There is something rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark. Since Sunday, Angela Merkel must think very hard about this famous line from Hamlet. The German Chancellor is among the politicians who have, according to the press, been spied on by the United States with the help of the Danish intelligence services.
For more than two years, according to Danish public broadcaster Danmarks Radio (DR), the US National Security Agency (NSA) had been tapping into Danish telecommunications cables to spy on key officials and senior officials in Germany. , Sweden, Norway and France. The NSA used Danish assets through collaboration with the Danish military intelligence services, called FE.
Denmark, a close ally of the United States, is home to several key landing stations for submarine internet cables to and from Sweden, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. United. Using these technical means, the NSA was able to access text messages, phone calls and Internet traffic, including searches, chats and messaging services of several political figures.
« Grotesque »
For nine months, Danmarks Radio carried out a joint investigation with Le Monde, the Swedish channel SVT, the Norwegian channel NRK, the German channels NDR, WDR and the daily Suddeutsche Zeitung. The beginning of the tangle on which they fired was “Operation Dunhammer”, launched in 2014 by FE chief Thomas Ahrenkiel to determine to what extent the NSA had abused its access to the means of its Danish ally.
This verification operation is carried out by a group of hackers and analysts of the service, four people according to Le Monde, who secretly analyze who the NSA spied thanks to this collaboration. Their field of research is limited to the years 2012, 2013 and 2014. The conclusions of the operation, completed in May 2015, show that Angela Merkel, the German Foreign Minister at the time, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the then opposition leader Peer Steinbruck were spied on. We do not yet know who in France was spied on.
“It is ludicrous that friendly intelligence services actually intercept and spy on senior officials from other countries,” Steinbruck told German broadcaster ARD. “Politically, I consider this a scandal”. Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist told Swedish broadcaster SVT that he “demanded full information on these things. Norwegian Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen told NRK television that he “takes these allegations seriously”.
“It is extremely serious, we must check whether our partners in the EU, the Danes, have committed errors or mistakes in their cooperation with the American services (…). And then on the American side, see if indeed, there has been (…) the listening, the espionage of political leaders ”, declared this Monday morning Clément Beaune, French Secretary of State for European Affairs, on France Info. He did not rule out the idea of ”drawing the consequences in terms of cooperation” with the United States from this thorny affair.
Snowden’s message
Since 2015, many Danish officials have received this report which accuses the United States. Defense Minister Trine Bramsen was briefed last August. It was during this period that the head of Danish military intelligence and three other officials were fired without an official explanation. On Sunday, the minister reacted to information published in the press by way of a press release. “Systematic espionage by allies is unacceptable,” his services said.
At this point, it is not established that Denmark knew that the United States was using its surveillance system to spy on its neighbors.
This spy case, if it is confirmed, occurred during and after the Snowden affair, in 2013. NSA employee turned whistleblower, Edward Snowden then revealed the existence of a surveillance system global communications and internet campaign targeting Germans in particular and the Chancellor’s cell phone in particular. His revelations had sparked a crisis between Merkel’s Germany and Obama’s United States, which had pledged to stop everything.
Via social networks, Edward Snowden challenged the President of the United States Joe Biden. “He was deeply involved in this scandal,” he wrote.
