Danish intelligence chief held over suspected info leaks, local media report
reuters.com
reuters.com
The charges are still secret, but appears to be related to this story:
Danish secret service helped US spy on Germany's Angela Merkel: report
https://www.dw.com/en/danish-secret-service-helped-us-spy-on...
>Danish intelligence also helped the US agency to spy on the Danish foreign and finance ministries as well as a Danish weapons manufacturer. The FE also cooperated with the NSA on spying operations against the US government itself.
https://www.dw.com/en/danish-secret-service-helped-us-spy-on...
The NSA made the Danish FE spy on both the Danish and US government. That is wild.
It’s long be standard practice for intelligence agencies in 5/9 Eyes to ask each other to spy on the others citizens when it would be illegal to do so themselves.
The NSA for example would find it difficult to spy on Senators, this is there way around it. And there is no denying there has be a reasonable cause to in the last four years.
If there's actually reasonable cause go to a court, get a warrant and investigate.
Isn't this the same as saying that you don't think there should be fundamental rights for people you don't agree with?
Having said all that, I’m no expert, I’m just a John Le Carre fan.
Yea who needs laws when we can just instate shadow government agencies with shadow budgets and their own set of alternative laws.
That is exactly what you are suggesting. These rules should not be "bent" because there are legal mechanisms to investigate that are being blatantly bypassed to make things easier
Second, my personal opinion on how intelligent agency’s operate is irrelevant. I am only trying to inform on my understanding how they sometimes operate in relation to the original far more interesting article.
Checks and balances are obviously essential and are the priority in all cases.
Finally, while I don’t believe in the boogie man, people, anyone, can be bad.
No it wasn't. Unless you could see what I typed into the web form before I hit submit.
>> while I don’t believe in the boogie man
Well you should. They're here. They are the NSA, the FBI, the CIA, and other government agencies that regularly operate out of bounds of legality. If the horrible things that they have done and continue to do don't shock you and create the desire for their radical change or elimination entirely, you are stupid or malicious.
I’m not American and so have little interest in their internal politics other than as a spectator.
That's why we should all care
Don't like it? Don't apply for a job that requires a clearance.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-spy...
Yes there is. The US has domestic intelligence agencies, why should the NSA be engaging in domestic intelligence when it's explicitly not their mandate?
This goes against the actual agreements in place, where they have to treat the other citizens as their countries do.
A Danish arms manufacturer planning on doing a deal with Gaddaffi during sanctions era?
A member of the White House in Europe to meet with Russian contacts, off his calendar, in the middle of an investigation into possible illicit ties between the White House and Russia?
The Head of US Olympics suspected of taking of bribes, having meeting with Addidas in Copenhagen with big money changing hands?
There are plenty of things like that going on.
Although not Westerners against Chinese (my kids are welcome to play with the Chinese kids next door and the Chinese next door are just as welcome as any other neighbor to a garden party).
But it should be the world against crimes against humanity.
And then we Westerners will also have to clean up our own systems; that is just as important, but a smaller task.
We don't know how many people have died as a direct result of Chinese internal policies and we likely never will. They certainly cannot be believed with any statements about human rights, imprisonment, or executions on any level. I would likely extend that to education due to rampant cheating and the interests of the central government (to look as good as possible regardless of the facts), but that is a separate conversation.
At the current rate, all ~13 million Uighurs in mainland China will effectively cease to exist in a generation or three. They'll still exist in genetic terms, but their culture will have been erased except for small pockets of holdouts, who will be hunted down and assimilated/imprisoned. This isn't to minimize the death toll of the War on Terror, but rather to not allow seriously bad actors to escape the scrutiny they deserve.
They are being culturally blunted and they will likely eventually be bred out of being a distinct group.
https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-we... https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-pr... https://www.voanews.com/a/east-asia-pacific_voa-news-china_c... https://share.america.gov/china-coerces-uyghur-women-into-un...
The latter two links are indeed .gov propaganda outlets, but their reporting on this issue is accurate. It's very easy to find more sources.
Dannebro reads like a title a fraternity would give you
If anyone's seen Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz (1969), that's where they filmed the opening scene where the KGB pursues the Soviet defector through central Copenhagen. The porcelain factory in the film is (was?) the real-life company's ceramics factory.
Duly noted.
Also Denmark has been a US protectorate for quite a while for reasons (e.g. Thule airforce base)
A example from this issue would be how NSA used Danish intelligence to bypass restrictions placed by Congress.
