Home Secretary wants to fire BSI boss Arne Schönbohm

According to dpa information, there has long been discontent in the Ministry of the Interior over Schönbohm’s role and his dealings with the Cyber ​​Security Council. The recent accusations and Schönbohm’s visit to the club’s anniversary have apparently brought the final straw.

The deputy chairman of the Greens parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, Konstantin von Notz, called for a thorough investigation. He told t-online: “Regardless of Schönbohm’s personal details, the accusations and suspicions in the room must be further clarified and appropriate consequences drawn.” In addition, the Ministry of the Interior is now urged to “definitively prioritize the multiple projects agreed in the coalition agreement in the field of computer security, especially with a view to the effective protection of critical infrastructure, and with the necessary political seriousness”.

The digital policy spokeswoman for the left-wing faction in the Bundestag, Anke Domscheit-Berg, said on Twitter on Saturday that she had requested that the digital committee deal with the issue next Wednesday. What Jan Böhmermann made public about the connections between the Russian intelligence services, “a dubious cybersecurity association, its members, and the BSI” is incomprehensible.

Schönbohm is one of the co-founders of the “Cyber-Sicherheitsrat Deutschland eV”, which has been criticized, among other things, for acting as a so-called state institution on certain occasions. In 2019, club president Hans-Wilhelm Dünn admitted to the ARD magazine “Kontraste” and the weekly “Die Zeit” that he had contacts with Russian intelligence agencies.

According to information from dpa, Schönbohm had been suggested on several occasions to distance himself from the “Cyber ​​​​​​​​Security Council Germany eV”. In early September, however, the head of the authorities appeared at the club to publicly congratulate him on his tenth anniversary.