Head of Danish intelligence suspended after whistleblowers hand over information | Hacker News Reader

Head of Danish intelligence suspended after whistleblowers hand over information

bbc.com

143 pointsHasknewbie116 comments

I applaud the Danish Government and I wish other countries politicians would have the courage to respect the origins of their mandate to govern. And before this descends in to ‘what-about-isms’ I can name at least 5 countries whose over-sight bodies should pay attention.

"The fact that the head of the Danish Military Intelligence Service is a willing participant in circumventing the agency tasked with holding his own intelligence service legally accountable is mind-blowing and must be deeply concerning to the minister."

The usual way this works, is that there is noise. Some smack on the hand, maybe a few sacrices. Noise goes away.

Military Intelligence goes back to doing whatever they like with a shared understanding from those in power (yet not expressed as such).

The watchdog, the article refers to, Tilsynet med Efterretningstjenesterne, was created on 1 January 2014 as a result of the Snowden leaks in 2013. It is government run, but completely independent from the intelligence agencies and members are appointed by a committee in parliament (except the chairman, who must be a judge on the supreme court).

That is actually pretty astonishing .. so it was set up to catch the cabalist spy empire that Snowden warned about, and it seems it has snared something .. one can only hope this will be prosecuted in the public sphere.

There is of course much they cannot talk about because it is classified, but they release a report each year the one up to 2018 are available in English here https://www.tet.dk/redegorelser/?lang=en

High Court judge, not that it makes a huge difference.

The high Court is the supreme court in Denmark so the difference is only in the name.

> According to local media, the Defence Intelligence Service is accused of failing to investigate allegations of espionage in the armed services. It has also been accused of obtaining and passing on information about Danish citizens.

The secret intelligence services in your country are not working for you or your safety, and this is not a secret. If you believe so you have not been following the news the last thirty years (before that they had a scape goat for their behaviour).

I think it would be possible for intelligence services to obtain and pass on information about a citizen while still trying to work for the overall safety of the country.

Nope, it is not their job. If a citizen is accused in a crime, there are other institutions tasked with the investigation. Sometimes this is the counterintelligence, sometimes this is the police. However, breaking the law and actively avoiding legal supervision is a crime which makes them criminals.

I'd imagine intelligence would be about crimes yet to take place, ie people planning a terrorist attack (is that a crime in itself?)

Generally, for every crime x, the act of planning x is a crime known as "conspiracy to commit x"

Not for a crime planned by one person alone.

Well, they are accused of not investigating possible espionage in their own army. Lacking details, it is really hard to say what is the exact situation, but obviously they are not interested in preventing crimes.

The community here is understandably very anti-surveillance, but you're right about the purpose of intelligence.

When we talk about intelligence and counter-terrorism, it's more about preventing terrorist attacks than reacting to them.

The UK is more open with statistics than the US — their most senior counter-terrorism officer claims that they foiled 22 terrorist attacks from March 2017 to September 2019 [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/sep/09/foiled-terro...

This would generally be the function of a counter-intelligence or internal (criminal) investigation group.

In the US that would be handled by the FBI -- they're legally the only ones that can spy on citizens in in the US. They work hand-in-glove with other agencies, but they own domestic.

A non-US example would be Russia, where the FSB (which Putin used to be the head of) handles internal investigations and counterintelligence like the FBI, while the SVR handles foreign intelligence. Or MI5 vs MI6 in the UK, etc.

Ok so we have to play by the rules to the absolute T. But our adversaries like China/Russia can play dirty and anyway they want, because you say justice is absolute and black and white. Great.

Have you ever thought that maybe there was a reason for those rules to be imposed? It is really easy to put on the kindergarten act and to say that if the other side did it first, then it is okay. However, what is the difference between you and the other side then? The state has rather enormous power as it is and it is quite able to use it without letting the power trips of random individuals.

If you understand these programs they have... they do a meta-analysis of huge amounts of data. So while they use your data, there isn’t somebody personally looking at your data.

Whereas China/Russia has people tracking dissidents etc.

Not even in the same realm.

Im saying give a more nuanced legal approach so we can defend ourselves.

