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> did you know in Germany you need a court order to surveil Taliban terrorists ... in Afghanistan? Fun times.

sounds reasonable, otherwise it'll be abused, no?

Abused how? If you need sigint on a possible bomb threat you learned about via humint in the field and you're waiting for bureaucracy to happen, people will die, and they have died already.

I could see plenty of ways in which a law like "you can surveil people if xyz without a court order" could be abused

Side note:

German intelligence service BND famously argued ~10 years ago that them intercepting satellite communication at their listening station in Bad Aibling does not in fact happen on German soil but in space. Therefore, they argued, their surveillance activities weren't bound by German laws at all.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltraumtheorie

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