Legendary hacker group CCC files complaint against German government over surveillance

The Chaos Computer Club (CCC), one of the oldest hacker collectives in the world and still Europe’s largest, has filed a criminal complaint against the German government and heads of Germany’s intelligence agencies.

Alongside the New York-based International League for Human Rights (ILHR), the 32-year-old hacker group accuses the government and three intelligence agencies 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 in office by bearing and cooperating with the electronic surveillance of German citizens by [National Security Agency] and [Government Communications Headquarters].” The CCC wants to call Edward Snowden as a witness. It wants him to be able to travel safely to Germany, without risk of extradition to the US, from Russia, where he has been stranded since the US cancelled his passport while he was in transit to Ecuador.