News of the week - Secret service spying on journalists

There is a lot of commotion at the moment around the activities of the German secret service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND). They caused for negative headlines about their activities in Iraq already, around two months ago. And now, the agency is criticised for spying on German journalists.

Last week, the news came out that in order to track down leaks in the organisation, the BND was spying on German journalists in the nineteen eighties and nineties. A former director of the BND has been accused of giving the order to let a reporter spy on his own colleagues. This news triggered a hefty discussion in the media and among politicians, in which the possibly endangered freedom of press has been a focal point.

Experts, politicians and the BND became active immediately in an attempt to formulate new rules with which these activities can be avoided in the future. As more and more incidents came to light, the discussions about the activities of the BND, and how to control this organisation filled many newspapers and news programs on radio and TV.

I found an interesting report of a radio station, mephisto976 which claimed that they had been spying on a spying journalist. Reminds me of the MAD magazine cartoon "Spy vs Spy". What happened to those guys, anyway?