Report: Danish Secret Service Helped NSA Spy On European Politicians

The U.S. Nationwide Security Company (NSA) utilised a partnership with Denmark’s international and navy intelligence support to eavesdrop on top politicians and higher-position officers in Germany, Sweden, Norway, and France by tapping into Danish underwater internet cables between 2012 and 2014.

Particulars of the covert wiretapping have been damaged by Copenhagen-primarily based community broadcaster DR above the weekend dependent on interviews with 9 unnamed resources, all of whom are said to have access to labeled info held by the Danish Defence Intelligence Provider (Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste or FE).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the then-German International Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the opposition chief at the time, Peer Steinbrück, are reported to have been focused by way of the Danish-American pact.

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Making use of the phone figures of politicians as research parameters, the report alleged that the NSA “intercepted anything from text messages to phone calls that passed as a result of the cables on their way to and from the telephones of politicians and officials.”

The spying procedure concerned deploying a unique specialized software referred to as XKeyscore in a facts middle positioned at Sandagergårdan in the city of Dragoør to search and examine information streams flowing in and out of the internet cables. XKeyScore is a data-retrieval technique that allows limitless surveillance of individuals any place in the earth, making it possible for the intelligence company to observe folks, read through e-mail, and listen in on their phone calls and searching histories.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel

But in 2014, adhering to issues that the NSA had abused the collaboration with FE to spy on targets in Denmark and its neighbors, the Danish counterpart founded a solution inner doing work group with four hackers and analysts — below the codename “Operation Dunhammer” — to analyze the partnership.

The most up-to-date round of revelations is the consequence of a 2015 report that the functioning group introduced to the FE, which also located that Danish intelligence assisted the U.S. company spy on Danish international and finance ministries as effectively as a weapons maker, in the long run forcing the government to suspend the head of the FE and three other officials in August 2020.

U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden, who previously produced public a trove of categorised info revealing alleged tapping of the German chancellor’s phone by the NSA in October 2013, accused U.S. President Joe Biden of remaining “deeply involved in this scandal the initial time about”. Germany dropped its investigation into the phone-tapping incident in June 2015 citing absence of evidence.

“There must be an explicit necessity for entire general public disclosure not only from Denmark, but their senior husband or wife as well,” Snowden tweeted.

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