SPIEGEL: Mr. Kahl, are you an avid user of Twitter?

Kahl: Not at all.

SPIEGEL: As head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency BND, can you do without? U.S. President Donald Trump seems to be at risk of triggering a global crisis with just a single tweet.

Kahl: What the American president tweets can also be read elsewhere quickly enough. Plus, the U.S. is not one of our intelligence targets.

SPIEGEL: During the campaign, Trump said several times that torture tools such as waterboarding are acceptable. The BND cooperates closely with U.S. intelligence agencies. Does Trump’s position make you uncomfortable?

Kahl: Following the election, Trump’s advisors quickly countered much of what he said as a candidate. And regarding torture, Trump said: If my secretary of defense, my secretary of state and my security advisor are against it, then we’ll leave things as they are. Currently, we don’t have any indications that the legal situation in the United States is going to change.

SPIEGEL: Trump’s program is “America First.” Is there concern that America’s willingness to share information and terror warnings with German agencies will fade?

Kahl: Were “America First” to develop into a dogma in intelligence cooperation, that wouldn’t be particularly amusing. Thus far, though, there is no indication that such cooperation is being reduced. I have great faith in the American institutionsand am confident that, in the areas that are relevant to our work, sufficient sense and expertise will be exhibited by the new administration as well.

SPIEGEL: The whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks recently published sensitive information from inside the CIA. Should we be worried that the BND also peers into the private lives of German citizens by way of all manner of hacked devices, such as mobile phones, televisions, cars and even smoke alarms?

Kahl: Germans don’t need to be worried about that. We have no interest in intruding on people’s private lives. The BND has a clear legal mandate: We must obtain information from abroad that is important for the security of our country. The private lives of German citizens are completely irrelevant.

SPIEGEL: Not necessarily. From 2008 to 2011, the BND listened in on the communications of Hansjörg Haber, head of the European Union monitoring mission in Georgia. He is a German citizen and husband of the state secretary in the Interior Ministry.

Kahl: That doesn’t contradict what I just said.

SPIEGEL: True. Only after someone becomes a politician, ambassador or employee of an NGO or a European institution might they end up as an intelligence target on the so-called selector list. You have conducted surveillance on many such people …

Kahl: … and have drawn the consequences from such incidents. We now have a new BND law, which defines more precisely the conditions under which we may conduct surveillance and when we cannot. These cases are now not only subject to stricter intelligence rules but also continue to be energetically monitored.

SPIEGEL: Will you continue to conduct surveillance on journalists?

Kahl: We will adhere to the rules that are now law. There are different levels for Germans, Europeans and those journalists who work and operate in non-European countries. If a foreigner in Raqqa claims to be a journalist, we are going to conduct surveillance anyway if he is affiliated with Islamic State.

SPIEGEL: Yet you apparently didn’t draw any distinction between such a person and reporters working for the BBC and the New York Times. Where is the boundary?

Kahl: That’s not so easy to answer from where we sit. But we have no interest in investigating journalists on the whole. Neither domestically nor abroad. We are searching for information that is relevant to our security and looking for people who are planning evil deeds. It can’t be avoided that these people sometimes communicate with others who are less suspicious.

SPIEGEL: What is your assessment of Islamic State’s current situation in Syria and Iraq?

Kahl: In contrast to other terror organizations, IS seeks to bring territory under its control. Currently, that is being taken from it; IS is losing territory. But that doesn’t mean that it is disappearing. IS will continue to play a role and make itself visible.

SPIEGEL: Is Islamic State moving to other countries, like Libya, for example?

Kahl: We see IS activities in Libya. And we are watching activists in Sub-Saharan Africa who used to be called Boko Haram but who now must be assigned to Islamic State. We are seeing IS in Afghanistan, we are seeing IS on the Sinai Peninsula.

SPIEGEL: Are those distinct cells or is there a larger network?

Kahl: There are repeated efforts to undertake operations on behalf of IS, but it then takes some time before they are recognized by IS headquarters. But that doesn’t mean that everything is controlled centrally. Some of the things that have taken place in Germany as well were not ordered by Raqqa or some other command post. The treacherous thing about this terrorist entity is that it can …. more:

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