Germany Approves Intelligence Reforms As Drone Threats And Security Risks Grow

Germany's domestic and foreign intelligence services to get greater powers to deal with hybrid threats. Meanwhile, transport ministers are meeting to find solutions to increasingly low river levels.

Germany’s Cabinet backs wider intelligence powers amid rising drone incidents and growing hybrid security threats.

Source : DW

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Key points generated by AI, verified by newsroom

• Military reported increased drone overflights of sensitive sites.

• Cabinet has approved reforms to the foreign and domestic intelligence agencies amid rising hybrid threats
• Transport ministers are set to discuss possible measures as river cargo shipping is hampered by low water levels
• The military has reported a large increase in drone overflights of sensitive sites in recent years

Rights group files criminal complaint over Mega's AI glasses

A German digital rights group, HateAid, has lodged a criminal complaint against Meta and companies that sell Meta's "smart" glasses in Germany.

HateAid said in a statement that putting the glasses — which can record audio and video — on the market broke digital privacy laws.

"There's no place to escape from smart glasses. You have to expect ​at ‌any moment to be filmed and then exposed on the Internet," said HateAid managing director Josephine Ballon.

The group said its complaint was based on a federal digital data protection law banning the sale of communication devices that can film people without their being aware of it.

Germany's digital communications ⁠regulator, ​the Federal Network Agency, issued a statement on smart ​glasses in late 2023, saying that connected devices for covert audio or video recordings were banned.

The glasses have earned the online sobriquet of "pervert glasses," with many fearing they could be used to take video particularly of unsuspecting women or children that is then turned into content of a sexual or hateful nature on the Internet.

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Inflation rises to 2.8% as energy prices jump

Germany's inflation rate rose to 2.8% in July, a rise caused mainly by an increase in energy prices after a fuel tax relief scheme expired, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) confirmed on Wednesday.

The figure is up 5 percentage points on the inflation rate in June.

"Energy prices continued to rise at an above-average rate and thus remained the central driver of inflation," said Destatis head Ruth Brand.

In July, consumers paid 8.3% more for fuel and heating than a year earlier, compared with an increase of just 3.4% in June.

In May and June, the government had cut energy taxes on petrol and diesel by just under €0.17 ($0.20) per liter as the US war with Iran drove oil prices up.

With the scheme expired, gasoline now costs more than €2 (2.31) a liter in most places.

The oil price shock was the key driver in pushing the April inflation rate to 2.9%, the highest since January 2024.

Food prices, for their part, have seen only moderate rises over the past months. In July, they were 0.4% above the same month a year earlier, matching the two preceding months.

Economists say, however, that food prices are likely to rise more sharply as the high energy prices make transport, refrigeration and storage are all currently more expensive.

Heat and drought are also negatively impacting agriculture and could reduce harvests.

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No accompanied drinking for 14-year-olds, Cabinet decides

The German Cabinet also on Wednesday approved a draft bill abolishing a previous law allowing 14- and 15-year-olds to buy and drink beer, wine or sparkling wine when accompanied by their parents or guardians.

According to the bill, the current exception to the general ban on under 16-year-olds drinking any form of alcohol "weakens the protection of young people from the considerable health and social consequences of alcohol consumption."

In Germany, under 14-year-olds are currently not allowed to buy or drink alcohol in any form, while 14-15-year olds are permitted to purchase and drink undistilled alcohol in public places in the company of their parents or legal guardians.

From the age of 16, people are permitted to buy and consume undistilled alchohol without accompaniment, while those aged 18 and over, as legal adults, can buy and consume all alcoholic beverages.

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Cabinet approves child pension subsidy

Among the draft bills approved by the Cabinet on Wednesday is a plan for children from the age of 6 to receive €10 ($11.54) from the state every month for a pension deposit .

Under the plan, the child's parents or carers would open the account and be able to deposit money there themselves as well.

The state payments would continue until the child turns 18.

Pension payments from the account would flow only after the now-adult turns 65.

According to the Finance Ministry, the state subsidies would amount to around €2,200, which "could become around €53,000 by pensionable age without any additional payments."

With the plan, the government aims not only to guarantee better financial security in old age for the younger generation but also to educate it in financial matters.

"Someone who experiences the capital market already at a young age and has positive experiences with it develops an understanding of long-term investment and will tend to invest in the capital market during his or her life," the Finance Ministry said.

The bill still needs approval by both chambers of parliament to go into force.

