middle East and Africa as well. The domestic intelligence service, the BFV on the other hand, focuses on threats within Germany.

[00:04:52] These include extremists, terrorists, right-wing extremists, left-wing extremists, Islamists, and the BFV is responsible also for counterintelligence, an area that has become increasingly important in recent years. And unlike the BND, the BFV is required to publish an annual report on its activities.

[00:05:16] This public report serves as a kind of threat assessment, basically describing which groups and organizations are under observation, and how the number of extremists has developed, among other things. Both intelligence and the BND does not have that. The BND does not publish an open report about threat assessment, which also differs from the US intelligence community, for example.

[00:05:42] Yeah, and both intelligence services, the BND and the BFV are authorized to recruit and manage human sources. They may conduct communication surveillance. They place individuals under surveillance. In addition, the BND can analyze satellite imagery in cooperation with the military, and it's also authorized to conduct cyber operations. And unlike the BFV, the BND is also permitted to carry out strategic signal intelligence.

[00:06:12] This involves the monitoring of internet traffic on these major internet exchange points, such as the one in Frankfurt. There's one huge internet exchange point where the internet communication can be filtered and intercepted. And these activities became widely known, as you know, to the public primary, preliminary through the disclosures made by Edward Snowden back then,

[00:06:39] on the NSA and the cooperation between the BND and the American services. Yeah, thank you very much for that. So Germany has historically placed unusually tight legal and political constraints on its intelligence services. Why was that model created, and how has Germany's history sort of shaped the BND as we know it today? Yes, Germany has historically maintained very strict laws governing its intelligence and spy services.

[00:07:06] This is basically a direct consequence of the lessons learned from Germany's history. During the Nazi era, there was the Gestapo, which was a secret police that Hitler used to persecute political opponents. And then after the Second World War, East Germany, the GDR had the Ministry of State Security, better known as the Stasi, which also functioned as a secret police force.

[00:07:34] And the Stasi was allowed to secretly monitor people, to arrest them, detain them, conduct interrogations. And yeah, and as a lesson drawn from these two dictatorships, the Nazi regime and the East German dictatorship, Germany introduced what is known as the principle of separation, or as we call it, the Trennungsgebot. And the idea is that the police should not be allowed to operate like an intelligence service,

[00:07:59] and an intelligence service should not be granted the same powers and authorities as the police. So the two are meant to remain strictly separated. Yeah, to be honest, this principle of separation mainly affects the domestic intelligence service, the BFV, because its work is focused mainly on German citizens, or at least on people living in Germany.

[00:08:23] Yeah, the BND was established shortly after the Second World War with the support and approval of the United States. It was decided that West Germany back then should have a foreign intelligence service. And at that time, it was not called the BND, but rather the Gehlen organization, or organization Gehlen, named after its first director, Reinhard Gehlen.

[00:08:47] And Reinhard Gehlen headed the section called Fremde Heere Ost, an intelligence section of the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. And after Germany's defeat, he himself offered his expertise on the Soviet Union to the Americans, and the CIA considered it to be a good idea to appoint Gehlen as the head of the new West German Foreign Intelligence Service.

[00:09:11] And at that time, there were virtually no legal regulations and restrictions governing the BND. Everything was highly classified back then. The situation was similar to that of other countries, such as the United Kingdom or Australia, where the public only learned much later that such intelligence services even exist. So the BND therefore enjoyed considerable operational freedom, I would say.

[00:09:42] BND was not allowed, of course, to arrest and interrogate people. That was not within the authority, but it was permitted to do many things. There was not yet a dedicated law defining, limiting its powers. And that changed after the German reunification, so after the end of the Cold War. In 1991, it was decided that the BND should be given its own legal framework.

[00:10:06] And the resulting legislation is quite strict and places significant limits on the services activities. Yeah, so before these new sort of reforms that are being proposed, what is the BND legally sort of allowed to do? And just importantly, what was it prohibited from doing? The first dedicated legal framework came into power in the early 1990s. Before that, no BND legislation or law existed.

[00:10:34] And since then, the law has been amended several times, particularly in the wake of Edward Snowden's NSA revelations back then, which caused a major public debate in Germany. And the parliament launched an inquiry even into the cooperation between the BND and the American and British intelligence services. And the BND Act or law was subsequently reformed.

