The German netzpolitik treason investigation and government lawyers

There is yet another article in a major German paper about the aborted 2015 treason investigation into the netzpolitik.org bloggers.

Today, zeit online runs a long read titled "Who lied" (in German) that tries to untangle the timeline, the controversial statements made at the time by the investigating federal DA and his boss, the justice minister.

The 2015 investigation ended without indictment after the DA was fired after claiming pressure from the justice ministry amounted to attacking "the independence of the justice system".

Since then, the "external expert" tasked by the DA to study whether the publication by netzpolitik of some confidential and secret information amounted to treason has published his study. It is behind a paywall, but the salient point made since it appeared in 2016 and again in the Zeit article is that, yes, "some" of the information were state secrets, according to the law professor author of the paper.

Since the DA early on made was reluctant to press the investigation without the study by his external expert, the blogster had two questions:
1) Who was the expert
2) Does the classification "confidential" even rise to the level of state secret?

The Blogster's answer to the second question was no, German intel agency declares a "Confidential" doc a state secret. Lo and behold, this opinion matches the one by the justice ministry, according to the leaked publication of its own study into the matter.

The blogster's answer to question one was that initial statements by the DA made it very likely the "external expert" would not be a neutral one. At the time, this was pure speculation on the part of the blogster, although based on time spent working for a government in a position that involved, let's say, interesting restricted data.

As it turns out, the DA's expert was non other than a professor who teaches surveillance law and privacy law to recruits of Germany's foreign intelligence agency BND.

Netzpolitik says in this article that the gentleman even has a BND ID.

Reporting on the not-so-external expert's paper in 2016 as well as the current article in Zeit online seems focused on finding fault with the minister, accepting the not-so-external expert's paper as gospel while dismissing the justice ministry's as politically motivated.

Two posts from the time for further reading: Treason complaint and the domestic intel agency chief behind the complaint.

German readers may also enjoy the post "Bullshit Alert" that tried to explain the bureaucratic strategies of not taking responsibility and/or blame.