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Cabinet passes controversial intelligence agency reform

The German Cabinet has approve a more than 700-page package of laws granting much greater powers to both the domestic intelligence agency (BfV) and the foreign intelligence agency (BND).

The package will allow the agencies more latitude in the gathering and storage of information and data, along with new options to actively combat acts of sabotage and hacking attacks.

The government says the package aims to enable the agencies to operate more effectively in the face of a myriad of hybrid security threats.

"We will not look on passively as foreign interference, sabotage and threats to the pillars of our constitution and our free society continue to grow," chancellery head Nina Warken told the daily Rheinische Post.

"Our [intelligence] services can only take targeted action against these hybrid attacks if they have more liberties and up-to-date measures" at their disposal, she said.

However, the planned reform has also met with considerable criticism from those who see the extended powers as a threat to civil rights.

The leader of the Free Democrats (FDP), Wolfgang Kubicki, accused Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt of "breaking a taboo."

"It can hardly be imagined that the Constitutional Court will not intervene here," he told the Augsburger Allgemeine daily.

"I do not want any secret police in Germany," he said. "I want full court control in the case of attacks on basic rights and a state that understands that you don't defend liberty by curbing it."

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Ansah has 'no fear' of losing bronze despite looming doping ban

Sprinter Owen Ansah, Germany's 100-meter record holder, delivered his country's first men's 100-meter European Championship medal in 40 years, despite facing a potential doping suspension.

Ansah won the bronze at the European Championships in Birmingham, England on Tuesday night, to take the biggest win of his career.

The 25-year-old posted a time of 10.19 seconds, managing to shut out the considerable noise surrounding his looming suspension by Germany's National Anti Doping Agency (NADA), which accuses the sprinter of refusing to take a doping test on July 9.

But Ansah insists that he failed to provide a urine sample because the doping control officer arrived outside of the requested time slot and Ansah had to leave to travel to Monaco for a Diamond League event. He also says he had just used the restroom before the officer arrived.

He said he is "not afraid" of having his medal revoked. "I trust my team, which has my back. I can’t influence the other stuff. I can only influence how fast I am on the track. And I showed that well today," Ansah said.

The sprinter is now turning his attention to the 200-meter dash on Friday, where he is eyeing a second medal at the Championships.

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Drone-related security incidents on the increase — military

Several hundred security incidents involvingdrones have been registered by Germany's armed forces in the past years, a military spokesman has said.

"Since the start of the illegal full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, reports on drone sightings affecting the Bundeswehr have greatly increased," the spokesman told the media outlet Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland.

"Over the past few years, several hundred suspected drone overflights in Bundeswehr-related areas have been reported," he said, adding that whole swarms of drones had been sighted on occasion.

Germany has seen a number of drone incidents in recent weeks, including one involving a drone carrying explosives at the Leipzig-Halle airport.

According to the newsmagazine Spiegel, the Hannover-Langenhagen airport was also closed several times overnight to Tuesday after a drone was sighted by employees.

Spiegel reported that the drone did not show up on police detection devices, suggesting that the object was possibly not a commercially available model.

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Transport ministers to meet over low river levels

Transport ministers from Germany's state and federal governments are to hold a video conference on Wednesday to discuss the challenges to inland shipping as rivers across the country run low.

Federal Transport Minister Steffen Bilger said the ministers would, among other things, talk about ways to compensate potential supply shortages as ships transport less cargo.

Several states have already lifted a ban on trucks using highways on Sundays in a bid to shift some cargo transport to other routes.

Ahead of the conference, Bilger, who belongs to the center-right Christian Democratic Union of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, told the daily Rheinische Post that there were currently no supply shortfalls.

However, he also said that cargo transport needed to be shifted more to road and rail to reduce the risk of supply problems to industry.

Bilger said the current river water shortages would likely continue until the end of August at least.

Amid the hot and dry weather, water levels in rivers such as the Rhine are continuing to drop, causing problems to inland shipping and to companies that rely on it for their supplies.

The situation on Germany's waterways will thus be a main topic in today's blog once again, as transport ministers meet to discuss how best to remedy the situation.

A planned reform granting new powers to intelligence agencies is also causing a stir, with some saying they go too far while others maintain their necessity as Germany faces ever more hybrid security threats.

One of those threats has been highlighted in a military report saying that hundreds of drone flights over army sites have been sighted in the past few years.

Disclaimer: This report first appeared on Deutsche Welle, and has been republished on ABP Live as part of a special arrangement. Apart from the headline, no changes have been made in the report by ABP Live.