Berlin Expands Special Services' Surveillance Powers On Social Networks To Fight Extremism

Berlin Expands Special Services' Surveillance Powers on Social Networks to Fight Extremism

The German government has approved a bill that will enable the country's special services to access correspondence on social networks as part of their fight against right-wing extremism, German deputy government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said on Wednesday

BERLIN (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st October, 2020) The German government has approved a bill that will enable the country's special services to access correspondence on social networks as part of their fight against right-wing extremism, German deputy government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said on Wednesday.

"The government has approved today Interior Minister [Horst Seehofer]'s bill that amends the legislation on protecting the constitution. The bill suggests amending the rights of the intelligence service to investigate serious threats to our rule of law and free order. The clearly defined goal of the bill is to improve the fight against right-wing extremism and right-wing terrorism," Demmer said at a briefing.

According to the government, to detect serious threats in a timely manner, the authority for the constitution's protection needs relevant powers that, among other things, allow special services to receive information from messenger services, the spokeswoman stated.

Interior Ministry spokesman Steve Alter, in turn, explained that the bill envisages tracking the correspondence of those people who "create a serious threat to democracy by their behavior," such as terrorists and violent extremists.

Germany is attaching great importance to the fight against far-right extremism. Within the context, earlier this year, the government established a special committee tasked with implementing counter-extremist measures developed by the government last October. These measures came on the heels of two notorious hate crimes in 2019: a shooting attack on a synagogue in the city of Halle in October and the murder of a pro-refugee municipal official in the city of Kassel in June.