VERFASSUNGSSCHUTZ REPORT

If you're up for some light reading on the state of terrorism and political subversion in Germany, check out the Verfassungsschutzbericht 2002 just put out by German Interior Minister Otto Schily and the President of the Federal Bureau of Constitutional Protection (Bundesamt fuer Verfassungsschutz) Heinz Fromm. The report is accessible as a monster, 272 page PDF file here. For the short versions, you can read the Tagesspiegel article here, and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung article here.

The main lines of the story are that official numbers show that political violence was down slightly in Germany in 2002 over 2001's totals, from 14,275 to 12,933 crimes from right-wing extremists, and from 4,418 to 3,639 crimes from left-wing extremists. Membership in domestic extremists groups seems to have declined slightly, although the number of skinheads is up slightly (by 300, to 10,700). Membership in extremist groups with foreign connections is also down, partly due to German crack-downs on such parties as Hizb ut-Tahir, which has its base in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

A few things are worth noting about the report. First of all, while Germans have also responded to international terrorist threats by strengthening the powers of the Verfassungsschutzers, the distribution of those powers and their relationship to law enforcement is different from in the U.S. The Verfassungsschutzers are not a law-enforcement organization and have no powers to arrest or detain anyone, and no powers to seize any items or search homes or apartments. Much of what they do have power to do, however, would be considered a "search" under U.S. law: they can get permission to place informants, record conversations, take pictures, and, under certain conditions, place wiretaps and go through people's mail and other correspondence. And they do apparently share information with police and intelligence services. They claim that most of their observations are of publicly available information, however. Plus, anyone who is the subject of a Verfassungsschutz information operation has a right to view their records and a reason for the observation, and the bureau is subject to judicial oversight.

Control over the Verfassungsschutz has not been substantially limited over the past few years, as far as I understand it, unlike what appears to be the case in the U.S. after the PATRIOT Act. Nonetheless, the bureau's power to observe and record what would here be called "first amendment activities" would likely be frightening to civil liberties activists in the States, even though the right to access the files surely does add a layer of citizen protection that appears to be absent in the U.S. in practice.

Secondly, the bureau casts a wide net, including observations of the Church of Scientology and legal parties such as the NPD and the Republikaner, both extremist right-wing groups. The state tried to ban the NPD but the German constitutional court nixed the attempt a few weeks ago, partly because much of the evidence that the government used in arguing for the ban was prepared by paid informants in the party. (See this article from the Guardian on the court's ruling.)

Finally,here a few tidbits in the report itself that are missed by the papers:

• There are nine pages on efforts of Russian organizations to spy in Germany for diplomatic, military and economic purposes.


• Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Libya all are reported to have active intelligence-gathering operations in Germany, mostly for the purposes of gathering information on expatriate opposition forces. The Iraqis also had contacts with right-wing extremists.


• China and North Korea are also listed as having agents in Germany; the papers picked up on the North Korean connection only.

Interestingly, Schily's press release leaves out the names of particular countries involved in active spying efforts in Germany. To get the details -- such as they are, beneath the flat bureaucratic language -- you have to go to the report itself.