The leading hacker organization has filed a criminal complaint against Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Chaos Computer Club, a non-profit organization, posted its statement on the official website on February 3. The plaintiffs accuse Angela Merkel’s government of violating the law by spying on Internet users. Based in Germany, the Chaos Computer Club released a communique alleging that Merkel, her cabinet, and Germany’s intelligence agency assisted the U.S. security services to monitor messages by German people in social networks. The hacker group claimed that Germany’s authorities were doing nothing to prevent the U.S. intelligence from espionage. On the contrary, they were aiding and abetting such activities, thus tolerating the personal privacy violation.
"With this criminal complaint, we hope to finally initiate investigations by the Federal Prosecutor General against the German government," the spokesman of the Chaos Computer Club stated.
Steffen Seibert, the government’s spokesman, said that every German citizen has the right to file such a complaint when he was requested to make comments on the hackers’ suit by the news agency Associated Press. However, Mr. Seibert declined to comment further.
The Chaos Computer Club filed the lawsuit amid the never-ending debates about illegal spying on Internet users in Germany by local and American security services. It was Edward Snowden, the fugitive ex-contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency, who first brought up the espionage topic in summer, 2013. Besides, he disclosed that not only ordinary Internet users from Germany and other countries are being under the U.S. National Security Agency’s surveillance, but also a lot of global political figures such as Angela Merkel.
Meanwhile, the relationship between the U.S. and one of its key overseas partners in Europe has been strained by the revelations in the media that the Chancellor’s cellphone has been monitored by the U.S. National Security Agency. In mid-January, the U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to implement changes in the National Security Agency and to bar the surveillance activities against the friendly states’ leaders.