The military tries hard to achieve this kind of alignment but even there it can be hard, a good historical example is Japanese Navy and army during second world war .
- in august he had been put on administrative leave
- he was imprisoned on the 9th of december
- on the 13th of december an independant commission set up by parliament (consisting of three judges) exponerated everyone implicated in this case
- on the 14th of december, the minister of defence welcomed him back to work
- today, 10th of january the public learned for the first time that he was imprisoned and still is imprisoned.
So even though he was exonerated by the independent commitee AND welcomed back by the minister, he is actually in prison. Very strange situation, makes we wonder if there are aspects of the case the public does not know about, or if someone has made an enormous error.
I assume this is a typo for exonerated?
The journalists aren’t legally required to allow themselfs to be questioned. That’s only if the case goes to court, but no one is refusing to testify in that case, because then the charges are public and a judge is present.
I will also guess that this chief is probably on the ethically correct side of the situation.
An interesting case indeed. I hope more info surfaces. We know things are bad, question is in what exact ways. Maybe something of substance will trickle down to us mortals.
Because I see your conclusion only as a vague possible hypothesis among many other options.
And intelligence services are by default usually into very grey, if not dark areas of ethics. So all this might just as well be an internal power struggle of which the public will only get to view a very distorted picture, of what was actually going on.
Intelligence agencies can only wish they were able to distort the picture for the public reliably, and frequently mess things up.
So the most likely explanation is the obvious, apparent one: He was shocked at the extent of the friendly spying, and leaked it to the media once it became clear it would be buried.
The interesting thing is how Denmark will handle this.
Actually several (apparently unrelated) stories have been leaked. One story about an intelligence operative who have been jailed for joining ISIS undercover, and one about a potential security threat from children of ISIS-supporters in camps in Syria. The one about NSA mad a bigger splash outside of Denmark, but the other cases where arguably more embarrassing for the Danish government.
No specifics, and I doubt that there will ever be any more unclassified specifics.
That said, this is SOP for some sectors of the world.
> Because I see your conclusion only as a vague possible hypothesis among many other options.
Sure. That is probably how it will remain.
> And intelligence services are by default usually into very grey, if not dark areas of ethics.
Yep.
> So all this might just as well be an internal power struggle of which the public will only get to view a very distorted picture, of what was actually going on.
Yep.
Often the identity of the person involved is also secret, but that is to protected that person, in case he or she is innocent. Such orders are always removed when the person is found guilty (to my knowledge anyway).
I think charges have to be revealed when the actual proceedings start, and of course the defendant and their lawyers know.
Source:
https://news.microsoft.com/da-dk/2020/12/07/microsoft-invest...
Seems to me like yet another example of companies successfully lobbying governments to buy unnecessary things.
"Microsoft's data center region will ensure the Armed Forces access to IT and data capacity that we cannot develop ourselves. Many of the solutions we depend on in the future - including solutions based on artificial intelligence - require computing power that is only possible using cloud solutions. I therefore look forward to the collaboration with Microsoft in relation to the specific opportunities that the new data center region opens up for the Armed Forces, ”says Kristian Vengsgaard, Chief Information Officer in the Armed Forces"
Since WW2 Denmark has aligned itself with the US. This has been the consensus since then across all the major parties (Conservatives, Liberals, Social-Liberals and Social-Democratic (with a noteworthy exception[1])).
The stance has during all those years from time to time been challenged by fringe parties like the Communist Party and the far-right Progress Party (who suggested that the Danish defence budget should be cut entirely and replaced with a answering machine saying "we surrender" in Russian).
The Danish populace has not always wanted this "hard alignment". As an example, Denmark would not allow American bases in Denmark (contrary to UK, Germany, etc). But we allowed the Americans to build an Airforce Base at Thule on Greenland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Air_Base).
The Social-Democratic prime ministers also communicated publicly, that Denmark would not allow nuclear weapons in peacetime. Yet, it was communicated to the American ambassador in 1960 that Denmark would ignore it, if US had nuclear weapons at Thule (as long as they didn't tell anyone). All was well until 1968 when an American B-52 crashes near Thule with thermonuclear bombs on board. It is worth noting that English wikipedia does not have an account of the incident, but the Danish does: https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule-sagen_(1968)
Well, the cold war "won" and after 1990s aligned even more with the US. In the late 90s the previously state-owned TeleDanmark company (telephony monopoly) was privatized and sold to the American company Ameritech beginning in 1997.
