Germany's Bundestag on Friday, November 13, approved a major overhaul of the country's intelligence laws, granting the foreign and domestic spy services broader powers to combat espionage, terrorism and sabotage, in what reports described as the most substantial revision of the legal framework in decades.
Source: DW reporting via Kobaran, Nov 13, 2026
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, who championed the legislation, described it as a “reform of the century.” “We are the target of hybrid threats,” he said, adding that “Germany is a theater of operations for terrorism, extremism and foreign powers.” LaPresse reported Dobrindt also called the reform a “historic turning point” and said it serves to protect democracy.
Source: LaPresse, Nov 13, 2026
What the BND can now do abroad
The changes affect two agencies: the BND, Germany's federal intelligence service responsible for foreign intelligence, and the BfV, the domestic Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. For historical reasons, German intelligence has mainly concentrated on gathering information rather than acting on it; the new law moves both services toward operational measures. Under the legislation, BND agents will be able to conduct covert operations abroad, including sabotage — the government describes the range as including paralysing the servers of state-sponsored hacker groups, disrupting disinformation networks or interfering with supply chains for weapons.
Source: DW reporting via Kobaran, Nov 13, 2026
What the BfV can now do at home
For the domestic BfV, agents will no longer be limited to collecting information. For the first time they will be permitted to take protective action against property and IT systems when specific threats are identified — including dismantling explosives or weapons, diverting or blocking data flows during cyberattacks, and deleting or falsifying data stored for malicious purposes. BfV agents will also be allowed to enter homes covertly under certain conditions, provided the measure is authorised in advance, and gain wider digital surveillance powers including monitoring encrypted telecommunications, AI-supported data analysis and biometric image matching. Open arrests and searches remain the responsibility of the police, LaPresse reported, and a body of former judges must verify the legality of certain measures in advance.
Source: LaPresse, Nov 13, 2026
Why Berlin says the change was needed
The government says the reform responds to an increase in foreign espionage, particularly from Russia, China and Iran, and aims to reduce Germany's dependence on intelligence provided by allied services. Officials point to a series of incidents, including a drone carrying an explosive device discovered in August at Leipzig Airport close to Ukrainian cargo planes; the device failed to explode, apparently because its detonator was faulty, and German authorities say Russia was behind the incident — an attribution reported by DW's coverage and not independently verified here.
Source: DW reporting via Kobaran, Nov 13, 2026
Opposition warns of a ‘secret police’; government rejects the charge
The law drew bitter criticism from opposition politicians. Clara Bünger, security spokeswoman for the Left Party, told public broadcaster ARD that Dobrindt was creating a new German secret police and called the law “a monster… summoning ghosts that we will probably never be able to get rid of,” warning that the separation between police and secret service — a principle she described as a lesson learned from the Nazi era — was “being eroded.” Dobrindt rejected that characterisation, saying it is “madness” to think the law creates a new secret police. Sonja Eichwede of the governing Social Democrats defended the reforms, saying they would make a significant contribution to ensuring the country's democracy was “robust and resilient.”
Source: DW reporting via Kobaran, Nov 13, 2026
What happens next: the bill returns to the Bundesrat, the upper house, which commented on the draft in September, and critics are expected to challenge the law at the Federal Constitutional Court, according to reporting on the vote. The fight over how far the new powers may be used — and how the advance judicial oversight will work in practice — is therefore not over with Friday's vote.