[00:10:59] And there have been a number of constitutional challenges to the law before Germany's federal constitutional court, which has repeatedly required further changes to the law. So in principle, the BND has so far been limited, and that's the current state, to be honest, limited to collecting and analyzing intelligence.

[00:11:26] In other words, its role is primarily firstly to observe. So it has not been authorized to conduct active operational measures. For example, it has not been allowed to carry out kind of missions conducted by the CIA, for example, with its special operations group.

[00:11:54] Such covert action, as it's called. These actions, yeah, that is operations that are effectively, I would say, military in nature. The BND has not been permitted to do that under the current mandate. And the BND has also not been allowed to conduct acts of sabotage, for example. Just to give you an example out of what the people from the BND would tell you is something that they are limited to.

[00:12:25] If the service learns that, let's say, missile components are being transported to North Korea, the current law does allow the BND only to monitor and to track that shipment. They are not allowed to temper or sabotage the equipment in any way in order to render it unusable, to manipulate it. So likewise, the BND has so far not been authorized to penetrate hostile computer networks.

[00:12:54] As part of the cyber operations, they are not allowed to cause any damage to these computer networks. In other words, to conduct offensive cyber sabotage. And of course, the BND is not permitted to carry out any lethal operations, such as targeting killings, for example. So has that caused a lot of frustration within the BND then? Yeah, to some people in the BND, these limits have been the reason for a lot of frustration,

[00:13:25] especially if you're looking at the new challenges and the new threats coming up with Russia. And the question has, yeah, some people asking the question, is there a role of the BND in a war situation, a conflict situation? Is there any activity that the BND should be allowed to carry out in times of war? So, and is the service even fit and able to carry out such operations? Let's take a break and be right back with more.

[00:14:10] So you've described these reforms as transforming the BND from an intelligence service that gathers information into one that can act operationally. So what does operationally actually mean in practice? By operational, I mean that the BND would no longer be limited to observing, to this observer role and gathering intelligence. Instead, it would be authorized to take active measures when Germany's national security or the, let's say,

[00:14:39] the collective security of the NATO alliance is at stake. And for the first time, this draft legislation for the new BND Act, which was introduced, by the way, about a week ago. So a week ago, this paper, it's 700 pages, BND and BFV, new reformed laws. This paper has been presented to certain parts of the German government

[00:15:07] and will then be presented to the cabinet in August and then make its way to the parliament, to the Bundestag. For the first time, this draft legislation would give the BND an active role in both national defense and also NATO's collective defense. The draft legislation would also authorize the BND to carry out acts of sabotage, other forms of covert interference, which is very, very new to German intelligence.

[00:15:34] And in addition, the BND would be allowed to conduct offensive cyber operations. In Germany, we refer to this as the hackback. This means the service would be permitted to respond to a cyber attack by hacking into and disabling attackers' IT infrastructure. These changes that are contained in the proposed legislation, what do you think will have the greatest impact on how the BND operates? There's some interesting stuff about how human sources, for example,

[00:16:03] might be allowed to break the law to gather intelligence and things like that. Yeah, that is something, this is also new. Some people might be surprised to hear that, but the current law does not allow sources of the BND to carry out crimes, to break into an apartment, to break into a car, to steal a computer, data, documents, whatever.

[00:16:32] BND is not allowed to tell their sources to carry out these crimes. So this is basically, this is definitely not a James Bond type of approach to intelligence work, but that is about to change, probably. And I believe the authorization to conduct active operational measures is by far the most significant change.

[00:17:00] Yeah, there's an explanatory memorandum accompanying this draft legislation. So the people who have written it, they describe why they need, why the BND needs these new authorizations. And that even states in that explanatory memorandum, you can, you see that it explicitly says that the BND may employ,

[00:17:29] conduct kinetic means, kinetic means to counter threats to Germany. And that is entirely new and represents a fundamental shift in the agency's mandate and approach to its work. And the issue of the hackback or the active cyber defense is also highly significant. One of the questions on the discussion is whether the BND should, in the future, be allowed to target foreign disinformation networks.

