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Germany moves to give spy agencies hacking and sabotage powers

Germany's cabinet approved a 732-page bill granting BND and BfV intelligence agencies new hacking, sabotage, and disinformation powers pending parliamentary approval.

Germany's cabinet approved draft legislation that would give the foreign intelligence service BND and domestic agency BfV active operational powers, including hacking foreign systems, sabotaging supply chains with faulty components, disabling servers of hostile state-sponsored hackers, and feeding false information to extremists inside Germany. The 732-page bill, the largest overhaul of postwar German spy laws, requires telecom carriers and digital providers to assist the agencies, bars measures endangering life, and imposes new statutory controls on how agencies use AI analysis, including judge-supervised spot checks of machine-generated outputs. The reforms stem from a Federal Constitutional Court ruling on surveillance proportionality and are expected to pass parliament, with the government aiming for the law to take effect next year; civil liberties groups plan to challenge it.

The Record · Aug 13, 2026Policy & legal

Lawmakers call for investigation into impact of CISA staffing cuts

Democratic lawmakers asked the GAO to investigate how CISA's roughly one-third workforce reduction affects its mission and critical-infrastructure protection.

Democratic lawmakers led by House Homeland Security ranking member Bennie Thompson asked the Government Accountability Office to examine how recent staffing cuts at CISA affect its ability to protect critical infrastructure and respond to cyber and physical threats. Nearly 1,000 CISA employees have been fired or quit since the Trump administration began, and acting director Nick Andersen plans to hire 300. The letter also flags the FY2027 budget proposal to eliminate nearly 900 additional positions and cut more than $700 million from the agency. CISA has had no confirmed director since Jen Easterly departed, and GAO confirmed it received the request.

The Record · 26d agoPolicy & legal

US military disabled ad tracking on troops’ devices following reports of targeted attacks

US DoD disabled ad tracking on troops' devices after foreign adversaries targeted service members using commercially bought location data.

Per letters shared with Senator Ron Wyden, the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command disabled advertising IDs on iPhones, Android devices, and Windows computers across the federal military enterprise. The protections rolled out earlier in 2026, with the Air Force implementing changes in July, to prevent adversaries from exploiting app-derived location data sold through data brokers. Wyden warned that personal devices brought onto military bases could still expose troops and facilities, and noted the intelligence community and FBI buy such data without warrants.

TechCrunch · Security · 12d agoPolicy & legal