‘The United States spied on Danish allies, including the Netherlands’

The US NSA secret service has abused a cooperation agreement with Denmark for years to spy on allies in Europe, including the Netherlands. Who pays Danish public broadcaster DR based on reports from a whistleblower.

Various sources have confirmed the news against the broadcaster. Too by Volkskrant studied the matter.

Data center

The NSA and the Danish FE military service agreed in 2008 that Denmark could operate internet cables in Denmark with the help of the Americans. In return, the NSA gained access to Internet cables to Eastern Europe. Together, they processed data in a specially designed data center near Copenhagen Airport.

“There are more such offers,” said Huib Modderkolk, journalist for Volkskrant. News OUR Radio 1. “The Americans then ask for cooperation in return for financial and technical assistance. For example, a hypermodern data center has been built on the Danish island of Amager.”

What the Danes didn’t know, however, was that the United States was also using this internet access to spy on Denmark itself and neighboring countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

This was brought to light by a former employee of the Danish FE service, who expressed his concerns about the Danish-American cooperation in internal reports. No action having been taken, he disclosed the reports to a supervisory authority. He then conducted an investigation, which led to several FE officials being placed on hold last summer.

the Netherlands

As a concrete objective in Denmark, the broadcaster DR mentions, among others, the defense company Terma, which was involved in the purchase of a new type of jet fighter. A few years ago, the choice fell on the American Joint Strike Fighter. DR does not provide concrete details on espionage in the Netherlands.

Dutch Secret Service sources are unwilling to tell de Volkskrant if they know about the case. “Everyone’s spying,” says one employee in a relative sense.

“The Netherlands is mentioned in the report, but it’s unclear what information the Americans collected,” Modderkolk says. “If you look at what Americans normally care about, you can think of economic espionage. You can imagine the Americans wanted information on everything that was going on around the Joint Strike Fighter when it was happening.”

Modderkolk takes into account that the espionage is still ongoing. “It lasted a long time, especially until 2018. It should have ended, but the question is who can search for it correctly because everything is very technical.”