Missing link: Ten years of treason – Blogger at the center of a state affair

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The email came without any real warning: "There is an initial suspicion of treason." Ten years ago, these words marked the beginning of a nightmare for Markus Beckedahl and Andre Meister from the Netzpolitik.org portal, which shook the foundations of press freedom in Germany. The two journalists had revealed how the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) wanted to undermine the anonymization options of citizens on the Internet. What followed was a kind of hunt by the judiciary and government agencies for the two bloggers, who were defending the public's right to information.

Sometimes all it takes is a click of the mouse to trigger a state affair. This is exactly what happened a decade ago: Beckedahl, then editor-in-chief of Netzpolitik.org, and his colleague published a document that proved how the domestic intelligence service was threatening the digital privacy of millions of people. A few months later, on July 30, 2015, this led to the duo being surprisingly charged with treason.

The case became a lesson in how quickly the state tries to defend its power – and how important independent journalism is for a functioning democracy. How could a state secret end up in the hands of bloggers, and what scars has this affair left on the German press landscape? A reminiscence of a scandal that almost led to a catastrophe for investigative journalism.

Overriding anonymization on the internet

The secret BfV plan, which envisaged a massive expansion of online surveillance, was published online by Netzpolitik.org in April 2015. The policy paper revealed how the authority planned to undermine an anonymization service used worldwide by journalists, whistleblowers and activists. The publication caused a stir in parts of the online community and raised fears that the state was actively undermining the digital security of its citizens.

The reaction of the German government exceeded these fears. Instead of defending the secret service plans or kicking them down the road, it allowed a top-level investigation to be launched against the two journalists responsible. The charge: treason – an offense that in German legal history was almost exclusively associated with espionage cases from the Cold War. Suddenly, according to the official interpretation, Beckedahl and Meister were no longer seen as investigators, but as a threat to national security. The case quickly escalated and raised the question of whether it was still possible to report freely on the work of security agencies in Germany.

What's more, prosecutors were also investigating the reporters' potential sources. However, they were never found.

"Missing Link"

What's missing: In the fast-paced world of technology, we often don't have time to sort through all the news and background information. At the weekend, we want to take this time to follow the side paths away from the current affairs, try out other perspectives and make nuances audible.

• All our the "Missing Links"

Maaßen was in favor of "mass data collection"

The news from July 30, 2015 made waves: The Federal Prosecutor General at the time, Harald Range, had initiated criminal proceedings against the duo on suspicion of treason. This was triggered by a classified draft budget for the BfV, which Netzpolitik.org had made public in full and details of which were examined in more detail in two "investigative articles". The confidential document revealed that the secret service had 2.75 million euros at its disposal for "mass data collection" on social networks, for example. The former head of the BfV, Hans-Georg Maaßen, who was still respected in government circles at the time, filed a criminal complaint with the Berlin State Criminal Police Office after the publication. The latter forwarded the case to the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe.

The charge of treason is a sharp sword: this offense carries a prison sentence of "not less than one year". It is also accompanied by extensive surveillance powers. However, the judiciary would have had to prove that the suspects had made a state secret public "in order to disadvantage the Federal Republic of Germany or to benefit a foreign power". In doing so, they would have had to have caused "the risk of serious harm to the external security" of the state.

The last time investigators wielded this weapon against journalists was in 1962 in the "Spiegel" affair. Large sections of the public also saw this as a barely disguised attempt by the state to silence an unwanted publication.

Intimidation of journalists

"Now we are under attack," Beckedahl immediately complained in an interview with heise online. According to him, the German government may have been involved. "We see this as an attempt to intimidate our work," complained the portal founder. The real scandal is that two years after the Snowden revelations, the executive branch does not want to curb the mass surveillance of the secret services, but rather expand it. Better protection for whistleblowers is definitely needed. A positive side effect: the social debate on the topic, which the original article had not yet triggered, would now be made up for by a wider circle.

At the same time, there was much talk of a judicial farce. The German Journalists' Association (DJV), for example, criticized the Federal Public Prosecutor's actions as "completely excessive" and an attack on the freedom of the press. Konstantin von Notz, deputy leader of the Green parliamentary group, found the federal prosecutor's actions "quite outrageous". It seems that "things are out of kilter" when nothing happens legally in the case of mass illegal wiretapping of normal citizens and the entire political establishment. Journalists who reported on surveillance measures, on the other hand, were massively persecuted.

Just 48 hours after the first news of the #landesverrat affair broke, several thousand people demonstrated in Berlin against an overreaching state. Participants loudly demanded Range's resignation. The latter suspended possible executive measures such as house searches as part of the investigation a few hours after it became known, with a view to "the great good of freedom of the press and freedom of opinion".

Federal Public Prosecutor General as pawn victim

Nevertheless, there was still a great deal of resentment: posters at the demonstration read: "Maaßen to Moscow, Snowden to Berlin." Even the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) feared an intimidation effect and complained to the then Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD): the proceedings could harm journalistic work for the good of the public.

Only after a week and a half was the spook largely over. On August 10, 2015, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office declared that it had closed the investigation into the allegation altogether. The then Federal Minister of Justice, Heiko Maas (SPD), had already taken a stand against Range after he had criticized an intolerable interference in the independence of the judiciary. As a result, the Federal Public Prosecutor General had to take his hat as a pawn and go into temporary retirement. The dismissed prosecutor continued to claim that he had only done his duty. It remained largely unclear whether and to what extent Beckedahl and Meister had been the target of surveillance measures in recent months.

