The creepy powers given to German spies

Germany's domestic intelligence service has much more wide-sweeping powers than those of other western spy services.

Photo by Isai Ramos on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

How far is a spy service allowed to go to protect the democracy it serves? When does its role tip from being one that protects the state’s citizens to one that sees citizens as threats?

This is a fundamental question for any functioning democracy. In a state with a restrained spy service, people don’t worry about what they say and where they say it. In a state with an unchained secret police, citizens are constantly looking over their shoulders.

The world is full of examples of the latter. 

On paper, the feared mukhabarat of the Arab world are there to protect people from Zionist infiltration; in reality, their role is to mercilessly quash any hint of opposition to the regime. East Germany was another paper democracy backed up by a powerful spy service, the Stasi, whose role was to root out and silence dissent.

On the other hand, a marker of liberal democracies is the strict limitations that are imposed on domestic intelligence services.

In the UK…