The German Intelligence Community is the collective of

intelligence agencies An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives. Means of inf ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. Germany has three federal intelligence services and 16

state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

intelligence services. Because they do not form a single entity and because their responsibilities are split between multiple government ministries and even jurisdictions, this is an informal term for all government agencies and components with intelligence duties, used by commentators, scholars and journalists. The three federal intelligence agencies are: *

Federal Intelligence Service The Federal Intelligence Service (, ; BND) is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, directly subordinate to the Chancellor's Office. The BND headquarters is located in central Berlin. The BND has 300 locations in Germany and foreign cou ...

(BND), which is responsible for

foreign Foreign may refer to: Government * Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries * Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries ** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government ** Foreign office and foreign minister * United S ...

and

strategic intelligence Strategic intelligence (STRATINT) pertains to the collection, processing, analysis, and dissemination of intelligence that is required for forming policy and military plans at the national and international level. Much of the information needed fo ...

. Additionally, they support the

German Armed Forces The (, ''Federal Defence'') are the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. The is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part consists of the four armed forces: German Army, ...

with

military intelligence Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis List of intelligence gathering disciplines, approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist Commanding officer, commanders in decision making pr ...

. Their primary methods of collection are

human intelligence Human intelligence is the Intellect, intellectual capability of humans, which is marked by complex Cognition, cognitive feats and high levels of motivation and self-awareness. Using their intelligence, humans are able to learning, learn, Concept ...

signals intelligence Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the act and field of intelligence-gathering by interception of ''signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly u ...

and

geospatial intelligence In the United States, geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) is intelligence about the human activity on Earth derived from the exploitation and analysis of imagery, signals, or signatures with geospatial information. GEOINT describes, assesses, and visu ...

. This is a sharp break with their American and British counterparts, where an intelligence agency mostly specializes on one of these collection methods. The BND is directly subordinated to the

German Chancellery The Federal Chancellery (, ) is a Germany, German Federal agency (Germany), federal agency serving the executive office of the chancellor of Germany, the head of the Government of Germany, federal government, currently Friedrich Merz. The Chancel ...

, Directorate-General 7. *

Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution ( or BfV, often ''Bundesverfassungsschutz'') is Germany's federal domestic intelligence agency. Together with the Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz (LfV) at the state level, the fed ...

(BfV). It is a domestic intelligence agency and tasked with detecting threats to the German state in the form of

religious extremism Religious fanaticism or religious extremism is a pejorative designation used to indicate uncritical zeal or obsessive enthusiasm that is related to one's own, or one's group's, devotion to a religion – a form of human fanaticism that co ...

political extremism Extremism is "the quality or state of being extreme" or "the advocacy of extreme measures or views". The term is primarily used in a political or religious sense to refer to an ideology that is considered (by the speaker or by some implied shar ...

and

organized crime Organized crime is a category of transnational organized crime, transnational, national, or local group of centralized enterprises run to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally thought of as a f ...

. Additionally, it is the primary

counterintelligence Counterintelligence (counter-intelligence) or counterespionage (counter-espionage) is any activity aimed at protecting an agency's Intelligence agency, intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering informati ...

agency of Germany, working to secure

classified information Classified information is confidential material that a government deems to be sensitive information which must be protected from unauthorized disclosure that requires special handling and dissemination controls. Access is restricted by law or ...

, government facilities and private businesses against

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...

sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization (warfare), demoralization, destabilization, divide and rule, division, social disruption, disrupti ...

and

cyber attacks A cyberattack (or cyber attack) occurs when there is an unauthorized action against computer infrastructure that compromises the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of its content. The rising dependence on increasingly complex and inte ...

. The BfV is subordinated to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Besides the BfV, every

German state The Federal Republic of Germany is a federation and consists of sixteen partly sovereign ''states''. Of the sixteen states, thirteen are so-called area-states ('Flächenländer'); in these, below the level of the state government, there is a ...

has its own

State Office for the Protection of the Constitution The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (; ) is a state-level security agency in Germany. In seven federal states of Germany, it is a semi-independent agency called and reports to the state's interior ministry. In the nine rema ...

(''Landesverfassungsschutzämter''), which is not subordinated to any federal ministry or agency. * Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD). Its duties are much the same as those of the BfV, except limited to the

. They also analyze tactical intelligence relevant to deployed German troops. As such, they fall within the jurisdiction of the

Federal Ministry of Defence The Federal Ministry of Defence (, ; abbreviated BMVg) is a top-level federal agency, headed by the Federal Minister of Defence as a member of the Cabinet of Germany. The ministry is headquartered at the Hardthöhe barracks itself located at t ...

. However, they do not conduct traditional

, which is done by other military branches, as well as the BND. The

Strategic Reconnaissance Command The Strategic Reconnaissance Command ( or ; ) is the central headquarters for military intelligence of the German Bundeswehr, based in Grafschaft (Schmallenberg), Grafschaft, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The KSA was founded in January 2002 a ...

(KSA) is the central headquarters for military intelligence of the German

Bundeswehr The (, ''Federal Defence'') are the armed forces of the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany. The is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part consists of the four armed forces: Germ ...

. Other state agencies that use intelligence techniques or collect data, such as the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the German Customs Investigation Bureau (ZKA), or the

Federal Office for Information Security The Federal Office for Information Security (, abbreviated as BSI) is the German upper-level federal agency in charge of managing computer and communication security for the German government. Its areas of expertise and responsibility includ ...

(BSI) are not officially regarded as member of the German Intelligence Community, although they do participate in coordinative institutions, such as the Joint Centre for Counterterrorism and -extremism (GETZ). The activities of the three federal intelligence agencies are coordinated out of the

by the Commissioner for the Federal Intelligence Services and Directorate-General 7. Furthermore, they are subject to parliamentary oversight through the Parliamentary Oversight Panel (PKGr). In cases where the agencies want to surveil electronic communications, they have to get permission by the G10-Commission, which acts much like the

FISA Court The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), also called the FISA Court, is a U.S. federal court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants aga ...

. The traditional primary focus of the German Intelligence Community, originally the West German Intelligence Community, was the threat posed by the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

and its satellite states. The German Intelligence Community has been closely aligned with the

United States Intelligence Community The United States Intelligence Community (IC) is a group of separate US federal government, U.S. federal government intelligence agencies and subordinate organizations that work to conduct Intelligence assessment, intelligence activities which ...

, especially the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

, since the start of the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

.German Intelligence Community in ''Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security'', 2004

References

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