During the Cold War, Berlin was one of the most spy-ridden cities in the world. Now it's the place where people go to escape government surveillance.

An international cadre of privacy advocates is settling in Germany's once-divided capital, saying they feel safer here than they do in the United States or Britain, where authorities have vowed to prosecute leakers of official secrets.

Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who was one of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's main conduits of leaked data, lives there now. So does Jacob Appelbaum, a former spokesman for WikiLeaks. They were joined earlier this month by Sarah Harrison, a top WikiLeaks activist who stayed at Snowden's side for months in Moscow and now says she fears being harassed by the government if she returns to her native Britain.