“Suspicion of treason”: German attorney general investigates journalists
netzpolitik.org
netzpolitik.org
netzpolitik.org has covered the 'Geheimdienstausschuss' (a parliamentary working group, formed after the Snowden leaks) extensiveley, like no other german-speaking media. They also played a critical role in the public debate around data-retention, voting-computers and many other issues in germany in recent years.
I think, chances are high, that they will never be convicted. Still, this will send chilling effects on critical media, blogs and journalists.
The german journalist associaation called it an attack on freedom of the press.
http://www.djv.de/startseite/profil/der-djv/pressebereich-do...
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/12/germany_drops_invest...
A few weeks ago it was rumored that there was an ongoing investigation against the whistleblowers who leaked some of the documents. The government did not want to confirm any of this and it was not clear until today that the journalists were also part of the investigation.
It's a shame to see this happening in Germany.
It is summer break without any upcoming news, so I hope this backfires really bad at them.
"§94 Treason
(1) Whosoever
1. communicates a state secret to a foreign power or one of its intermediaries; or
2. otherwise allows a state secret to come to the attention of an unauthorised person or to become known to the public in order to prejudice the Federal Republic of Germany or benefit a foreign power and thereby creates a danger of serious prejudice to the external security of the Federal Republic of Germany, shall be liable to imprisonment of not less than one year.
(2) ..."
As usual when comparing different legal systems it gets muddy. I guess what you're having in mind is more like "Hochverrat" (high treason).
An aside: what are the connotations of "treason" and "treachery" in English? Is treason the criminal act against your country and "treachery" more personal, betraying a friend?
"treachery" is the more general term, that would apply to anything from personal betrayal to particularly underhanded business dealings. It's roughly equivalent to "betrayal", though more emphatic.
"treason" can technically refer to the same thing (you could say "this is treason" to refer to some personal act of betrayal, though it would come across as hyperbole), but in practice it almost exclusively refers to the crime.
An opinion regarding usage from a native speaker, here: it might for instance be considered treacherous to lure the King into a forest where he may be murdered, in return for a rich reward from a pretender to the throne; but merely supporting the pretender in hopes of a reward, even to the point of secretly betraying the King, might in other circumstances be plainly and distastefully treasonous without evoking the same connotations as treachery.
There are archaic British legal meanings of the word treachery which might parallel your distinction of Landesverrat and Hochverrat, I am not sure. But only lawyers on the Commonwealth side of the fence would likely understand that meaning.
And, in fact, it makes a certain kind of logic. Per dictionary.com, treason means acting to overthrow one's government or trying to harm or kill the sovereign, but it includes giving aid to the enemies of one's government. Revealing where the government is spying on people may in fact give aid to the enemies of the government.
Now, in a free country, that's balanced by the peoples' right to not be spied on by the government. The people have a right to know that the government is crossing that line. (And, in fact, the definition of a free country might be one where the people, rather than the government, are the real sovereign.)
But no, it wouldn't be espionage. Espionage would mean that they were themselves spying, which is not the case.
OK, it's not the CIA... And this is not about "evil Yankees" (because, a "Yankee" is not evil). It's about journalists who actually should put all organizations they are member of, just as F1 drivers do with their sponsors, on their suits so that the news consumer can know who's interests they represent: US, Russian, Chinese...
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I am sorry about that, but in our society, the truth is not suffered. I should not waste my time, telling it.
Seems to me like they would have a hard time proving that the journalists let either a person or the public know about a state secret in order to... "prejudice the Federal Republic of Germany" or to "benefit a foreign power". That would mean they would have to show intent, and while I'm not familiar with these particular journalists, I think it's highly unlikely they are trying to destroy their own country, and are rather trying to perform their function as journalists in that they are informing citizens, aka the public, about potentially relevant information even if it may be considered confidential or secret in nature.
The problem is that the governments of the world want to pretend like that have final say in what constitutes egregiously dangerous information and often conflate it with information that is obviously not.
Germany has quite a few more restrictions on free speech as well, but I'm curious what section of law the accusations would fall under.
Look, the bottom line is that across the world, freedom of speech is dangerous to the powers that be, and it is communication that enables freedom of speech. Communication in the form of technology has largely leveled the playing field faster than nation states could catch up, and the internet has for a short time become a bastion of free speech in a world were the state and corporations have taken over almost all other forms (first it was the printing press, then the telegraph, then radio, and TV).
Now TPTB have awoken to the danger that is the internet as a medium of unrestricted anarchistic freedom of though, and that, my friends, is the real reason the internet will be, and is being, taken over, legislated, regulated, censored, tracked and tagged. Not because of "national security", but because of "globalized aristocratic oligarchical security posing as national security".
Make no mistake, they will pass the laws they want if they don't exist, and if we fight them (like we did with SOPA/CISPA, etc) they will simply try again after learning the lessons of their defeat. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep fighting them, but the attacker, especially a well geared and learned attacker always has the advantage.
A good example of this kind of legislative subterfuge, at least in the US, is the Aldrich plan and the Federal Reserve Act.
According to G. Edward Griffin, Paul Warburg and his co-conspirators “added several very sound provisions to the Federal Reserve Bill. By that I mean they added some provisions which seriously restricted the ability of the Federal Reserve to create money out of nothing. Warburg's associates said, ‘Paul, what are you doing? We don't want those in there, this is our bill.’ And his response was, "Relax fellas, don't you get it? Our object is to get the bill passed. We can fix it up later." Those were his exact words. ‘We can fix it up later.’ …