14 DAY TRIAL // A German activist is now being questioned by the authorities for initiating a satirical NSA-agent-spotting walk.
Daniel Bangert came up with a fun idea to treat spies like they were an endangered animal species and created a Facebook group called the “NSA spy protection league,” Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten reports.
The first planned event was a stroll around the nearby Dagger Complex in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt. The purpose? Spotting spies.
The facility collects European data for American intelligence agencies and Bangert believes it could have been used to aid the NSA gather data on German citizens, as revealed by documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
However, a few days before the event, the young man got a phone call from a police officer who started asking questions about his plans. Soon after, a police van was parked outside his house and he got instructions to open the door.
Bangert says he was interviewed for a long time and in the end was told that if he wanted to go forward with his plans, he needed to register the walk with the police, as a public event.
However, Bangert asked for clarifications as to why they would need to do such a thing, when there was really no difference in going for a walk and meeting up for a sports event.
Later that day, he was visited once more by the police, along with a secret service agent that wanted to know what his political views were and if his co-walkers intended to act violently against the guarded Dagger Complex.
Saturday, Bangert and about 80 other participants went ahead with the walk, enjoying the nice weather and mocking the NSA, although they didn’t manage to spot any of the spies they wanted to see in their natural habitat.
Bangert says he plans other similar events in the near future.