2024-07-17 04:24:33
Report on attack plan
Do German intelligence services need more powers?
Updated on 13.07.2024Reading time: 3 min.
Russia is said to have targeted the head of Germany’s largest arms company. There is great outrage, but also concern: German services are said not to have uncovered it.
In view of alleged Russian plans against the Rheinmetall boss, calls for more powers for the German security authorities are growing louder again. Saxony’s Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU) made corresponding demands. Green Party deputy Konstantin von Notz then told the German Press Agency: “The situation is too serious to cook up party-political soup about it.” SPD politician Jens Zimmermann spoke of knee-jerk demands.
According to information from the US broadcaster CNN, American secret services are said to have uncovered the plot against the Rheinmetall boss.
Schuster told the “Bild” newspaper: “I have a massive problem with the fact that we constantly need information from abroad.” The security authorities there have “the tools with which they can gain this information, for which I cannot find a political majority here in Germany.”
North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) told the “Bild” newspaper: “We have to get ahead of the situation, early information is the core of the whole business. Exciting information can no longer be found on the street or by hanging out in a bar, but on the Internet. So you need skills.”
Western intelligence services generally generate a lot of information through joint work, as former high-ranking employee of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and current security expert Gerhard Conrad explained in the ARD “Tagesthemen”. But it is also true that “the German services are much more restrictively regulated in intelligence, telecommunications intelligence and other areas”. They are not allowed to do what other services – especially in the USA – are allowed to do. “You have to consider whether these trade-offs that were made in earlier times are still viable today.”
Schuster: Highly risky to have to rely on foreign countries
From Schuster’s and the Union’s point of view, the following are necessary: data retention, i.e. the storage of location and traffic data from telecommunications without cause in order to have them available for anti-terror investigations if necessary; so-called source telecommunications surveillance (source TKÜ), which takes effect before encryption or after decryption, and online searches. The state minister said: “These are the methods that allow the Americans to give us valuable information. But if we are not allowed to do anything – I think it is extremely risky to have to rely on information from abroad again and again.” Data retention has long been controversial.
According to CNN, US intelligence services uncovered plans by the Russian government to assassinate the CEO of the largest German arms company Rheinmetall, Armin Papperger, at the beginning of the year. The German side was then informed and the 61-year-old was subsequently given special protection. Rheinmetall is one of the largest European suppliers of tank technology and artillery shells for Ukraine. In June, the company opened a repair shop for infantry fighting vehicles in western Ukraine. The production of new tanks is also planned.
The Kremlin denied any alleged attack plans. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) said that they would not comment on “individual threats”. “But one thing is clear: we are taking the significantly increased threat posed by Russian aggression very seriously.”
FDP interior politician Manuel Höferlin told the dpa: “The reflexive call for old and unsuitable surveillance instruments such as data retention does not help if you want to strengthen security. The case of the attack plans on the Rheinmetall boss in particular shows that other and more targeted findings are necessary than the indiscriminate storage of all login data of everyone in Germany.” Rather, the case shows how important and valuable the cooperation of intelligence services is. “Both we and the other countries benefit from it.”
Green Party deputy leader von Notz said that the traffic light coalition is currently working on a comprehensive reform of the law governing intelligence services. SPD politician Zimmermann also pointed this out. The Union should also take note that the Federal Constitutional Court has set clear limits for the work of the intelligence services, he told the dpa. All relevant departments of the federal government, from the Chancellery to the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defense, were run by the CDU and CSU for 16 years, and they therefore bear a large share of the responsibility for the current state of counter-espionage.
Von Notz said that the blanket statement that there are stricter restrictions in Germany than in other constitutional states is misleading because the legal situation and the highest court rulings are much more differentiated. “It is true, however, that a country like the USA spends many times more money than Germany invests in this area. For this reason, we are calling for a special fund for internal and external security.”