Missing Link: We are looking for terrorists (m/f/d)
BKA and BND celebrate anniversaries, demanding far-reaching new powers for the digital world for their birthdays.
In recent days, two major German authorities celebrated their birthdays. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA, 9300 employees, budget 1.24 billion) celebrated its 75th birthday in Wiesbaden in the presence of politicians. The Federal Intelligence Service (BND, 6500 employees, budget 1.5 billion) celebrated its 70th birthday in a smaller setting. If we include the precursor to our foreign intelligence service, the US-controlled “Organization Gehlen”, both are approximately the same age.
Another commonality stems from the BND's current advertising campaign (“We are looking for terrorists (m/f/d)”), which needs to fill around 1100 open positions. And: both authorities want and should receive expanded powers.
SS service ranks preferred
On March 15, 1951, the cross-state Federal Criminal Police Office was founded with the first BKA law. The legal provision was necessary because, based on the experiences of National Socialism, there was to be no centrally managed police force. Alongside the state criminal police offices, a coordination center was established, initially located in Hamburg and then moved to Wiesbaden into a former youth hostel. An external office was set up in Bad Godesberg and was responsible for personal protection of constitutional bodies.
With 355 officers, the BKA quickly began its coordination mandate. As early as June 1952, Interpol membership was completed and the BKA was established as the National Central Bureau. In 1953, the first new building was completed.
The BKA was significantly built up by former SS member Paul Dickkopf, head of the Interpol liaison office. He ensured that leading positions were filled by individuals who held an SS service rank. Dickkopf modeled the organizational structure and departmental work instructions after the Reich Criminal Police Office.
This continuity was not unique to the BKA but also applied to the BND, though this was suppressed for a long time. It was only with the book by criminologist Dieter Schenk, “Blind on the Right Eye. The Brown Roots of the BKA,” that the processing of the NS past of BKA officials began. In 2007, this culminated in the establishment of a research group by then-BKA President Jörg Ziercke, which investigated the numerous discrepancies, for example, in the forensic examination of war crimes. The tasks were delayed until there was nothing left to investigate.
Searching with a computer
As early as 1951, an article in “Kriminalistik” appeared about “Mechanized Crime Fighting” upon the establishment of the Federal Criminal Police Office, in which the author raved about a punch card system as a search method. However, after the Third Reich's experiences with the punch card-controlled “Population Counting, Identification, and Sorting” (Götz Aly), the young Federal Republic only had decentralized reporting systems. It wasn't until 1967 that the State Criminal Police Office of Schleswig-Holstein introduced computerized searching with an IBM /360-40 and a personnel information file. Teleprinters in selected police stations served as terminals.
The decisive change occurred in the early 1970s when the BKA, with a new BKA law, received its own search powers for the first time. In 1972, the first search system INPOL was launched, which was only shut down in 2003 and replaced by INPOL-Neu. This system was followed by a system called PIOS (Persons, Institutions, Objects, Things).
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The BKA became known to the general public through “Commissioner Computer,” as BKA official Horst Herold was called. Herold sat on a commission to reform the BKA from 1969 onwards and dealt with the PIOS search databases. When the Red Army Fraction was founded in 1970, he took over the leadership of the BKA and tried to find its members using negative grid searching. The system failed in the search for the RAF hostage Hanns-Martin Schleyer because a crucial message from a police officer about a clandestine apartment in Erftstadt-Liblar was not entered into the system. Herold was retired by Interior Minister Gerhart Baum.
Meanwhile, the BKA has numerous search information systems, of which the “Police 2020” architecture is the most ambitious. It was supposed to be realized by 2020, is now on its way to perhaps starting in 2030, and is steadily progressing under the new name P20, as it is said. At least the work keeps IT crime investigators busy enough that the BKA is not considering using software from the US company Palantir, which is used by the state police forces in Hesse and Bavaria.
Praise from the Chancellor
On March 12, a ceremony was held in Wiesbaden for the 75th birthday. In his speech to BKA officials and invited guests, Chancellor Friedrich Merz emphasized that Germany is a safe country – and pledged his full support to the BKA in establishing new, expanded powers. In addition to protection against increasing cyberattacks, the BKA and other security authorities must have the powers to “actively prevent” cyberattacks. With this, Merz alluded to the Cybersecurity Strengthening Act, which allows the BKA to disrupt or damage hostile infrastructure.
