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Security and intelligence - in brief

01 January 2008

Germany: Social Forum infiltrated: Since its foundation in 2002, the Berlin Social Forum has been infiltrated by at least four undercover internal secret service informers who collected vast amounts of personal data on its participants. The regional intelligence service (Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz) had at least one informer who was revealed to have been active over the past 10 years in the autonomous scene in Berlin. The public protocols of the service's parliamentary oversight committee show far-reaching surveillance and spying operations on the political activists. The political and social groups affected work on issues that range from anti-corruption in the so-called "Berlin Bank scandal" that left the city bankrupt, a planned social centre, the unemployment movement and the initiative to abolish subsidised public transport. Around 20 Berlin Social Forum participants have demanded sight of their files held by the Berlin Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz. This was rejected because it might reveal the working methods and sources of the service. Now four of the participants have issued a complaint against the municipality stating: "We will not accept such an infringement on our right to privacy. [With this complaint] we want to enforce access to the files and have the deployment of informers declared unlawful. We feel obliged to set a mark against such a violation of our civil rights and against the obstruction of extra-parliamentary political engagement."

Contact: info@socialforum-berlin.org. A chronology of the infiltration can be downloaded at: http://www.soziales-berlin.de/sfb/?p=26