[00:17:59] For example, the so-called Russian troll farms, what was called the Internet Research Agency, that was flooding social media with these lies and fake and disinformation kind of stuff to interfere in Western elections. And as you remember, the United States, they have done exactly that. The NSA and U.S. Cyber Command conducted operations against the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg

[00:18:26] to disrupt the efforts to interfere in the U.S. elections. And under the proposed legislation, the BND would also be permitted to carry out similar operations in the future. It's also a major shift. How much of these reforms are being driven by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and sort of the growing threat of hybrid warfare across Europe? I think one thing is absolutely clear. Without the war in Ukraine, without Russia's aggression, the hybrid campaign against NATO,

[00:18:56] there would be no such intelligence reform in Germany. These developments are clearly the driving forces behind the proposed changes. And following the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 22, then Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared a Zeitinwende, literally a historic turning point, as he described it.

[00:19:22] And by that he meant a fundamental shift in Germany's security policy. Germany would invest more in defense, it would expand its armed forces, it would equip them more effectively. And what we are now witnessing, to be honest, is a Zeitinwende for Germany's intelligence services as well. So they too are being adapted to the demands of the new European security environment, I would say, yeah.

[00:19:49] And another thing that sort of appears through the reforms is Germany's desire to become less dependent on American intelligence. How important is that objective? And how is the confidence in sort of the long-term reliability of the United States changed in Berlin? I would say this is the second major reason behind the intelligence reforms that are now being proposed, that are in the making. The United States, or more specifically the Trump administration,

[00:20:18] is no longer widely regarded as a fully reliable partner, to be honest. And many Europeans have been unsettled by Trump's statements, by the actions he takes. And across Europe, there is now a growing question, how much can we still rely on the United States when it comes to security? And for Germany's intelligence services, no partnership has been more important than the one with the United States.

[00:20:48] That's just a fact. It has long been the cornerstone of Germany's intelligence cooperation. But that was also because Germany's intelligence services operated under far more restrictive legal authorities than their American counterparts. And as a result, they depended heavily on intelligence and operational support from their U.S. partners. And that too is now intended, at least to change.

[00:21:17] That's what the government wants. The goal is to equip both the BND and the BFV, the Domestic Intelligence Service, with broader capabilities so that they can operate more independently. And one objective is to reduce Germany's reliance on the United States. At the same time, the reforms are intended to make Germany's intelligence service more interoperable with the foreign counterparts

[00:21:42] and better be able to cooperate with other services, also on the European level. An intelligence world, as you know, cooperation tends to work best when partners have similar capabilities and legal authorities. So this is also one main reason why these reforms are now being conducted. Yeah, yeah. How does that sort of look in practical terms of these reforms

[00:22:10] and sort of how it's going to develop Germany's relationship with the United States, UK, and French intelligence services, do you think? In practical terms, this means that the BND should be able to do what the intelligence services of the United Kingdom, France, also the Netherlands or Poland are already authorized to do. So basically keep up with them. The idea is to bring the BND up to the same level and that would make the cooperation with those services much easier.

[00:22:40] Ultimately, I think the primary objective is to deepen also the cooperation within Europe's intelligence service community, while ensuring that Germany can compensate for the capabilities that might no longer be available if the US proves to be a less reliable partner in the future. So to have a stronger cooperation with France, with UK and other partners in Europe is one thing.

[00:23:06] And also to step up and to be able to fill the gap that the US might leave. That's another point. Is Germany uniquely placed to specialize in any particular areas, such as dealing with Russia or terrorist groups and things like that? Yes, at least that what sources within BND have told me for years that they have focused on Russia for a long time, of course,

[00:23:35] because Germany was the front line of the Cold War and that there was a lot of expertise with the East European, East German intelligence services and also, of course, the Soviet KGB. And that this is something that they continued even after the Second World War to focus on Russia. And I was even told that if you compare that to the UK, for example, after Litvinenko poisoning happened,

[00:24:04] that BND Russia experts came to the UK to give the UK partners some briefings on Russia. And I was told by one of my sources that he was surprised to see that there was not that much Russia expertise in the UK back then, in the UK intelligence service. And that's at least what he told me, that they were very happy when the Germans came and briefed them on some issues.

