Media: Danish intelligence services helped American intelligence to spy on European politicians

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has spied on European politicians for years, using cooperation with the Danish intelligence services.

This was reported by the Danish public television and radio company DR, which conducted a large-scale journalistic investigation together with a number of other European media outlets.

The NSA used its collaboration with the Danish Military Intelligence Service (FE) to intercept data from Danish submarine Internet cables to spy on government leaders, high-ranking politicians and officials from Germany, Sweden, Norway and France from 2012 to 2014. Among them are German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as former German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and former German opposition leader Peer Steinbrück (both were candidates for the post of Chancellor).

According to DR, FE management has been aware of NSA espionage for several years. Almost immediately after Edward Snowden published information about the mass surveillance of world leaders by the American intelligence services, a special working group of four hackers and analysts was created in the FE, which, codenamed “Operation Dunhammer” (“Operation Rogoz”), until 2015, investigated Danish-American cooperation under the strictest secrecy to prevent the NSA from receiving news of the FE investigation. According to DR sources, an important finding in the report was that the NSA used its collaboration with the FE to spy on politicians and officials from neighboring Danish countries, something that the Danish intelligence services had no idea about at the time.

During the investigation, it turned out that the NSA used a special program to filter the necessary information from a huge database of Danish Internet cables, which was collected by Danish intelligence services for the NSA. The NSA used phone numbers as search parameters to extract data from politicians and officials. As a result, American intelligence services gained access to text messages, phone calls, and Internet traffic of their espionage targets, including their searches, chat and messaging services.

Danish Defense Minister Trine Brahmsen, who was appointed to the post in June 2019, was briefed on the findings of the classified report in August 2020.

In general, of course, strange claims to the Danish special services, which preferred cooperation with the BND, cooperation with the CIA and NSA.
The choice was made in favor of cooperation with the hegemon, rather than cooperation with the special services of an incompletely subject country. And it’s not the Germans to blame the Danes, since they did the same.
This is actually one of the main problems of the EU – it consists of incompletely subject or completely non-subject countries, which often do not even control their own special services. Therefore, all talk about the EU as a powerful subject player, which pursues an independent policy and competes with the United States, China and the Russian Federation, remains talk. The role of the EU is to ride the train of American politics.

Of course, as in the case of previous scandals of this kind, they will try to hush up and chatter this story, so as not to destroy the transatlantic partnership in the face of the threat of Russian hackers. But imagine what would happen if, say, it became known that the Danish intelligence provided the SVR or the GRU with an opportunity to eavesdrop on Merkel or Steinmeier. How would the EU or Germany react to this?

But the fact that the United States is listening to the authorities of the European “allies” and satellites must be understood – this is all for the good of freedom and democracy. And then suddenly it turns out that the German Chancellor is not a Democrat and wants to get out of American control. Therefore, the scandal in a noble family, as usual, will be limited to punishing small switchmen, like the Danish special services, who simply served the world hegemon. It is worth recalling here that the BND itself also helped the NSA keep track of the “European partners.”

The country’s federal intelligence service (BND) has spied on neighboring European countries for several years at the request of the US National Security Agency (NSA), sources say Sueddeutsche Zeitung and NDR radio station.

According to information leaks from the BND itself, the surveillance was apparently carried out on the office of the President of France, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the European Commission.
The BND monitoring service in Bad Aibling in Bavaria also monitored European companies at Washington’s request to see if they were violating sanctions, for example against Iran.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Mezieres called on the intelligence service to submit a report on this matter to the Bundestag as soon as possible.
In connection with the accusations against the BND, a scandal flares up around the figure of Thomas de Maizière himself.

As you can see, the European intelligence services are quite happy to serve the NSA and spy on their EU neighbors. When this pops up in the press, they start oohs “How is that ?!”, “This is a scandal!”, “Gentlemen, well, you can’t do that!”, Some scapegoats are fed to public opinion and so on until the next time. I am sure that even now, in addition to Denmark and Germany, the intelligence services of some EU member states are helping the United States to spy on other EU member states. Because it is impossible in the “transatlantic partnership” without surveillance, otherwise they will start scattering.

Materials used kommersant, bbc

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