Internal security is a longstanding issue on the political
agenda, and governments provide well for it. Two issues have
recently provided challenges to internal security policy. First,
extremist right- and left-wing activities are an increasing
problem, arising mainly but not exclusively in the federal
states of the former East Germany. Second, fighting terrorist
and extremist activities has emerged as both a domestic and
international phenomenon. Recent events have clearly
demonstrated that even small terrorist groups of Islamic
fundamentalists are able to paralyze the whole security system
for weeks at a time. Today, internal security policy is closely
intertwined with EU strategies and policies. Due to the events
of 9/11 and its effects on the subsequent “war on terrorism,”
former Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble focused on
policies strengthening internal security in order to prevent
future terrorist attacks. In 2007, there was a debate on data
retention, with policy mandating the storage of all