If it was just about meta data, maybe. However, the US (I accept that we are talking them now) have the lovely habit of imprisoning and torturing people on the bases of suspicion, without a due process, and without oversight or consequences for the fuckups. You see, the rules are exactly for the situations when some innocent bastard gets between the teeth of the machine and some middle manager orders for the body to be buried because murders look bad in the quarterly performance review.

> Whereas China/Russia has people tracking dissidents etc.

If you think the USA doesn't track dissidents you've been walking around with your eyes and ears shut.

Comparing what the US does to citizens to what Russia/China do is laughable and childish.

What, like, tear gas people for a photo op in front of a church the cunt ain't never even been in?

Are you asserting that that’s a bad thing?

It depends on who is doing the tracking and who the dissidents are. I think most will agree it’s in the interest of the country to track “dissidents” who are bent on inciting “race” wars and so on. Violent anarchists probably also get in that list. Basically any seriously credible threat to the state and its citizens.

Do you believe it is reasonable to draw a distinction between dissident and criminal?

In many aspects yes but you also don’t want surprises. Most members of those groups haven’t been caught doing criminal activity; does that mean you ignore them because they haven’t struck.

If you hear rumblings about a heist it makes sense to monitor the conspirators even if they have not yet done the heist.

Conspiracy to commit crime is already a crime.

Being a dissident, not so much.

It seems that you’re implying that allowing intelligence agencies unlimited discretion in spying on their own populations is necessary in order to “win” against hostile foreign powers.

This seems like a fairly extraordinary claim that you haven’t backed with either evidence or logic.

I never said unlimited. Limited would be fine, enough to even the field.

How does spying on your own citizens “even the field”?

If these rules are not followed, then what is the difference between us, Russia, and others? The amount of propaganda coming from Washington?

The rules are too strict. Have reasonable rules. Otherwise enemies exploit your Achilles heel.

If you want to die on the hill of a subjective concept of morality, fine. But I don’t and I don’t think most do.

The US point of view is more concerned about making enemies than solving problems. This is the Achilles heel of this country. For all its problems, the Chinese are engaged in the right approach: make alliances instead of war and improve their economy.

There’s a fair argument to be made here, but I think you’re missing the parent’s point. It’s not that it’s impossible for someone to obtain and pass on information while working for the overall safety of the nation, but rather they’re arguing that secret intelligence agencies inherently do not serve the overall safety of their own countries.

Your rhetoric is simplistic and unhelpful. Isn't it funny how little attention is paid to terrorist attacks that don't happen?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_thwarted_Islamic_terro...

https://www.google.com/search?q=ring+wing+terror+plot+foiled...

There's a balance here. To be free, we have to protect ourselves from plots like these, otherwise we would live in fear. At the same time, this protection itself threatens other kinds of freedom, like the freedom from surveillance and interference by our own governments. We have to be cognizant of this balance. We need whistle-blowers, watchdogs, and so on. But we also need state intelligence.

Wow, that's a pretty irresponsible list for an encyclopedia. I'd expect a certain standard of evidence for assertions of thwarted plots, but there seems to be little if any presented.

When I read about western intelligence agencies, one can't help but look at the last decade or so and ask, what was it they said their job was again, specifically?

I was surprised to find reading a book called Intelligence in an Insecure World[0] that the general consensus amongst intelligence studies scholars is apparently that there's no empirical evidence for the effectiveness of intelligence work and there probably never will be (although I read the book some time ago so I might be misremembering it).

[0] https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Intelligence+in+An+Insecure+Worl...

For those of us who haven't read the book, could you summarize please?

Anecdotally that claim seems untrue. Intelligence services have had a tangible effect on world history.[1][2][3]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann#Capture

It looks like both of the authors are academics with no actual experience in intelligence work. Considering how much intelligence work is classified and non-public, their conclusion sounds like the equivalent of claiming that there is no proof IT people are necessary because your computer works.

That's whatever the opposite of "appeal to authority" is. For starters there's a lot determined researchers can learn from declassified information about old ops and public information about current budgets and so on. And even if they worked in intelligence they wouldn't be able to publish anything classified.

What intrigues me is the claim "intelligence work is never useful". This is easily falsifiable with Wikipedia, which I assume even university professors deign to glance at on occasion. It's such a weird statement to make I feel like there's either more or GGP is mis-remembering something important from the book.