Furthermore, Merz alluded to the case of Daniela Klette, who was unmasked by a journalist using a facial recognition program. “Therefore, it is clear to us: our police authorities need powers for very specific purposes to conduct automated, AI-based data analyses. This must not be based on random findings by journalists, but must be the result of systematic police work in Germany,” he said to great applause. Preparations for a corresponding law are already underway.
Foreign intelligence service with domestic powers
The Federal Intelligence Service also wants operational powers of this kind. The time is favorable, as the legislature must revise the BND Act by the end of 2026, following a decision by the Federal Constitutional Court. The traffic light coalition was already working on it before it was extinguished. In a draft law that became known at the beginning of the year, a clause on active cyber espionage is included, which would allow the authority to penetrate platforms like those of Google and Meta Platforms and secretly extract information. “This would transform the BND from an intelligence service that purely collects and analyzes information into a secret service that could also carry out actions such as sabotage itself,” wrote the taz about the reform of the intelligence service under the title “A Bit of James Bond.”
It is also intended to be a bit like the NSA, as the BND plans to convert its encryption division in Bonn-Mehlem into a Crypto-Cyber-Technology Center (KCT), a mini-NSA, in direct competition with the decryption specialists ZITIS. With AI and quantum computing, spies & spies will get a new arsenal of tools for tricking, deceiving, and acquiring information.
Data extraction at the Frankfurt Internet Exchange Point DE-CIX is to be extended, and direct searching in metadata will be enabled. In the wake of the Snowden revelations, details about the cooperation between the BND and the NSA became known. The BND intends to handle the work with its own selectors (search criteria) itself.
Further points of the reform: The BND is also to investigate domestically and spy on foreign diplomats, as well as journalists from authoritarian states. Here, it is simply assumed that such journalists are being harassed by their state, thus effectively being agents.
On the other hand, control over the BND is weakened; instead of the parliamentary G10 Commission, the National Control Council, founded in 2022 and composed of former judges, is to be responsible. The argument of the Chancellery, which is responsible for the BND, that control is strengthened through this body is bizarre. Because experts who dealt with the subject were sent to the G10 Commission by the parties. This is not necessarily true for the lawyers appointed by the Chancellery: the BND isolates itself.
This is also shown by the defeat recently suffered by the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information. The failure of a request for information by a journalist about the BND's negative assessment of the Ukraine war also points in this direction.
As is well known, the BND is currently led by diplomat Martin Jäger, formerly ambassador to Ukraine, before that to Kabul and Baghdad, and previously press spokesman for Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. At the Munich Security Conference, he was combative, emphasizing that sabotage actions by the opposing side must lead to actions that also make the opposing side “feel the pain.” He told the parliamentary control committee that his service would “take on higher risks in a targeted and consistent manner.” His predecessor Bruno Kahl was sent as ambassador to the Vatican.
Under Kahl's leadership, BND agents judged in early 2022 that Russian troops at the border with Ukraine were conducting exercises but would not launch an attack on the neighboring country. Kahl himself was in Ukraine with a BND delegation when the country was invaded by Russia. He had to be evacuated to safety by a hastily assembled vehicle convoy.
Flops and Tops
With a similarly incorrect situational assessment, the future German intelligence service faltered in 1953, when it was surprised by the popular uprising and the construction of the Wall. “As documents show, the 'Organization Gehlen' had an almost comprehensive agent network in the GDR, which, however, delivered almost exclusively military information,” according to this documentation published by the BND itself (PDF file).
The origin story of the “Organization Gehlen,” which half-jokingly referred to itself as the “last active unit of the German Wehrmacht” until the 1960s, is described here; on the occasion of its 60th birthday celebrations, Chancellor Angela Merkel emphasized cooperation with foreign intelligence services. In light of newer historical research (PDF file), the impression often created by Gehlen, that the organization came into being solely thanks to his organizational talent and eventually led to the takeover of the unit as the Federal Intelligence Service, must be revised.
In light of the Iran war currently instigated by the USA, the Federal Intelligence Service's greatest success must be acknowledged on its birthday: In 1970, the German service, together with the CIA, took over Crypto AG, based in Switzerland and owned by Swede Boris Hagelin. The operation, under the later codename Operation Rubikon, led to the delivery of modified encryption devices that allowed both services to read along. They were then used in about 170 countries.
The operation was exposed when Iran became suspicious in 1992 and arrested a Crypto AG employee who was not privy to this type of espionage. He had to be bought out by the BND. The Federal Intelligence Service then withdrew from Crypto AG, while the CIA continued to exploit the vulnerability for a while longer.
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