Overview

• The legislation authorizes covert online searches of computers and smartphones by Hesse’s domestic intelligence service under judicial warrants.
• It removes the five-year cap on storing minors’ personal data in exceptional radicalization cases, allowing longer retention.
• Interior Minister Roman Poseck cited a surge in online radicalization among young people and recent terror arrests as justification for the measures.
• The proposal incorporates changes demanded by the Federal Constitutional Court after parts of the previous law were ruled unconstitutional in July 2024.
• Poseck warned that threats to Germany’s liberal democratic order now include right-wing and left-wing extremism, Islamism and foreign-directed disinformation campaigns.