[00:24:34] Yeah, so Russia is one thing. But to be honest, there is also, just looking at the invasion of Ukraine, BND was not one of the services who believed that Mr. Putin would go all the way for a full-scale invasion. They had a different opinion on that, as did the French and the Dutch. As we know, there was a publication this week that also the Dutch services wouldn't believe that Putin would start a full-scale invasion.

[00:25:05] So, yes, there is some Russia expertise. There was also some things that they got wrong in the past, also about Russia. Yeah, there is this strategic, technical, SIGINT intelligence, basically. BND has access to what we call the Frankfurt Internet Knot, so this exchange point, the DATESICS exchange point in Frankfurt. It's the second largest in the world when it comes to data traffic. There's only one bigger one in Sao Paulo.

[00:25:36] So it's the second biggest in the world. There's a lot of data and traffic going through that exchange point also to the east, also to Russia, and also other parts of the world, for example, Iran. So having access to this data point is very valuable for the BND and also the BND's partners. This is why the NSA, GCHQ, and others still have this cooperation with the BND

[00:26:03] to basically also access the data on this exchange point. And there's also BND expertise in analyzing what they call foreign enemy weapon systems. This is a special part of the intelligence service is responsible for collecting enemy weapons, and they are pretty good at that.

[00:26:32] So I heard that a few years ago, somehow even North Korean weapons turned up with the BND, and they were able to analyze it and to provide NATO with their reports on these weapon systems. And they're also collecting Russian, of course, Russian armament and Russian drones and whatever in Ukraine, in cooperation with the Ukrainian partners. Yeah, I think if I remember correctly, we had a great conversation, was it last year or the year before,

[00:27:00] about German operations during the Cold War? And I think that was one of the themes of those operations, collecting those weapons, yeah. Yeah, there's, during the wars in the Middle East, the Israel-Arab wars, Yom Kippur war, the Six-Day War, there was cooperation with the Israelis to gather Soviet weapon systems back then that they captured from the Arab armies. And they would then send it to the Germans and they were able to analyze it and to build countermeasures, counterweapons.

[00:27:30] Then there was, of course, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, where also BND was very active, gathering Soviet weapons and bringing it to Germany, analyzing it, providing NATO with all of the information around it. And then there was this interesting situation that after the Cold War, somehow in the reunification, after reunification of Germany, somehow there was access to a lot of weapons from the GDR.

[00:28:01] So somehow Germany had lots of Soviet weapons. They didn't know what to do with them, but Israel was very interested in them because they were still facing an enemy, Arab countries around them, that were using these Soviet weapons. So Israel had a great interest in analyzing these weapon systems from the GDR. And there was also a secret BND corporation where they would send these weapon systems to Israel in the early 1990s.

[00:28:30] Let's take a break and be right back with more. So the draft legislation also describes the BND as both a civilian and military intelligence services. What is the significance of that and why has it raised concerns in part of Germany's

[00:28:59] sort of defense establishment? Yeah, this is in fact a quite unique German feature. Some even describe it as a German, we say Sonderweg, German special path. Germany does not have a separate independent military intelligence service. Unlike countries such as the US or UK, France, Netherlands, the German armed forces, they do have an organization

[00:29:28] responsible for defense intelligence, but it is not an independent intelligence agency. So it's part of the German armed forces. The BND is also tasked with conducting military intelligence, but only on a strategic level. It is not responsible for providing tactical or operational intelligence. Yet those are precisely the types of intelligence that are most important to the military.

[00:29:58] For them, it's more about operational and tactical and not that much about strategic level. So strategic meaning what kinds of submarines is Russia building? What kinds of missiles is North Korea working on? Or the Chinese, what is the structure of the Chinese military? Whatever. This is the task of the BND to analyze that, to gather information intelligence on these things. But for the military, it's more about operational, tactical intelligence.

[00:30:28] Because these informations enable the armed forces to identify, locate, and engage an adversary. Or to put it simply, before you can shoot at something, you need to know what you're shooting at and where you have to shoot to. And there's always been a certain degree of rivalry between the Bundeswehr, our military defense intelligence part or organization and the BND over these responsibilities.

