German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/93, pp. 11497-11498.
Frau President. Herr Minister. Valued colleagues.
In the year 2016 - ten years ago - the addition in the Federal budget for the
Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution amounted to some 260 million
euros. Since then, the Constitution Protection clearly receives almost every year
a growth of means. In the year 2025, the means already amounted to 577 million
euros. In the present budget for the year 2026 we have reached 690 million euros.
In the budget plan for the year 2027, it is as per the government draft 860 million
euros, again an increase of some 25 percent in comparison to the previous year.
What have the taxpayers received for that as a return? Since the CDU-led Federal
government under Merkel opened the borders, numerous Islamist terror attacks
have been thwarted. Some unfortunately could not be prevented. In nearly all
thwarted cases, if not even in every, single case, the decisive evidence came
from secret services of our foreign partners. The Federal Office for Protection of
the Constitution is blind.
Why is that so? For one, the Federal Intelligence Service and the Federal Office
for Protection of the Constitution [VS] lack authority and, for another, the
German secret service for years is misused for criminalizing unfavored opinions
of citizens and the opposition. A unique proceeding among democratic states!
The Federal government now wants to work on the problem of the absent
authority, yet with its planned reforms clearly goes too far. For Interior Minister
Dobrindt has overtaken from his predecessor the partisan political narrative that
the greatest danger proceeds from the extreme right.
Instead of, at enormous expense, gathering crimes of opinion and construing an
unconstitutionality beneath the threshold of criminal culpability, the VS should
apply itself to the actual threats to our free, democratic basic order. Those are
espionage, terrorism and violence-prone extremism.
The Constitution Protection shall however in the future not only observe,
evaluate and report, but itself covertly intervene in the reality. Among other
things are foreseen the access to private IT systems, entrances of domestic
dwellings, interventions in data connections, as well as the deletion or
falsification of stored information. Those affected, under circumstances, could
never come to know of such measures.
Especially alarming is the planned possibility of recruiting of 16 and 17 year olds
as confidantes. Minors would thereby be made paid informers of a domestic
secret service. This is no harmless instrument of inquiry, ladies and gentlemen,
but an attack on trust, family, school and social cohesion. A state, Herr Minister,
which makes spies of minors tends not to freedom but to denunciation.
Still more heavily weighs that the Constitution Protection's draft shall enable
diverting or altering data streams, providing false information and deleting or
falsifying stored data. The secret service thereby from observer becomes actor.
And the control is not convincing. An independent control council is indeed
foreseen. In urgent cases the authorities' administration shall nevertheless be able
to immediately carry out measures. The control then follows subsequently, while
a report on the Mebrofenin [radioactive tracer] can be permanently omitted. The
control board in addition shall be elected by the parliamentary control board on
which the largest opposition delegation, the AFD delegation, is denied a seat on
partisan political grounds, even though it is legally entitled [rechtlich zusteht].
Konstantin von Notz (Green): You will not be elected! In a
democracy elected! You are entitled to absolutely nothing!
[Ihnen steht gar nichts zu!]
The obviously partisan political misuse of the Constitution Protection now certainly
becomes public when party politicians of all colors strike an alarm shortly before
a possible AfD-led State government. The State Office for Protection of the
Constitution may in the end be accountable to an AfD interior minister. Hear, hear!
Involuntarily comic and self-revealing!
The chief of the Thüringen Constitution Protection Office and SPD member
Stephen Kramer wants in the future to withhold from the Sachsen-Anhalt
colleagues, for example, information from the Constitution Protection association,
and have specific agents and sources withdrawn and overtaken by other authorities.
Many citizens may ask themselves in regards such plans what then is actually sought
to be hidden with such measures.
Ladies and gentlemen, the AfD stands for a domestic secret service which occupies
itself with the actual threats.
Sebastian Fiedler (SPD): Say for once something on Russia! I'm
listening! What do we do with Russia?
Those are terrorism, espionage and violence-prone extremism. Here, we extend the
hand, Herr Minister.
Many thanks and Glück auf!
[trans: tem]
