Denmark Helped NSA Spy On European Union
The Danish military intelligence agency Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste (FE), has helped the US to spy on targets across northern Europe, Danmarks Radio (DR) has claimed.
Several senior Danish officers have been suspended after a whistleblower said they enabled the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor Internet traffic in France, Sweden, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands. DR report that the US National Security Agency (NSA), tapped the German chancellor, Angela Merkel’s phone and this was disclosed by Edward Snowden in 2013.
In addition to Merkel, the NSA also spied on then-German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and former German opposition leader Peer Steinbruck. The DR probe, codenamed “Operation Dunhammer,” concluded that the NSA had eavesdropped on political leaders and officials in Germany, France, Sweden and Norway.
The investigation found the NSA had access to extensive data streams that run through internet cables to and from Denmark and intercepted everything from text messages and telephone calls to internet traffic including searches, chats and messaging services.
Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said recently that the German government had “taken note of the reporting. It is in contact with all relevant national and international authorities for clarification.”
The espionage is understood to have begun during in 2013, when Edward Snowden the former NSA contractor revealed thousands of secret documents exposing the vast US surveillance operation mounted after the 2001 9/11 attacks. Snowden has accused Joe Biden, who was US vice-president at the time, of being “deeply involved … the first time around”. Snowden has called for “full public disclosure not only from Denmark, but their senior partner as well”.
The former NSA contractor has been charged in the US with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence and is in Russia.
According to the report, the Danish government had known about the surveillance of neighbouring European countries since 2015 at the latest. In response to the Snowden revelations, Danish intelligence and IT specialists had compiled the extent to which the Danish intelligence service cooperated with the NSA in the seceret report.
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