前西德前总理海尔穆特·施密特曾打趣说，不如看报纸也不听联邦情报局（BND），反映出该机构长期被边缘化。正在推进的修法被称为“ Zeitenwende（转折点）”，呼应奥拉夫·朔尔茨在2022年把德国军费战略上调后的表述，并有望突破长期受1990年《BND法》数据保护导向框架和法院、监督以及隐私限制制约的现状。
修法初稿显示，新法可能赋予进攻性行动权，包括网络“反击式黑客”行动和对私营科技公司渗透，扩大全国性互联网交换点（如法兰克福的DE-CIX）数据获取、延长存储期限，并允许读取消息内容而非仅元数据；还可能设立“特殊情报形势”机制，在该机制下可在战前提前扩展权力。财政层面上，去年起情报机构获准不受“债务刹车”约束，今年BND预算上调25%至15亿欧元，用于增强人工智能与卫星侦察，以支撑其到2029年将国防支出提高到GDP的3.5%目标。
改革动因既有威胁压力，也有战略考量：俄罗斯主导的混合型威胁正在上升，而对美国情报依赖的脆弱性在美国去年对乌克兰支持一度受限后被放大。障碍仍在，包括国防部可能不愿承认BND为正式军事情报机构、执政联盟中由执掌司法部的社会民主党可能收紧部分野心措施，以及德国宪法法院在2020年裁决后持续强化隐私审查的法律挑战风险，促使新法必须更高抗辩性。
Former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt once joked he might as well read a newspaper than listen to the BND, reflecting how long the agency was sidelined despite being Germany’s foreign-intelligence service. A pending amendment now called a *Zeitenwende*—echoing Olaf Scholz’s 2022 defense-turn—signals Germany’s first major intelligence reset after decades shaped by the 1990 BND Act’s data-protection-heavy framework, strict oversight, court rulings, and operational constraints.
Early draft proposals would allow offensive operations, including cyber “hack-back” actions and covert access to private technology firms, broader acquisition from major internet exchanges such as DE-CIX, longer retention periods, and access to message content rather than only metadata; they also contemplate a “special intelligence situation” trigger for pre-war power expansion. Financially, intelligence agencies were exempt from the debt brake starting last year, and the BND budget rose 25% to €1.5 billion this year, with a major share aimed at AI and satellite reconnaissance to support the target of 3.5% of GDP in defense spending by 2029.
The logic is both threat-based and strategic: hybrid pressure from Russia is rising, and dependence on U.S. intelligence appears riskier after Washington’s partial intelligence shutdown to Ukraine. Hurdles remain, including defense ministry resistance to formally designating the BND as the military-intelligence pillar, coalition friction with the SPD-run justice ministry over more ambitious provisions, and continued constitutional-court privacy scrutiny after the 2020 ruling, making legal resilience the central test of the reform’s durability.
Source: A revolution is coming for Germany’s intelligence services
Subtitle: Derided at home and abroad, Germany’s spooks are about to get sweeping new powers
Dateline: 4月 02, 2026 12:30 上午 | BERLIN