[00:30:58] And that tension is now becoming even more obvious because the proposed new BND Act is intended to strengthen the BND's role in the field of military intelligence. The problem, however, is that the BND is not part of the armed forces, nor is it part of the Ministry of Defense. It reports to the federal chancellery. So the chancellery is a civilian

[00:31:28] government authority. And in that sense, it is, it basically is the, I always call it the chancellor's intelligence service. Within the Bundeswehr, there are many or some people who argue that this arrangement no longer makes any sense. That military intelligence is simply too important. They believe it should be much more closely integrated within the armed forces and allowing the intelligence

[00:31:58] to flow to the military commanders more quickly, more efficiently. And yeah, Germany has created a rather unusual structure when it comes to defense intelligence. One that is often, by the way, difficult for foreign partners to understand. Someone once told me this story about James Clapper and I have to say, I don't know if it's true, but I was told this happened. When James Clapper was the director of national intelligence,

[00:32:27] he visited Germany and on the first day he met the head of the Bundeswehr Defense Intelligence Unit Organization. And this person introduced himself to Clapper by saying, hi, I am the German director of defense intelligence. And the following day, Clapper visited the BND and he met the deputy director introducing himself exactly with the same words. hey, I'm the German director of defense intelligence. And according

[00:32:56] to that story, Clapper looked really buzzed and he replied, I thought I met him yesterday. So it's a very strange, very odd structure that we have there. And it illustrates how unusual this is. And yeah, because we are now all talking about the threat coming from Russia and the possibility of an even bigger, broader war in Europe and the need for an

[00:33:25] effective defense and restructuring of our military. This is why there are some people within the Ministry of Defense pushing the idea, maybe establishing a new intelligence service, a full-out military intelligence service that is part of the armed forces. So this is where the rivalry comes from and this is why people think the structure needs to change. Do you think these reforms are going to smooth out

[00:33:54] those misunderstandings or do you think that still needs to be figured out? That still needs to be figured out and I think this rivalry will continue. The BND has a deputy director especially responsible for defense intelligence. This is a person coming from the military. It's a very high-ranking military official. And there are also within BND about 700 soldiers

[00:34:23] that are working within BND. They basically leave the armed forces then they join the BND and these are the analysts when it comes to the strategic military intelligence stuff. So this is the situation and basically this deputy of the BND he is the head of the military component within BND. But it's still a service connected to

[00:34:53] the chancellery. It is not reporting to the minister of defense which is quite an odd situation thinking about just imagine we are in a war situation tomorrow and the military has to ask the BND for this very important information. So could you tell us where we need to shoot at in Kaliningrad for example? Can you give us targeting information? And the BND first of all it's not able to do that because it lacks

[00:35:23] personnel and lacks authority but it's from a military point of view it is not a situation where you want to go to war with. We mentioned this earlier but Germany spent decades building strong legal safeguards and oversight mechanisms for its intelligence services. Do you think these reforms are going to strengthen democratic oversight weaken it or just simply redesign it for a new era? That's actually quite interesting. I think there is a redesign about to come up

[00:35:52] when it comes to oversight and also legislation restrictions and control. On the one hand the BND is expected to receive broader powers greater operational capabilities and on the other hand the proposed legislation also includes changes to the oversight. For several years now Germany has had a new oversight body known as the

[00:36:22] Unabhängige Kontrollrat or Independent Control Council. This body is responsible for authorizing the BND's technical surveillance measures. It is staffed by independent judges who decide whether the BND may carry out specific surveillance activities. It is a totally independent body. It is an own authority. Then there is a different body called

[00:36:51] the G10 Commission which is responsible for authorizing surveillance measures directed at individuals within Germany or German citizens abroad. This is because German citizens and also foreigners living in Germany are protected by our constitution in a special way. There is this G10 commission and it is composed of basically honorary

[00:37:21] members so they are not paid to do that appointed by the German parliament by the German Bundestag. Many of them used to be judges and they review and approve surveillance measures in accordance with the legal requirements. They give the German intelligence services the authority to wiretap a German national for example or a not in Germany. And this is about to change.

