Staff of RT’s video agency Ruptly were detained for several hours by Berlin police while filming the Anonymous 'United Stasi of America' action. Despite the crew having official permission to work in the area, police attempted to confiscate the footage.
The reporters were searched and detained for two hours. Police
released the Ruptly team without charges as they found no grounds
to seize the memory card with the video.
On July 14, Anonymous activists protested government surveillance
programs by beaming giant words reading 'United Stasi of America'
across the US embassy wall near the Brandenburg Gate in central
Berlin.
The projected note – up to three meters high – made reference to
the former East German secret police, the Stasi.
The projection came from the car parked across the embassy and
only lasted for two minutes. After that, three Anonymous
activists packed up and left the scene.
However, a handful of police proceeded to detain the journalists
filming on location.
“The police considered them first as suspects and then as
Anonymous conspirators,” Ruptly said.
"Staffers of Ruptly video agency were shooting Anonymous
actions and they had all the necessary work permits and
accreditation. In this case, any fact of confiscation is illegal,
so the Berlin police failed to remove our stuff," said
Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief.
In June, German magazine Der Spiegel reported that the US combs through half
a billion German phone calls, emails and text messages each
month, and has classified Germany on the same target level as
China.
Back then Markus Ferber, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's
Bavarian sister party and member of the European Parliament,
accused Washington of using "American-style Stasi
methods," thus comparing them to the communist East Germany’s
much-dreaded Ministry for State Security (Stasi).
The Stasi secret police employed a network of informants that
served as watchdogs against any forms of government
dissent. Spies reported the actions of friends and
relatives, drilled holes into apartments and hotel rooms to film
citizens with hidden cameras, and infiltrated schools and
universities. In some cases, spouses and family members spied on
each other.