After a heated parliamentary debate, Germany’s federal Bundestag has passed a landmark intelligence reform law that bestows sweeping new operational and surveillance authorities on the nation’s two core intelligence bodies: the foreign-focused BND (Federal Intelligence Service) and the domestic BfV (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution). The final vote saw 309 lawmakers support the legislation, 190 reject it, and 71 choose to abstain. Championed by Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, who has framed the package as a “reform of the century”, the policy update is positioned by the federal government as a critical response to surging hybrid threats targeting German territory, including rising espionage activity attributed to Russia, China, and Iran, alongside persistent risks of terrorism, sabotage, and foreign-backed disinformation campaigns. For decades, strict historical guardrails shaped by the legacy of Nazi-era secret police abuses constrained German intelligence agencies to a primarily information-gathering mandate, with no authority to carry out active disruptive operations. That framework is now set to be rewritten: BND operatives posted abroad will for the first time be legally permitted to run covert foreign missions, including targeted sabotage actions that could range from disabling servers belonging to state-sponsored hacker groups, dismantling foreign disinformation networks, to interrupting weapons supply chains that pose a direct threat to German national security. Parallel new authorities apply to the domestic BfV, which can now take proactive protective action against high-risk physical assets and digital systems when a concrete, verified threat is identified. Permitted actions for BfV agents include defusing hidden explosives, blocking malicious data flows during active cyberattacks, erasing or altering data stored for terrorist or sabotage purposes, and planting disinformation to disrupt hostile plots. Under strict pre-authorisation from independent judicial bodies, BfV personnel may also conduct covert residential entries to disrupt imminent threats. The agencies also gain expanded digital surveillance tools, including the ability to monitor encrypted communications, run targeted remote online searches, deploy AI-powered large-scale data analysis, and carry out biometric facial matching across public online platforms. The reform has sparked fierce pushback from opposition lawmakers, most notably Clara Bünger, security policy spokesperson for the Left Party. Bünger has denounced the law as an unprecedented power grab that effectively creates a new unaccountable German secret police, warning that it erodes the long-standing legal separation between intelligence agencies and regular law enforcement – a core safeguard established to prevent the return of authoritarian abuses from the Nazi and East German Stasi eras. She described the final legislation as a “monster” that “summons ghosts we will likely never be able to banish”. Dobrindt has dismissed such criticisms as unfounded, calling suggestions that the law creates a rogue secret service “utter madness”, while centre-left SPD lawmaker Sonja Eichwede argued the new powers are essential to make Germany’s democratic institutions robust and resilient against evolving 21st century threats. The push for the reform gained additional public urgency after a failed explosive-laden drone attack targeting Ukrainian cargo planes at Leipzig Airport last August, which German federal investigators have publicly attributed to Russian state operatives.