The Lower Saxony Office for the Protection of the Constitution concealed more than six years of surveillance and data collection from Andrea Röpke, a political scientist and freelance journalist known as an expert on right-wing extremism, in 2012. This was confirmed to the journalist today by telephone by the president of the Lower Saxony Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Maren Brandenburger. According to Brandenburger, a statement from April 18, 2012, claiming that "the Lower Saxony Office for the Protection of the Constitution [...] neither keeps a file nor stores any information in files," is false. In fact, data on the journalist was collected from 2006 until March 2012.
The false information provided on April 18, 2012, was preceded by a request dated February 9, 2012, for the disclosure of stored personal data. "At the time of the request, my client was still under surveillance. The lie of April 18, 2012, was clearly intended to cover up the six years of unlawful surveillance," said attorney Sven Adam. He drafted the request on behalf of the journalist and is also examining the possibility of filing an administrative lawsuit against the false information. From now on, the focus will also be on the complete reconstruction of the collected data in order to assess its extent and to verify the legality of its collection. This is particularly relevant here because journalists are protected by fundamental rights and bound by professional secrecy. "We expect the data to be disclosed in a transparent process. The fact that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is apparently deliberately evading judicial and democratic oversight is completely unacceptable for a democratic society," Adam continued.
This is not the first time a Lower Saxony security agency has denied collecting data on journalists. Under the leadership of Robert Kruse, the former Vice President of the Lower Saxony Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the Göttingen Police Directorate initially informed Kai Budler, a Göttingen radio editor and expert on right-wing extremism, in 2011 that no data was stored on him. Later, the police leadership admitted that this was not the "whole" truth. A lawsuit against this procedure has been pending before the Göttingen Administrative Court since November 2011 under file number 1 A 214/11, with a hearing scheduled for November 6, 2013.
For further questions, please contact attorney Sven Adam.