[00:37:52] Highly likely in the next year this G10 commission will cease to exist and what they are doing now will then be done by this independent control council this body independent body and because the constitutional court called for a more professional approach to intelligence surveillance at least when it

[00:38:21] comes to surveillance measures to approval and to review of these things. And so it will strengthen this independent control council the new legislation and there will also be some changes to the whole approach of how much the BND can intercept on these internet exchange points how this data will be approached there will also be a change to that. What's the German public reaction been to this?

[00:38:51] Is this a major national debate or is it still largely confined to politicians journalists lawyers and civil liberty organizations? I would say it's largely confined to journalists politicians and more and more also to these civil liberties organizations but it's German public and I don't know why that is because it's very important I in history after the

[00:39:21] Cold War in Germany that we give such authority to intelligence services it's a major shift but I think there's lots of other things that the public is concerned about there's an economic crisis going on there is a lot of money spent on defense a lot of money is going into the German military so these are the main things that the public is now interested in so there's no huge

[00:39:51] debate about it very interesting to see that even in parliament there are some parties also on the opposition side that they were very outspoken critics of intelligence work and they were calling for politicians are now very much in

[00:40:21] favor of this new BND act and they now 10 years later they are convinced that Germany needs more powerful intelligence services to face the threats that this country faces and also with regards to what is happening in the relationship with the what has been reaction of the more fringe

[00:40:51] political movements in Germany like far left and far right groups they are strong critics of these new approaches of the new authorizations that will be given to the intelligence services on the one hand because it's quite unique you can find that rarely in any other country the

[00:41:21] domestic intelligence service the BFV also monitors parties political parties extremist parties and now we have a very strong party called AfD alternative for Germany and this party the domestic intelligence services is very closely watching this party because of the right wing tendencies in that party and of course members of that

[00:41:51] party they don't really like the BFV and the way that they are monitored and they call it the domestic intelligence service they call it a political tool used by the government to persuade political opponents they even compare it to the stasi back then so they are not really in favor of strengthening the domestic intelligence service and on the other hand you have the

[00:42:21] leftist parties extreme left parties they of course they call for years now they have called to abolish and even get rid of all the intelligence services we don't really need them that's their approach so yeah but there has not been a huge debate also in the political sphere and that's due to the fact

[00:42:52] not much is known about how this all came together and how the government internally worked on this there have been a few media reports about it we were the first to report about on the BND draft back in December but this is also I mean nobody had something in their hands to talk about you know what I mean this is that's probably why there was also a lack of political debate on this

[00:43:22] issue let's take a break and be right back with more so looking beyond Germany do you think these reforms represent Germany becoming more of a conventional intelligence power comparable to MI6 CIA and France DGSE or is Germany creating his own distinct model that we could

[00:43:52] look at and study there are people also leading these agencies and I think they are in favor of creating something similar to MI6 and CIA I truly believe that they think it's about time and it's very necessary to have intelligence services acting in that way but in the end because it's a political process and this law has to go through parliament and there will be I'm

[00:44:22] very sure some people will go all the way to the constitutional court to fight against these intelligence laws so there will be discussions also in the constitutional court about it so in the end it in in in Germany in

[00:44:54] the services themselves if you call them a secret service they would refuse that they would say we are not a secret service what we are we are a intelligence gathering service so they make the distinction and some people say maybe we are turning more and more into like a real secret service like a geheimdienst

[00:45:24] now and becoming a proper spy agency looking ahead what should observers outside Germany watch for over the coming months which parts of legislation are likely to change before becoming law and what will tell us whether this is simply a modernization of the BND or a genuine transformation of German intelligence I think in August and now there is a delay what the government wanted to do is they wanted to present this

[00:45:54] draft to the parliament even before the political summer break that we have in Germany and there is a delay now so it's highly likely that this intelligence legislation draft will be presented to the cabinet in August and then make its way so I guess in September and October of this year we will have a political debate and I guess that some of the

[00:46:25] ideas that the government has presented in that draft will be challenged in the parliament there was a debate within the German government consisting now of they had huge problems accepting for example the authority of breaking into a computer system and spying on

[00:46:55] computer data being done by the domestic intelligence service so for them that was one step too far which is I mean it's very strange if you look at the European intelligence service landscape most other services in Europe are allowed to do that so but yeah the SPD the social democrats they had a problem with that but I think it will go through I think they will also accept in