Around the same time the Americans approached the Danish politicians again. And a deal similar to the nuclear weapons on Greenland was reached: "You're allowed to use our infrastructure to spy on people, but we're not going to make it official". As the same time Denmark was in "the coalition of the willing" sending troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, it is worth noting, that this is not a partisan issue within the Danish political elite. We've had Conservative, Liberal and Social-Democratic Ministers of Defence the last twenty years and they have all been briefed about this cooperation. The same goes for their permanent secretaries.
Snowden revealed a lot about this cooperation back in 2015. The "nifty" part from the American perspective is, that they can tell the Danish "We won't spy on Danish people, only foreigners". They then approach Britain and says: "We won't spy on British people, only foreigners". The do the same with Norway, The Netherlands etc. and... well, suddenly they're able to spy on all Europeans. Denmark has a great position for spying because a lot of traffic from Eastern Europe travels through Denmark (and Sweden, but they are not part of NATO). Also, hearsay is that the spying on German Chancellor Merkel was done from Denmark.
Around 2014 the Danish politicians decided to establish "Tilsynet med EfterretningsTjenesterne" (TET) aka. "Supervisory Authority on the Intelligence Agencies" to keep an eye on the intelligence agencies replacing some toothless organisation that previously had the task.
In 2020 TET made a press release: "We cannot get the information we require from the intelligence agencies". The Minister of Defence at this time is Trine Bramsen, who is most known for complaining about nerds being hard to approach and understand for her friends and it is impossible to understand why they all wear white tennis socks (I kid you not: https://www.version2.dk/blog/opraab-til-it-noerderne-smid-te... - use Google translate for a cringe experience).
She is totally clueless.
But that was great in this situation, because as any politician she wants to show how she can solve issues in a resolute manner. So she sends home a bunch of civil servants (including head of the Defence Intelligence Agency, a previous permanent secretary, etc. The top brass). Apparently she didn't get (or understand) the verbal memo about: "Don't ask and don't tell about our cooperation with the Americans".
Like an elephant in a porcelain store.
And retired Ministers of Defence were all gunning at her for "ruining the cooperation with our greatest allies" etc. They, of course, do not want it to be revealed, that they had this information.
Well. Time passes. And just before Christmas it was announced that the matter has been investigated. The public are not allowed to hear, what has been investigated. Or who. But the conclusion is that the intelligence agencies has done nothing wrong. Nothing to see here. Move along.
A couple of days later, the directors (not the editors!) at a couple of major newspapers are called to a meeting with the head of the Police Intelligence Agency and the Defence Military Agency (temp head) where they are politely told: "We just want to let you know, that harming our cooperation with foreign powers carry a 12 year sentence" (it's a very long sentence in Danish terms).
The Police Intelligence Agency has been playing "whack a mole", literally, for some time: Who leaked to TET? Who leaked to the press?
We are currently in a situation, where the state-sponsored national Danish broadcaster (DR) is reporting, that the Police Intelligence Agency (PET) has been surveilling, including wire-tapping, the head of the Defence Intelligence Agency: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/hemmelig-pet-taskforce-afl... (again, Google translate).
I hope this provides some context. There has since the 1960s been an understanding in the top of Danish society that "The Americans are our friends, we cannot say 'no'.". Even if the Danish population has been kept in the dark. A clueless Minister of Defence by accident kicks the hornet's nest and now somebody must take the fall. But be aware that they're all in on it. No minister (left or right) is innocent and the same goes for the civil servants at the very top.
But it is not all bad! Whereas Germany was earlier our primary trading partner, Denmark nowadays export more to the US than to our neighbouring country. A few dead soldiers and no privacy for your population was totally worth it.
[1] During the 1980s some parts of the Social-Democrats wanted Denmark to re-align. This caused the so-called "footnote politic". Whenever NATO wanted to take some initiative, the Danish foreign minister had to negotiate footnotes saying "Denmark is not part of this and that".
It supports my assertion that the Danish politicians "indicated" something to the Americans and told the Danish public something else:
" Denmark's nuclear-free zone policy originated in 1957, when the coalition government decided in the lead-up to the Paris NATO summit not to stockpile nuclear weapons on its soil in peacetime.[77][78] The presence of the bomber in Greenland airspace in 1968 therefore triggered public suspicions and accusations that the policy was being violated.
[...]