> Intelligence services have had a tangible effect on world history.[1][2][3]

You forgot the most important:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway

>Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare",[9] [...] Most significantly, American cryptographers were able to determine the date and location of the planned attack, enabling the forewarned U.S. Navy to prepare its own ambush.

Best of all: it was (partially) a chosen plaintext attack!

> Admiral Nimitz had one critical advantage: US cryptanalysts had partially broken the Japanese Navy's JN-25b code. Since early 1942, the US had been decoding messages stating that there would soon be an operation at objective "AF". It was initially not known where "AF" was, but Commander Joseph Rochefort and his team at Station HYPO were able to confirm that it was Midway: Captain Wilfred Holmes devised a ruse of telling the base at Midway (by secure undersea cable) to broadcast an uncoded radio message stating that Midway's water purification system had broken down. Within 24 hours, the code breakers picked up a Japanese message that "AF was short on water". No Japanese radio operators who intercepted the message seemed concerned that the Americans were broadcasting uncoded that a major naval installation close to the Japanese threat ring was having a water shortage, which could have tipped off Japanese intelligence officers that it was a deliberate attempt at deception.

Good one. There are many more, I'm sure.

The Dutch intelligence service helped Britain crack Argentinian crypto during the Falklands War.

Tangible and in the national interest yes, but not necessarily in the interest of the general public. E.g. the interception of an offer from Siemens (Germany) for a high speed rail system for South Korea intercepted by the French intelligence, see https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&r... (look for TGV)

That makes sense, because barred the possibility of putting all the population in jail, there will always be people with the ability to do harm to others that cannot be stopped by so-called intelligence. 99% of what they do is to infringe on personal freedoms and lobbying the government for more money.

Hm maybe it is to protect against China/Russia/Iran/NK stealing our military secrets, you know those ones that protect you and your family from being absorbed into an authoritarian system where you have zero voting rights?

They can steal our secrets because the NSA couldn’t keep its own Crown Jewels secret, they were leaked by Shadow Brokers and subsequently used by the US’ enemies to infiltrate US civilian systems. In a very real sense, we would be safer against the Russians if the NSA didn’t exist.

Can intelligence agencies be the case of "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." (A line from Futurama)?

Sure, that would be possible in an abstract tabula rasa sense, if we had no awareness at all of the last seven decades. At this point, we've seen quite enough evidence to conclude that they mostly do wrong, and occasionally we find out about it. Mike Pompeo and James Clapper are typical "intelligence officials", which means that there are much worse actors lurking deep in those organizations.

"Cryptonomicon", a Neal Stephenson novel, delves into the idea that you can mask your intelligence gathering by failing to act on it within some statistical margin. Numerous other ideas are explored.

You only need to look into the Danish investigation of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 to know, if anyone in the intelligence community, they know their stuff.

You’re confusing Dutch with Danish. MH17 was investigated by the Dutch :)

Can you expand on that, it sounds interesting

Exactly the place to look at to understand they don't

Let's start a global program for shifting intelligence funding to schools. Education is a better defense than mass surveillance.

Yeah I’m sure when the West abdicates intelligence funding and increases education, the anti-west axis forming/formed will come in by the campfire and sing kumbaya with you.

Number of people working for intelligence services in my country: around 2000.

Number of people working in education: 342100.

It won't make a dent.

What are the budgets?

Intelligence: €150M - €250M (estimates are bit unclear) Education: € 30B

That sounds intelligent: they must be well educated already!

Mass deportations are a simpler solution. Crime and welfare use are disproportionately linked to non-citizens from specific regions and countries.

Intelligence agencies in Nordic countries are really small, just few hundreds people per agency and limited budgets. Even if they go rouge, what they can do is limited. Number of people in the field is even smaller. This creates problems of it's own because their counterparts quickly learn to recognize their faces.

For comparison, FBI Counterintelligence Division alone has 1-2 people per 10,000 Americans. Add different intelligence and surveillance agencies under DHS and others to that list and it's easy to see that the US has insane amount of domestic surveillance manpower per capita.

The US is invading, bombing or financing a civil war in a random country every few years, while Denmark are at the corner of the map. Are you going to compare the threat models of the two?

Thereat model to their own citizens, yes.

