Iris P. made close friends and entered into intimate relationships with people she was at the same time spying on. As an undercover investigator “Iris Schneider” she researched the left-wing scene and the “Rote Flora” in Hamburg for years. After her media-effective exposure in 2014, two more covert investigators flew up in Hamburg within 18 months: Maria B. (camouflage name “Maria Block”) and Astrid O. (alias Astrid Schütt). They also worked with similar methods as Iris P. and were undercover in the left scene for many years. In idyllic Heidelberg, the policeman Simon B. enrolled himself at the university in 2010 to spy out left-wing students who had never dreamed of being caught in the crosshairs of state surveillance.
The protagonists impressively tell their stories from very different perspectives. Supervised people from the “Red Flora” environment in Hamburg and young students from Heidelberg, but also politically and legally responsible people, such as the former Federal Attorney General Kay Nehm, have their say.
What does surveillance, which usually seems abstract, really mean? “In the Inner Circle“, these current social questions are approached in a very personal and concrete way: What consequences does surveillance have for the individual and for society as a whole? How free can supervised people be?
