The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) used a partnership with
Denmark’s foreign and military intelligence service to eavesdrop on
top politicians and high-ranking officials in Germany, Sweden,
Norway, and France by tapping into Danish underwater internet
cables between 2012 and 2014.
Details of the covert wiretapping were broken[1]
by Copenhagen-based public broadcaster DR over the weekend based on
interviews with nine unnamed sources, all of whom are said to have
access to classified information held by the Danish Defence
Intelligence Service (Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste or FE).
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the then-German Foreign
Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the opposition leader at the
time, Peer Steinbrück, are said to have been targeted through the
Danish-American pact.
Using the telephone numbers of politicians as search parameters,
the report alleged that the NSA “intercepted everything from text
messages to phone calls that passed through the cables on their way
to and from the phones of politicians and officials.”
The spying operation involved deploying a special technical
software called XKeyscore in a data center located at
Sandagergårdan in the city of Dragoør to search and analyze data
streams flowing in and out of the internet cables. XKeyScore[2]
is a data-retrieval system that enables unlimited surveillance of
people anywhere in the world, allowing the intelligence agency to
track individuals, read emails, and listen in on their telephone
calls and browsing histories.
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| German Chancellor Angela Merkel |
But in 2014, following concerns that the NSA had abused the
collaboration with FE to spy on targets in Denmark and its
neighbors, the Danish counterpart established a secret internal
working group with four hackers and analysts — under the codename
“Operation Dunhammer” — to examine the partnership.
The latest round of revelations[3]
is the result of a 2015 report that the working group presented to
the FE, which also found that Danish intelligence helped the U.S.
agency spy on Danish foreign and finance ministries as well as a
weapons manufacturer, ultimately forcing the government to suspend
the head of the FE and three other officials in August 2020.
U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden, who previously made public a
trove of classified information[4] revealing alleged
tapping of the German chancellor’s phone by the NSA in October
2013, accused U.S. President Joe Biden of being “deeply involved in
this scandal the first time around”. Germany dropped[5]
its investigation into the phone-tapping incident in June 2015
citing lack of evidence.
“There should be an explicit requirement for full public
disclosure not only from Denmark, but their senior partner as
well,” Snowden tweeted[6].