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Article

12 Dec 2014

Author:
Wolfgang Kaleck, European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights

Germany’s secret role in repressive state spying

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Germany is seen by many as the place where the Snowdon revelations have had the greatest impact. But sometimes it seems the benchmark is somewhat skewed. While concerned citizens here feel disturbed by the revelations, in other parts of the world the consequences of government surveillance include arrest, torture and death. As with arms exports, Europe and in particularly Germany are helping to provide repressive regimes with the technology they need and are managing to do so without provoking much opposition at home... ECCHR have been working for years on legal action against the firms involved, in particular against German-British companies Gamma International and Trovicor...German prosecution authorities rarely act in such cases, due to the difficulty in proving the supply and use of software for purposes that violate human rights. With this in mind, we were glad when hackers uploaded internal Gamma communications to the internet. The data showed not only that assistance was being provided to customers in Bahrain, but also revealed that computers in Germany were among those being targeted...We will appeal the decision of the state prosecutors in Munich and continue to push for an investigation.