"Warning: the state reads over your shoulder" - a protest in front of BND HQ. Demotix/Florian Boillot. All rights reserved.
In April 2015, the debate around the close collaboration between the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the US National Security Agency (NSA) reached a new dimension. First, the members of the G10 Commission, a body charged with reviewing and authorizing governmental activities that breach the privacy of correspondence and telecommunications, publicly complained that they felt deceived by the Chancellery. Second, the head of the Chancellery Peter Altmaier notified the Parliamentary Control Panel that the BND might had helped the NSA for years in spying on German and European companies and individuals. Meanwhile, the operator of the Internet exchange point DE-CIX in Frankfurt had announced his intention to take the BND to the Federal Administrative Court over its large-scale spying on foreign Internet users.
The federal government can no longer ignore what experts have known for a long time now: the supervision and control of the federal intelligence service is in dire need of reform. Not only is parliamentarian control in need of further development. The court-like control of the G10 Commission and the supervision in the BND as well as in the Chancellery are equally underwhelming at present. What is necessary is an extensive reform of secret service management in Germany.
