BERLIN (AA) - Journalists and human rights activists announced on Thursday that they have filed a constitutional complaint against the global surveillance practices of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND.
“The mass surveillance and unrestricted expansion of the powers of the intelligence services must be stopped. So far, the German lawmakers have failed to do this,” Christian Mihr, director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Germany, said.
"Under the guise of strategic information gathering abroad, the BND can now use extensive surveillance means, tools that are tailored to individuals, such as the state trojan software, without any significant legal restrictions,” said Bijan Moini from the Berlin-based Society for Civil Rights (GFF).
Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service Act, which gave broad powers to the BND, was declared partly unconstitutional by the country’s top court in 2020, after the RSF lodged a constitutional complaint.
Despite a revision of the law in spring 2021, experts stress that journalists and non-EU citizens are still inadequately protected from mass surveillance of global communications by the BND.
According to the experts, while legal provisions are protecting German citizens from global surveillance, their data can also be collected by the BND, as the law gives the agency the power to track "machine-to-machine" communication.
“This monitoring of traffic data between devices and services in processes such as online banking, hotel bookings or navigation is not subject to any prerequisites, which means that this data can also be collected from Germans, and provide insights into numerous areas of their lives and social behaviour,” the experts of RSF and GFF said.
“In this way, EU institutions and EU citizens can also be monitored by the BND almost without restrictions. And for the purpose of the early detection of threats, this surveillance can even be indefinite,” the experts warned.