Freedom and combatting terrorism

Last week Germany experienced a new turn in its battle surrounding the freedom of the press and the right to access facts while combating terrorism and protecting the right to personal choice. In truth, this has been the reality for weeks now and there has been much disruption.

Last April, German intelligence (which calls itself the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) filed a lawsuit against the German news site Netzpolitik. It accused the news agency of publishing confidential facts about a new programme it was planning to launch that would require stricter surveillance on phone calls, the internet and social networking sites in the hopes that it could monitor jihadist extremists and clamp down on matters that threatened German national security. Intelligence forces considered Netzpolitik’s decision to publish details of the programme, including its budget, a matter of treason because it threatens national security.

Federal prosecutor Harald Range both received and examined the intelligence bureau’s claim and consequently decided to follow up on the matter by launching an investigation into the news site and the journalists in question. It is here that all hell broke loose and journalists from both the right and left wing stood up in Range’s face as they considered this to be a threat to journalistic freedom and its legacy in Germany. Journalists also considered this the state’s attempt to deprive German citizens of their right to access facts and information and have therefore deemed these recent events as an unprecedented catastrophe in the nation’s history. The battle between journalists and the federal prosecutor is no longer contained in the offices of news agencies but has been brought down to the street where citizens are involving the Ministry of Justice and the judiciary in their protests. Many protestors raised slogans that stated: “No democracy without freedom of the press.”

Germany’s Minister of Justice Heiko Maas found himself in a predicament and asked the attorney general to temporarily suspend the investigation in an effort to keep the issue on a neutral standing. When asked whether or not he considered the actions of Netzpolitik a matter of treason, Haas said: “I do not think that the Netzpolitik bureau or the journalists working at the news agency meant to betray the nation or to threaten national security when they published their recent report. Perhaps the state’s legislation on monitoring and protecting state secrets should be revised in a way that keeps the heritage of the freedom of the press and the right to accessing information the way it needs to be in a democratic country.”

As a result of the above statements, Range also found himself in a predicament and attempted to defend himself in the media by accusing the minister of justice of exercising political pressure to close the investigation. In turn, the minister of justice did not delay his response when he called the federal prosecutor a rebel. In the event that this investigation goes through and Netzpolitik’s journalists are accused of treason, it is the ministry of justice that will have to deal with the aftermath of that decision, which could prove problematic given that such an accusation has not been made in Germany in over 50 years. Moreover, the German people are overly sensitive about the government monitoring their actions in this way because it brings back memories of the Gestapo’s crimes during the Nazi era.

The question of monitoring and censoring journalism was met with far more protests than accusing certain journalists of treason because the first issue brought into question the legality of German intelligence and its tools because it now means that journalists will be monitored under the pretext that they themselves are growing extremists. The Supreme European Council recently ruled that spying on a suspected extremist does not give the government the right to monitor his calls, contacts and messages because they are suspicious as this would be considered first and foremost a violation of privacy.

When we compare this German calamity to the recent law signed by Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi two days ago, which prohibits the Egyptian press from publishing any news about security or military matters that pertain to the internal interests of the army, we must ask ourselves: Do we truly live in one world?

Translated from Al-Araby Al-Jadeed on 19 August 2015.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.