Five years later, Netzpolitik.org took an in-depth look at the players in the affair. Maaßen was the driving force and was the main cause of the scandal, the editorial team found in a podcast. The former CDU man came up with the crazy idea "that our two articles could be about treason and state secrets". However, he did not write the unfounded "expert opinion" from his secret service for the federal prosecutor's office himself. The whole thing was "politically approved by the Federal Ministry of the Interior", which was headed by Thomas de Maizière (CDU) at the time.

What did Interior Minister de Maizière know?

According to the report, there were indications that high-ranking officials in the interior ministry, including a state secretary, were aware of Maassen's plan to file a criminal complaint and approved it. De Maizière claimed that he only found out about the investigation at a very late stage. The head of department tried to shift responsibility primarily onto the BfV and Heiko Maas. He came under pressure and had to defy accusations that he was ducking away and not fully investigating.

In addition, employees of the Ministry of the Interior resisted the closure of the proceedings, which Heiko Maas was seeking. The differing positions between the SPD-led Ministry of Justice and the CDU-led Ministry of the Interior contributed to the escalation of the scandal.

"Ten years ago today, I was at the center of a state affair for ten days," Beckedahl recalled in an email to subscribers to his newsletter list Digitalpolitik.de on 30 June 2025, adding that "today's far-right conspiracy ideologue Maaßen" was disturbed by the report on the "secret expansion of internet surveillance". The 49-year-old still regrets it: The German government had "unfortunately seen these revelations as a feasibility study".

Streisand effect in action

"What followed were the most eventful ten days of my life," the activist looks back. Camera teams from Tagesschau and Co. were "sometimes in our office in the mornings and again in the afternoons", "because there were constantly new developments". 2,500 people took to the streets for freedom of the press. "Our donation IBAN was a trending topic on Twitter", today's X, "because our website and therefore also our donation information could not keep up with the requests from all over the world at the time", Beckedahl cannot hide a certain amount of joy about the"Streisand effect" that was triggered. "We received so much money in donations over the ten days that we were able to expand our editorial team afterwards."

"And I had to reassure my mother that she didn't need to worry," the review continues. "She had read in the teletext that it was a year to life sentence. We had only done our job."

A week and a half later, the investigation, which had been launched in May, came to an end. This meant that the editorial team still had a summer vacation, Beckedahl explains. At the same time, however, the dismissal of Ranges was a missed opportunity to "prove our innocence in court". This is because the case was constructed as a targeted attack on the independent media "by right-wing actors in positions of responsibility".

Out of the noose

The journalist concludes that he has learned a lot "about media and political mechanisms and how those in political positions of responsibility can pull themselves out of the noose". In the parliamentary investigation, "numerous inconsistencies" came to light. "But nobody cared anymore, because it was the fall of 2015 and the time of 'Wir schaffen das'". He and Meister would "unfortunately not have access to files for at least another 20 years".

According to Beckedahl, he "still hasn't lost faith in the rule of law", but rather has developed a "now more than ever" attitude. His life and his main topics changed when he left Netzpolitik.org after 20 years. Beyond state surveillance, he now sees the much greater danger of "no longer having a functioning democratic public sphere in the near future". It is therefore necessary to effectively limit "the power of Big Tech and the tech oligarchs" and to promote democratic alternatives "so that we have freedom of choice tomorrow".

The revolution eats its children? The former media revolutionary now sounds at least a little more statesmanlike. As curator of the re:publica internet conference, Beckedahl still poses the question once a year: "What kind of digital society do we want to live in?" At the same time, he sets up the Center for Digital Rights and Democracy to create publicity for his cause and "exert the necessary pressure on politicians". Also on board: the campaign organization Campact, which advocates progressive politics. As a columnist, Beckedahl also wants to stay involved in journalism.

"The person actually responsible"

The quintessence of the affair was the conflict between freedom of the press and state secrecy. However, the dispute also turned out to be a fierce political conflict between the then – and now – coalition partners CDU/CSU and SPD. It also shed light on the role of the secret services in the state. Ultimately, it became clear that the hurdles for a charge of treason in a democratic society are very high – especially when it comes to uncovering information in the public interest.

Maaßen got away largely unscathed at the time. "The person actually responsible" was the former head of the domestic secret service, who had found a compliant accomplice in the Federal Public Prosecutor General, Beckedahl railed a decade ago. Stephan Mayer, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group's interior expert at the time, however, emphasized that Maaßen had merely reacted to the fact that confidential documents kept leaking out. De Maizière stated that the head of the authority had behaved "completely correctly".

Maaßen first fell out of favor in the fall of 2018, mainly due to his controversial statements on riots against migrants in Chemnitz. While the then Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) spoke of "hunts", the head of the BfV doubted the authenticity of a corresponding video. Mayer, on the other hand, stumbled across the accusation that he had massively threatened a "Bunte" journalist with destruction and blackmailed him after several affairs in 2022. Although the CSU politician denied this, he officially resigned from his position as the party's Secretary General – for health reasons –

(nie)