BERLIN, Feb 13 - Germany should beef up its intelligence services and allow them more freedom to act in the face of a range of hybrid threats from Russia, the head of the country's foreign intelligence service said on Friday. Read more at straitstimes.com. Read more at straitstimes.com.
I agree with the sentiment but this isn‘t really how the BND works. It‘s more like the German NSA. They have barely any real executive power and rely on other institutions or even nations to act on the information they gather. Secret services in countries like the USA, UK or even France have much greater executive powers such as a license to kill.
I see the actual Police, their powers and use of surveillance systems like Palantyr as much more problematic, personally. Or the fact that we have a de facto illegal right radical party sitting in the parliament and other parties don‘t even think about applying mechanisms to protect our democracy and freedoms from them. It looks like our secret services in Germany are at least doing their job. I wish I could say the same about politicians.