Germany’s defence and security overhaul entered a new phase on Wednesday, with cabinet approval for a bill to significantly expand the powers of national intelligence agencies. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt celebrated the biggest intelligence shake-up since the Second World War as “transforming our intelligence services into genuine secret services”, but opponents see something more sinister behind the reforms.

Viewed in isolation, the argument for beefing up foreign and domestic intelligence branches is compelling. Germany has faced multiple serious attacks in recent weeks alone, notably the Islamist terror attack on Berlin Pride which resulted in one death and 29 injuries last month. Then there was the discovery of an explosive-laden drone at Leipzig airport last week, which US intelligence sources believe was an act of Russian sabotage.

To counter such threats, domestic and foreign intelligence agencies will receive much stronger operational powers, especially in the cyber sphere, as well as enhanced powers to gather and store individuals’ private data, including access to online activity and the ability to conduct home surveillance. By themselves, these new capabilities do not create a modern-day Stasi. Germany’s intelligence agencies have been kept relatively toothless following the horrors of the 20th century. The reforms aim to bring them up to speed for a more dangerous security environment.

Yet Germany’s political context imbues them with another, more disturbing quality. Dobrindt lauded the fact that intelligence services will gain “active powers to tackle modern state terrorism and extremist groups more effectively”. One such “extremist group” is the Right-wing Alternative für Deutschland, Germany’s most popular political party.

The AfD has been under surveillance by intelligence agencies since it was classified as “suspected extremist” back in 2021. A ruling last year that upgraded its nationwide threat category to “confirmed extremist”, thereby enabling significantly heightened surveillance, is under review. The AfD won an injunction in February to keep its classification at “suspected” until this process is complete. The party is, however, still formally classified as “confirmed extremist” in five states — including Saxony-Anhalt, where it leads polls by around 20 points ahead of elections in September.

Intelligence reforms propose a five-year limit on surveillance of “suspected extremist” groups, extendable with Interior Ministry approval. A cynic might wonder whether this clause was added specifically to ward off accusations that new powers could be weaponised against the AfD. Such concerns would be far more satisfactorily assuaged through confidence that the newly empowered agencies, and the Independent Control Council providing legal sign-off on intrusive measures, are truly apolitical.

Sadly, such confidence is near-impossible. The head of the foreign agency, Martin Jäger, is a former member of Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and worked in government posts before moving into foreign affairs. The Turkish-born head of the domestic service, Sinan Selen, personally championed the classification of the AfD as extremist and has condemned the party for its “anti-migrant and anti-Muslim stances”.

AfD hostility to Islam will no doubt remain a matter of interest to domestic intelligence. Foreign services may also find new reasons to blur intelligence surveillance with political monitoring. German commentators see the Russia threat as a key driving force behind the intelligence reforms and the AfD is consistently characterised as a “pro-Russian” Trojan horse.

The AfD rejects the intelligence reforms in their entirety. Party leader Alice Weidel said it was a “bitter irony” that a “Stasi 2.0 looms” just as the country marks the 65th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall, describing the expansion of powers as “an attack on the rule of law”. Yet the reforms have drawn sharp condemnation from the Left, too. The Greens warn that “agents will be able to act against citizens” without transparency, while Die Linke said lack of oversight of the “new secret police” would enable the state to spy on people’s private lives. A recent spate of fines and investigations into citizens guilty of mocking the Chancellor hardly instils confidence in the state’s respect for individual freedoms.

Dobrindt’s response when these concerns were raised on Wednesday was unnerving in its blithe moral certainty. “What do law-abiding citizens have to fear now?” he said. “The answer is: absolutely nothing.”

Uniting the AfD with the Left is no mean feat. Intelligence reforms have, however, provoked deep-seated suspicion of what could be called Germany’s Deep State — the thick web of establishment party interests that permeate every level of public life, including the intelligence services themselves.