CCC Hackers Sue German Government for Helping the NSA
A group of hackers and a human rights organization are suing the German government for allegedly conducting illegal spying activities and aiding the National Security Agency and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
The Chaos Computer Club (CCC), one of the largest hacker groups in the world, and the International League for Human Rights (ILHR) filed a criminal complaint to German federal prosecutors on Monday. The groups are accusing the German government, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, "of illegal and prohibited covert intelligence activities, of aiding and abetting of those activities, of violation of the right to privacy and obstruction of justice" by cooperating with the NSA and the GCHQ to spy on German citizens, according to the CCC's press release.
"After months of press releases about mass surveillance by secret services and offensive attacks on information technology systems," the group wrote in the release, "we now have certainty that German and other countries' secret services have violated the German criminal law."