State Offices for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV)
Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz
The federal constitution protection law (BVerfSchG) obligates the Federal and State governments to arrange their own protection of the Constitution authorities. The Federal government implemented this responsibility through the establishment of the BfV on 07 November 1950, and the States soon thereafter. Some established independent Protection of the Constitution authorities, while others [North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein] allocated the task of the protection of the Constitution of a section of their Ministry of the Interior. Also in the new federal states successive authorities were set up after the reunification of Germany for protection of the Constitution, so that there are now 16 state authorities for protection of the Constitution.
The legislature has standardized in §1 paragraph 2 explicitly an obligation for cooperation of the protection of the Constitution authorities. The cooperation extends to the exchange of knowledge and expertise. The distribution responsibility is closely controlled.
For extremist efforts of merely regional significance observations are conducted through the responsible state authority. The BfV has a central role to summarize and evaluate collected information. In cases of national meaning it can determine however also personally and accomplish security operations.
However a special role is allocated the BfV in the area of espionage. In order to better monitor the methods and techniques of hostile espionage activities, the interpretation of all espionage cases is centralized at the BfV.
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/germany/lfv/
Created by John Pike
Maintained by Steven Aftergood
Updated Wednesday, November 26, 1997 5:56:23 PM