[00:47:39] how much operational active measures do we really want to have so this wording of kinetic means so does that mean lethal means does that really mean killing people I guess there will also be a debate about that I have no idea what will be the result of it but I think in November and December of this

[00:48:11] about to be authorized by the German parliament and also the constitutional court calls for a new law by 1st of January next year so there has to be a new B&D law by then it's mandatory so before we wrap up today is there anything else that you think is important to our listeners to understand about these reforms or the future of German intelligence I think we talked about the main issues I mean what people outside of Germany

[00:48:41] maybe find interesting is to see that there is a new approach towards intelligence services I think in general within the German public I think that people understand that there is a reason why we need to have intelligence services that they are outspoken critics of intelligence services have now turned into

[00:49:10] fans and people supporting BND and others and that's also yeah I mean without Donald Trump it wouldn't be that way I guess there's on the one hand of course there's the war in Ukraine and the Russian aggression on Europe and about European security and

[00:49:40] strengthening their own services and giving them all the authorities they need to fulfill the tasks and that's mainly due to Trump and this now not so easy relationship with the US what is the mood in Germany about these sort of defense reforms and even relations with the Trump administration I guess we are now at a very critical point because you see there is an economic crisis also hitting Germany which is

[00:50:10] a rich country but Germany is suffering I mean many areas of the German economy are now suffering especially car making and whatever and now more and more it becomes obvious that there is not enough money for social welfare for defense for whatever so you have to set

[00:50:39] priorities and I'm still surprised that people are not really let's say there's no there are no protests on the streets let's say that you know calling for the government just to stop spending on defense but in the end it there's something it's like shifting money from one point to another and we don't have mandatory military service

[00:51:09] it's all on a volunteer base now and the German government believes our government believes that they can fulfill all the requirements and the numbers personnel also NATO requirements just by volunteer force and people voluntarily joining the military and it's not going to work out I guess and I'm wondering when will be the point where the government will decide that we need a military service again in this

[00:51:39] country but there is a new approach to security there's a new way of looking at how to establish security and what European security means and this is intelligence services which have not really been people like to talk about spies of course and also in Germany they like spy movies and

[00:52:09] spy stories and whatever but it's not something it's not a spy service loving country let's say that we don't have James Bonds the intelligence services of the German past they have been the tools of dictatorships and this still clings with it there's still an effect to this sounds like you might need a new movie franchise to change that yeah actually there was a German James Bond back in the

[00:52:40] 1970s he was called Mr. Dynamite and it was the story of a BND officer running around and saving the world from evil and I have to say it the movies were not really successful they need a show like the Bureau probably they need a show yeah there have been some shows recently also there was a German production on Netflix

[00:53:10] featuring a couple former BND officers that are you know featured featured as they have been working in war zones and whatever and now they are approached to do this one last job you know this is what the spy movies are always about and yeah they were also they were even allowed to do some filming at the BND headquarter in Berlin

[00:53:40] and I've heard that the BND the directors of the BND they really like this idea of having this more out in the public in movies and whatever yeah sorry to keep an eye on that yeah they have invited they have invited like YouTube influencer kind of guys coming over to the BND to

[00:54:18] recruiting recruiting people it's all about recruitment because they need staff they need personnel yeah fantastic was there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up today is there anything you're interested in working on at the moment oh we are working on yeah we are working on a story about space about the militarization of space what does space defense space security mean what is Russia doing in space what is China yeah there's been some new

[00:54:48] reports about Russia and China targeting SpaceX satellites or something so it must be here yeah yeah and it's also we also look at the dependencies that we have on space because I think many people don't realize how much we depend on the space and satellite infrastructure and of course when it comes to conflicts and Russia maybe Russia is not one of the greatest space nations anymore but it's for sure it's a counter space nation they know

[00:55:17] how to do countermeasures in space and yeah that's what I'm working on nice nice well we'll share that once it comes out fantastic well where can listeners find out about your reporting and more about you I think it's best to follow me on social media on X or on Blue Sky just type in my name and you will find that and I'm publishing of course also my work and I feature other works of colleagues there and yeah just follow me social media fantastic well thank you

[00:55:47] for joining today Florida it's been really great thanks for the interest

[00:56:17] thanks for listening this is Secrets and Spies