Investigators apparently monitored phone calls between representatives of the “last generation” and journalists. This is reported by the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. The Bavarian State Criminal Police Office is said to have been listening in on the conversations unnoticed since October 2022.
According to a report in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, Bavarian investigative authorities have been tapping numerous telephone conversations between climate activists and journalists for months.
The group “Last Generation” was affected, the newspaper reported, citing internal documents. The instruction for the eavesdropping came from the Munich public prosecutor’s office. In Bavaria, members of the “Last Generation” are being investigated on suspicion of forming a “criminal organization”.
Surveillance apparently continued
According to this, a landline connection with the Berlin area code, which the “Last Generation” passes off as their official press phone, was affected by the surveillance. Whenever journalists called there, the conversations had been overheard unnoticed by the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office since October 2022.
“The connection almost exclusively receives inquiries from media representatives, students and pupils asking for press information or an interview,” quoted the “SZ” from a police note on the results of the first two months of the eavesdropping campaign for the public prosecutor’s office. After that, monitoring continued.
High legal hurdles
In addition, according to “SZ” research, the authorities also monitored other phones, including the mobile phones of some leading figures of the last generation. Their spokeswoman Carla Hinrichs was named. An investigation note for November 7, 2022 states that Hinrichs had “several current inquiries from the ‘Spiegel'” on that day.
The wiretapping measures were based on decisions of the Munich District Court. It also says that while listening to conversations with journalists is not strictly prohibited, there are high legal hurdles to do so. The investigative authorities would always have to carefully weigh up freedom of the press and the interests of criminal prosecution. It is doubtful whether this happened here. In the decisions of the district court in Munich, the problem of freedom of the press is not mentioned at all.