German parliament passes law giving spy agencies hacking, sabotage powers

Germany’s Bundestag has passed the biggest overhaul of the country’s spy laws in the postwar era, voting 308 to 190 to let the BND foreign intelligence service hack foreign systems, sabotage adversaries' supply chains and take down servers run by hostile state hackers, rather than only reporting on threats. The law also gives the BND and the domestic BfV a legal basis for AI analysis of large datasets and biometric image matching, bars measures intended to endanger life, and requires advance approval from an expanded Independent Control Council for operations inside Germany.