I could easily find a lot of reporting on the "CNN leak", even in German online media, and from my understanding, we cannot, at this point in time, be sure that this leak is legit.
Right now, it's simply a news story that is very difficult to confirm.
In any case, my recommendation would be to apply "I can’t help but see some kind of special interest or agenda whenever I hear a news story now." here, too. Everything else would be a bit inconsistent.
My SO is a journalist in Germany. She's all over this. Not clear if there are any clear "scandals". Would be fantasticly German if absolutely nothing fishy shows up.
AFAICS it's not a leak, but a regular freedom of information request. And I'm not too familiar with how German media works, but if it's anything like the Dutch national broadcaster, it's not actually the states that are pursuing this, but journalists on their own accord.
"Reportedly" means that they've had a report (from Der Spiegel, who claims sources in the German police.) What you're doing here is simply lying. What it seems you want journalists to do is to report what they've heard as truth, and to disguise their sources.
Or are you saying that Der Spiegel isn't a legitimate source and shouldn't be reported on? It's unintelligible.
Don't trust obviously incentivized players like Sophos, karma-chasing security wannabes, or anyone else in this category around this kind of topic. German media is very good. Spiegel is an excellent paper.
Trust your instincts, look for second sources, and wait to follow up before you decide one way or the other.
The outlets who published this news (Volkskrant and NOS) are reliable, and even the responsible minister has more-or-less confirmed the story.
Of course, this news comes at a time when there is a (non-binding) ballot coming about dragnet surveillance here. So clearly this news is helpful for some parties.
I'm not sure what your motivation for putting "news" in quotes is — Handelsblatt is a business newspaper that's been around for 77 years. They would not assign a staff of 12 people to sort through 1,388 PDFs, 1,015 spreadsheets, 213 Powerpoint decks, image/video/audio files, and email unless they had several sources confirming the leak's legitimacy.
Seems to be quite common practice for some news outlets here in Germany. I remember that I read a court decision stating that this would for some reason be acceptable. Not sure if it really is though.
Right now, it's simply a news story that is very difficult to confirm.
In any case, my recommendation would be to apply "I can’t help but see some kind of special interest or agenda whenever I hear a news story now." here, too. Everything else would be a bit inconsistent.
reply