Are we allowed to spy?

Many people in Germany have never heard of a service called the Independent Supervisor Council ( U n K-Rat Unabhängigge Controls. No wonder, for this service was established only about a year ago, although its powers are big enough and secret.

While the practice of systematic monitoring electronic communications is widespread among Germany's allies in the West and then has a particular interest in the communication of suspicious people, and perhaps even foreign services, it seems that Germany is constantly going in the other direction.

In May 2020, Germany's Constitutional Court ruled that the German secret service BND cannot wire and monitor the electronic communications of a person “for no justified reason”. But it's important to note that this is not about an ordinary “investigation of police”, in the case of a possible criminal offence. In these cases it's all clear and in that case permission is granted by the competent court. But who can decide whether a wiretap action is “or not to replace “ (1)x5>?

That is precisely why the German government decided to establish the Independent Supervisor Council, which, like a court, would decide on a special request in cases where German intelligence officials cannot simply go to court, in cases of someone allegedly working for any service or state.

Multiple Permissions

The council began its work in January last year and is now preparing to move to the former Interior Ministry building in Berlin. But a year later, the Council also drafted a report on the work of the Bundestag Parliamentary Supervision Commission. WDR reporters learned about the most important details from those sixty pages of the report.

What surprised them was that virtually all surveillance was allowed, from reading electronic communications to entering the cell phones of suspicious people. But a request seems to have caused problems: When German intelligence officials wanted to take a closer look at the communications of a company suspected of having links to spying. The council in this case kindly recommended that, under German laws, this was not possible to monitor certain persons, but not the entire company. That's why the law needs to be changed...

Required Explains

No doubt, German intelligence officials and allies will likely laugh at how many demands he made BND to spy on someone: 121 for the entire year in Germany. But Allies may not be pleased to see that the BND also reported on activities with so-called “selection” so with selected channels of communication that Allies use, such as, US NSA or British GCHQ.

Following the Constitutional Court's decision, in the ranks of the BND, there has been no less uncertainty, because it was not clearly known how to work on such cases. However, this report explicitly praises <x0-competitive” and “co-operation” The BND with this Council. But German journalists discover there are more problems here than talk and there are complaints about the current situation. /dw

Got it.