The report blamed Danish Prime Minister H. C. Hansen for intentionally introducing ambiguity in the Danish–U.S. security agreement: he was not asked about, nor did he mention, the official Danish nuclear policy when meeting with the United States ambassador in 1957 to discuss Thule Air Base. Hansen followed up the discussion with an infamous letter pointing out that the issue of "supplies of munition of a special kind" was not raised during the discussion, but that he had nothing further to add.[87] In doing so, the report concluded, he tacitly gave the United States the go-ahead to store nuclear weapons at Thule.[88]
[...]
The report also confirmed that the United States stockpiled nuclear weapons in Greenland until 1965, contradicting assurances by Danish foreign minister Niels Helveg Petersen that the weapons were in Greenland's airspace, but never on the ground."
And the Americans (and English, Canadians etc.) liberated you.
And then for decades, you were up against the Soviet Empire where the Americans provide a pillar of security.
And somehow this relationship with the Americans is bad, exactly how?
You haven't provided any evidence of wrongdoing in terms of cooperation with the Americans.
The US collects intelligence on everyone - so does Germany. And the UK. And ... Denmark. That's normal in 2021.
A key factor in a friendly relationship is to be able to tell your friend "no" without him/her getting angry. If one of the people in a relationship is forced to be subservient at all times we normally call it an abusive relationship.
And I think you kinda missed the point: Danish politicians have done everything in their power to please the US since the 1960s and have done so increasingly since Bill Clinton was president. That's fine, if they told the populace that is what they're doing. Instead what they're doing is making hidden agreements with the US, that includes spying on our closest allies and neighbours (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spie...) all the while they tell the Danish people that it is impossible to say if Americans are spying in Denmark.
If it is such a great benefit to Denmark to act as a lap dog for the US, you would think the Danish politicians was proud of it, wouldn't you?
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Saying "Americans are evil because I heard something on the news and am going to assume a bunch of facts" is 'Kindergarten Arguing'.
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"A key factor in a friendly relationship is to be able to tell your friend "no" without him/her getting angry. If one of the people in a relationship is forced to be subservient at all times we normally call it an abusive relationship."
This is a glib conflation of pop culture relationship psychology, with realpolitik nature of geopolitical relations.
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"And I think you kinda missed the point: Danish politicians have done everything in their power to please the US"
I think you 'missed the point' by making broad, fabricated assumptions about a) what exactly Danish politicians are doing, b) the benefits received on either side and c) the materiality of the requests made by the US.
You don't know what was asked for and received from either side, nor the benefits to either party.
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'Adult Argumentation' is the recognition of the material facts of the situation, of which there are many including the fact that Denmark is small and relatively weak, does not have the scale to work on a lot of defence and intelligence initiatives, it has to partner with 'good neighbours' on a variety of issues, and that Denmark deploys intelligence capabilities, including spying, like every other state.
If Denmark is a 'lapdog' of any state, it's by far and away the lapdog of Germany which de-facto dictates monetary policy (Kroner is issued by DK but is pegged i.e. controlled by ECB), EU level migration, unilaterally makes dumb energy deals with the Russians giving them tremendous leverage and putting everyone at risk, to the point where once again, ironically, the Americans, literally as we speak are having to step in to protect all of you, almost 80 years after WW2 ended. And so many other things.
Thankfully, Danish and other European politicians have developed good relations with the US such that US support on issues such as Ukraine and Russian expansion are going to be well mitigated.
To put that in context, the US is providing a huge layer of security for Denmark, in exchange for what, exactly? For helping the US track down a corrupt politician using surveillance? Seems like a pretty good deal. Who is who's lapdog now?
I don't recall any referendums on the NSA cooperation.
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On one point you're very right, though: I don't know the details of the deal made between the Danish defence intelligence agency and NSA. I sure would love to (the same goes for the Danish public), so please let me in on the details!
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You seem unwilling to accept, that the actions performed by politicians is not always in the interest of the people they're supposed to serve. This is quite weird. An US analogy would be, that it is obvious that Pelosi or Trump are more concerned about their private fortunes than the interest of the American public.
And as I said: If the Danish politicians thought this cooperation to be in the best interest of the Danes, they could announce it publicly. "We let NSA tap our data, because they in return sometimes provides tips to us on homegrown terrorists and threats to Danish interests in the Middle-East". It is strange that it is not even possible for them to acknowledge the existence of an agreement. Why all this cloak and dagger when it is so obviously a great benefit for the country as you make it out to be?
However for about 10 years there have been issued warrants without the name of the court and judges on them in terror-related cases: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/danmark-har-hemmelige-domm...
Of course the court sessions in this case are not open to the public on request of the prosecutor. The defense has declared that it wants to let the public in, but that the judges will most likely not agree to that.