{"id":10609,"date":"2015-08-01T08:44:04","date_gmt":"2015-08-01T13:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10609"},"modified":"2015-08-01T08:44:04","modified_gmt":"2015-08-01T13:44:04","slug":"german-journalists-investigated-for-treason-after-publishing-surveillance-leaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10609","title":{"rendered":"German Journalists Investigated For Treason After Publishing Surveillance Leaks"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/07\/31\/german-journalists-investigated-treason-publishing-surveillance-leaks\/\" target=\"_blank\">German Journalists Investigated For Treason After Publishing Surveillance Leaks<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Two journalists at the prominent German news website\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/netzpolitik.org\/\">Netzpolitik<\/a><\/em>\u00a0are under investigation for treason after publishing details about the planned expansion of the German Secret Service\u2019s Internet surveillance program.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, the organization\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/netzpolitik.org\/2015\/suspicion-of-treason-federal-attorney-general-announces-investigation-against-us-in-addition-to-our-sources\/\">received a letter<\/a>\u00a0from the Federal Attorney General of Germany confirming ongoing investigations against reporters Markus Beckedahl, Andre Meister (pictured), and an \u201cunknown source\u201d for the articles, one of which was\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/netzpolitik.org\/2015\/geheimer-geldregen-verfassungsschutz-arbeitet-an-massendatenauswertung-von-internetinhalten\">published<\/a>\u00a0in February and detailed a secret budget plan for surveillance activities, and another, from April,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/netzpolitik.org\/2015\/secret-department-we-present-the-new-german-domestic-secret-service-unit-to-extend-internet-surveillance\">describing<\/a>\u00a0a new surveillance unit for monitoring social networking and online chats. Meister has characterized the plans as being part of Germany\u2019s \u201cpost-Snowden\u201d internet surveillance push.<\/p>\n<p><em>Netzpolitik<\/em>, which reports on politics and technology, learned within the last several weeks that Federal Attorney General of Germany was investigating the stories, but believed its sources were the target of the investigation rather than its journalists, Meister said in an interview. Only yesterday did it became clear that Meister and Beckedahl were also under investigation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a direct attack on freedom of the press, such as hasn\u2019t been the case in around 50 years in Germany, since the \u2018<em>Spiegel<\/em>\u00a0scandal\u2019 in 1962,&#8217;\u201d Meister told<em>The Intercept<\/em>, citing an\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spiegel_scandal\">incident<\/a>\u00a0in which the German newsweekly\u00a0<em>Der Spiegel<\/em>was searched and some of its journalists were arrested on treason accusations stemming from an article questioning the preparedness of West German armed forces.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese charges are an intimidation against media and against potential sources \u2014 which are an integral part of investigative journalism,\u201d he added. \u201cThe public needs whistleblowers to find out about what\u2019s done in their name and with their money. So the original investigations against our sources were already a direct attack on freedom of press and freedom of information.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>German Journalists Investigated For Treason After Publishing Surveillance Leaks Two journalists at the prominent German news website\u00a0Netzpolitik\u00a0are under investigation for treason after publishing details about the planned expansion of the German Secret Service\u2019s Internet surveillance program. On Wednesday, the organization\u00a0received a letter\u00a0from the Federal Attorney General of Germany confirming ongoing investigations against reporters Markus Beckedahl, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7750,4330,359,462,483,7749,7747,938,765,5567,7748],"class_list":["post-10609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-andre-meister","tag-der-spiegel","tag-germany","tag-journalism","tag-liberty-2","tag-markus-beckedahl","tag-netzpolitik","tag-press-freedom","tag-surveillance","tag-the-intercept","tag-treason"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10610,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10609\/revisions\/10610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}