Impetus for the reform of intelligence law in 2024
The ministries involved have agreed on a rough roadmap. However, important decisions have not yet been made and the devil is in the detail. The sometimes very different interests of the players involved are causing tensions. Important reform projects of the traffic light system could be watered down or even bog down.[3] There are also urgent problems to be addressed, the solution to which was not agreed in the coalition agreement.[4]
The upcoming reform offers legislators the opportunity to significantly improve the protection of fundamental and human rights. To achieve this, key requirements of constitutional court and European case law must be implemented in full. Control mechanisms must be strengthened to ensure that the principles of the rule of law are not circumvented in practice.
We want to make a contribution to this with the impulse papers published on this page. We discuss urgent problems and deficits in intelligence service law and current control practices. We also make specific recommendations for the amendment of intelligence law. Our proposals are based on insights we have gained in the course of our multi-year analysis of the practical legal dimensions of state surveillance. Some ideas come from a comparative analysis of the legal frameworks of other democracies and direct exchanges with practitioners of intelligence oversight in Europe and North America.[5]
Our impulse papers
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Informationsbeschaffung mit der Kreditkarte: Wie nachrichtendienstliche Datenkäufe verfassungsrechtliche Mindeststandards unterlaufen (published on May 28, 2024)
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Die Stärkung des Datenschutzbeauftragten als Schlüssel zu einer effektiveren Nachrichtendienstkontrolle (published on March 6, 2024)
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Bedingt kontrollfähig: Warum der Unabhängigke Kontrollrat einer Reform bedarf (published on February 29, 2024)
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Zügellose Überwachung? Defizite der Kontrolle des Militärischen Nachrichtenwesens der Bundeswehr (published on October 17, 2023)
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Mehr Rechtskontrolle wagen. Warum das Mandat des Unabhängigen Kontrollrats erweitert werden sollte (published on May 17, 2023)
[2] BfDI (2023). Stellungnahme zum Entwurf eines Gesetzes zum ersten Teil der Reform des Nachrichtendienstrechts sowie zum Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Änderung des BND-Gesetzes; Bäcker (2023). Verfassungsbeschwerde; Wetzling und Dietrich (2022). Disproportionate use of commercially and publicly available data
[3] Meister (2024). Ampel diskutiert Bruch des Koalitionsvertrags
[4] Ruckerbauer und Wetzling (2023). Zügellose Überwachung? Defizite der Kontrolle des Militärischen Nachrichtenwesens der Bundeswehr