Yeah .. but we (I'm Danish by citizenship) don't apologize because our newspaper prints satirical drawings of some prophet.

The threat model is different. No terrorist attacks of serious kind were performed as of yet but plans were found for terrorist attacks in Copenhagen. Something akin to what happened in Germany. The threat seem real.

Did the police have to break the law to stop those attacks? Because the question is not if a country should have a counterintelligence service, but what legal tools it should be given, whether it should be under judicial control when using them, and how to control it so that it does not abuse the powers (both legal and physical) it is given.

I don't think so. I think the info was obtained from our allies which dig it up somewhere in the middle East.

>>Even if they go rouge, what they can do is limited.

I expect you meant "go rogue" but "go rouge", as in red/communist/russian, also works in the context.

On the flip side intelligence also uncovers huge networks of despicable people.

https://www.thelocal.dk/20161021/danish-man-ran-scandinavian...

Well done!

Could you imagine a government agency spying on its own citizens? In America that would be illegal and unconstitutional.

We would have to immediately defund that agency.

>Could you imagine a government agency spying on its own citizens? In America that would be illegal and unconstitutional.

I thought that was the case in most countries, so they get around it by getting their buddies to do it for them, hence five-eyes (or n-eyes).

The sentiment was that the agencies would only look outward, but in reality the problem is mostly insider threat.

How would they track all the white supremacists?

is this a joke ? ever heard of the NSA ?

“Kids detect sarcasm at about age 6, but don’t begin to see the intended humour until around age 10,” - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070803141811.h...

> Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied. The original statement, by Nathan Poe, read:

> Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article.

How old was Nathan Poe when he wrote that?

;)

Imagine a country where you have zero power to elect officials and have no constitution, so you could never have oversight over it.

Oh wait, that’s the system (via China/Russia) that our intelligence agencies are helping protect us against.

Do you legitimately believe that US intelligence agencies are the bulwark against authoritarian government in the US?

No, I meant they are part of the bulwark against countries like China/Russia taking over the world.

This is a seriously nutty belief, that you claim to have. This year the increase in our military spending was bigger than Russia's entire military spending. We could cut our military budget in half and still dwarf China's.

Hah, what is funny is that you think military spending amounts means much at all.

First of all, there’s asymmetrical warfare. Russia’s investment in cyber, hypersonic, etc.

China’s investment in medium range missiles to create access denial for the US in the pacific.

Plus factor in that the US budget is bloated because of these corrupt fat cat defense industry companies, huge waste, etc...

Given US foreign and economic policy intent on dominating every corner of the planet [0] and the universe [1], could you blame China, Russia, or any other country for doing everything they can to reach parity with the US?

Giving up all your rights in the name of endless wars on everything is a path to a sad ending for the US and the world.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-spectrum_dominance

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarisation_of_space#United...

...Russia...China...

Wow their military must be much smarter than ours. Or perhaps they are held responsible for their performance?

...US budget is bloated because of these corrupt fat cat defense industry companies, huge waste, etc...

So... does all of this argue for more or less civilian oversight?

Lol who holds them responsible? Not civilians, I can assure you.

They’re just more nimble because they’re top-down leadership. Not as good at expressing the people’s will, but more nimble at implementing autocratic decisions.

Wait, "expressing the people’s will"? Who in this conversation does anything like that? Certainly not USA. We didn't vote for spending three-quarters-billion-dollars-a-year on a military that hasn't accomplished anything in over five decades. Neither did we vote to spend the untold hundreds of billions we spend "in the black budget" on the even less effective unsupervised services. The last four presidents have run for office promising less militarism, but not a single one has delivered on that promise. "People's will", what a joke.

  s/three-quarters-billion-dollars-a-year/three-quarters-trillion-dollars-a-year/

Why is that so hard to type?

Our armed forces are safeguarding Americans from a worldwide foe that could show up anywhere on the globe.

To beat the world, we have to outspend the rest of the world combined on defense.

Perhaps the greatest danger to American defense is insider threats. If the looming danger from insider threats is stark enough, we will absolutely need to find a way to outspend ourselves on defense.

This safeguarding is likely what is keeping us in danger. We don't have to pretend we are policing the world anymore, enough time has gone by to be able to say it's mainly modern day imperialism. We can work on our defense on this side of the planet without outlining 'the enemy' with outposts and guns pointed at them for 'our defense'.

