Germany to Empower Its Secret Service

Germany’s intelligence services are regaining capabilities they lost after World War ii. The German cabinet agreed on a 700-plus-page package of laws today that empowers Germany’s foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, the bnd and BfV.

Independence: Since World War ii, Germany has relied on the support of allied foreign intelligence services. These new laws, once approved by the legislature, will enable its agencies to conduct acts of sabotage and hacking attacks abroad and increase surveillance of German citizens.

• The bnd would be able to manipulate computer networks of a foreign power during an ongoing cyberattack or disinformation attack on Germany.
• The bnd and BfV would also be authorized to access devices and retrieve data, and enhance interception of encrypted communications.

The aim is “to be able to act actively against our adversaries,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said today.

Opposition parties in the Bundestag are furious.

• Konstantin von Notz, deputy chair of the Parliamentary Oversight Committee, told ard’s Morgenmagazin: “In the future, agents will also be able to take action against citizens—without this being transparent and subject to review under the rule of law, as is the case with the police.”

After World War ii, the Allies enforced a strict separation between Germany’s police and intelligence agencies, which had brutally silenced dissent during the war. The new laws are a step toward enabling this to resume.

Ulrich Thoden, defense policy spokesperson for the Left Party, told Morgenmagazin: “That is precisely a bitter lesson from our history—especially from the Gestapo—that we had to learn and that the Allies drove home to us.”

Germany has never overcome its Nazi past. Former Nazis, such as Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, created Germany’s postwar spy network and other powerful agencies. (Read “Germany’s Secret Service Scandal” for more information.)

Most people are unconcerned about Germany’s past. But Bible prophecy warns that the nation will soon brutally suppress dissidents at home (Revelation 13) and strike unsuspecting targets abroad (Ezekiel 7:14). Empowering Germany’s secret service capabilities could play a major role in the fulfillment of these prophecies.

This is part of the prophesied resurrection of the beast of Revelation.