BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst)

History

According to the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb), the BND was founded on 1 April 1956. For decades its headquarters were in Pullach near Munich; since 2019 they have been in Berlin. Its legal basis is the BND Act of 1990.¹

Functions and status

Under § 1 BNDG, the BND is a higher federal authority within the remit of the Federal Chancellery and may not be attached to a police authority. It collects and analyses the information needed to gain knowledge about foreign countries that is relevant to Germany’s foreign and security policy.²

Oversight

The activities of the BND, the BfV and the MAD are overseen by the Parliamentary Oversight Panel (PKGr), enshrined since 2009 in Article 45d of the Basic Law; the details are laid down in the Act on the panel (PKGrG). The panel is supported by a permanent representative appointed for five years.^3,4

Since the 2021 reform, the BND Act has also provided for an Independent Control Council (Unabhängiger Kontrollrat) – a supreme federal authority, independent and not bound by instructions, which oversees the BND’s technical intelligence and has offices in Berlin and Pullach (§ 41 BNDG). It has a quasi-judicial body and an administrative oversight body, reports to the parliamentary panel and works with it, with the G 10 Commission and with the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection (§§ 40–58).^5,6

Rulings and reforms

According to the bpb, in 1999 the Federal Constitutional Court examined and upheld strategic monitoring of communications between Germany and other countries. In 2016 the BND Act was reformed, extending the service’s powers and introducing an independent oversight body.¹

In its judgment of 19 May 2020 (1 BvR 2835/17) the Court ruled that fundamental rights – the privacy of telecommunications (Article 10 of the Basic Law) and freedom of the press (Article 5) – also protect foreigners abroad, and that the 2016 provisions on foreign surveillance were largely unconstitutional. It held strategic surveillance as such to be permissible subject to strict safeguards and required broader, quasi-judicial oversight; the provisions could remain in force until 31 December 2021 at the latest.⁷

The Act was amended accordingly in 2021. According to the bpb, in 2024 the Court ruled that strategic surveillance for the purpose of defending against cyber threats requires better protection of fundamental rights, and gave the legislature until the end of 2026 to amend the provisions.¹

Technical intelligence in the Act

Chapter 4 of the BNDG regulates strategic foreign telecommunications intelligence (§§ 19–27), cooperation with foreign public bodies (§§ 31–33) and intrusion into the information technology systems of foreigners abroad (§§ 34–37), with provisions protecting relationships of trust and the core area of private life.⁶

The NSA affair and scale

According to the bpb, Edward Snowden’s disclosures of 2013 indicated that the BND had passed the NSA selected lists of numbers, addresses and keywords. In 2014 the Bundestag set up a committee of inquiry into NSA–BND cooperation; its 2017 report found that the BND had spied on EU and NATO states in excess of its powers, with the governing coalition and the opposition drawing different conclusions.¹

According to the bpb, in 2026 the BND has a budget of about €1.5 billion and about 6,500 staff; about a thousand people still work in Pullach. The BND cooperates with some 450 foreign services in more than 160 countries.¹