Obviously GP is ironic and really agrees with you. "Outspend ourselves"? Does this phrase mean anything? Not even the war pigs are this silly.

And I was agreeing with them, just translating it into my own rant. Excuse me, but when I hear you smarties(not you specifically, threads lately in general) picking up pitchforks in the name of freedom, you will hear the silly squeal. And unfortunately, the 'war pigs' seem to be the sharpest in the shed by far.

From virtually everyone else's perspective the US is the worldwide foe.

Your foreign policy has had horrendous effects on the world for the last 50+ years.

Lol what a trite and uncritical comment.

Yes I’m sure we are the foes of Europe (30 countries), of South Korea, Japan, Philippines, Australia, NZ.

Of Brazil, Mexico, the Carib, Colombia.

Georgia.

The list goes on and on. Countries in our sphere are doing very well. They have democratic governments.

Yes there are some stupid foreign policies I abhor as much as you. So if something is wrong a few times, it’s completely evil? Laughable. Apply that logic to the rest of the world and see what you get.

The fewest number of deaths per capita from war that the world has ever seen over a 50 year period?

I have zero power to elect officials in both China/Russia and the US...

PRC and Russia both have constitutions...

And they’re both worth the paper they’re written on, esp PRC. It’s basically a secretive ruling cabal.

And now you're into subjective territory where it's easy to condemn due to inexperience with their propaganda. I'll point out your own by reminding you that you started off with an assertion that they did not have constitutions at all, as if constitutions are some magic thing that assures freedom.

My suggestion is that it's better to focus on the myths and failings of your own government, as they directly affect you.

I'd take these allegations with several grains of salt. This smells (stinks) of politics.

It shouldn't. There's no political gain for any of the major parties. It also happens after several, relatively minor, cases of corruption and nepotism in the military and intelligence services (former high-ranking official just got 3months prison today). It stinks mostly of a corruption and several decades of lack of proper oversight

What kind of targets is he accused of targetting?

Danish citizens which is only allowed to be done by the police. And withholding of information to be reported.

Is it related to that Iranian kidnapping plot that led to Denmark being shut down for a while the other year? (Only because it's the most dramatic thing to happen there in a bunch of years, that would be related to the intelligence service.)

The grounds of accusation are kept secret as it is based on confidential information.

Are there "kinds" that are not covered by the law and are more okay to have their rights abused?

The intelligence agency involved here is the military intelligence as opposed to the police intelligence. Think CIA vs FBI.

The military intelligence are allowed to do whatever it takes to defend against foreign powers, but they are not allowed to gather intelligence on Danish citizens. If they uncover something that involved danish citizens or internal threats in the course of their work they are supposed to hand it over to the police intelligence service. As I understand part of the scandal is that this has not happened, compounded by active measures to cover things up towards the oversight committee.

I have no idea (I'm Swedish, not Danish) what all of this is about. That's why I'm asking. I don't like what you're implying.

Well, the article says that they are accused of spying on danish citizens and providing the results to foreign entities without authorization or legal base. You ask what were the targets implying that it matters and some "targets" are not as equal as others. Sorry if I've gotten you wrong.

I checked https://www.reddit.com/r/Denmark/comments/ifkfsi/tre_ledende... - seems like noone really understands what's going on. Internal drama?

If you can read Danish you see what information the public have been given here https://www.tet.dk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/PRESSEMEDDELEL...

Here are the points I think are highlights:

> That FE has on several occasions since the Authority's establishment in 2014 and until the summer of 2020 - in connection with, among other things, the Authority's specific inspections and meetings with the head of FE - has withheld key and crucial information for the Authority and given the Authority incorrect information about the service's collection and disclosure.

> That there is an inappropriate culture of legality in FE's management and parts of the service, where the service's possible unjustified activities or inappropriate circumstances are shelved, including by failing to inform the supervisory authority of matters relevant to its control.

> The submitted material indicates that FE, prior to the establishment of the Authority in 2014, has initiated operational activities in violation of Danish law, including by obtaining and passing on a significant amount of information about Danish citizens.

> That FE has unjustifiably processed information about an employee in the supervision. (TET)

You are absolutely correct.

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