NSA Spying on European Leaders, Yet More

On May 30, the Danish public radio station DR revealed that the Danish military intelligence (FE) service had collaborated between 2012 and 2014 with the U.S. National Security Agency to spy on European political leaders in Germany, France, Sweden and Norway, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The FE was giving the NSA access to the country’s underwater electronic information cable nexus, which transmitted massive amounts of data from telephone calls, SMS and online messages of the relevant officials. The investigation was carried out by DR radio in collaboration with several other European media, including Le Monde and the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

In 2014, after the initial revelations stemming from the files supplied by Edward Snowden, an internal investigation was already begun in the FE, and whistleblowers are apparently behind the recent round of disclosures.

On May 30, Snowden tweeted: “Biden is well-prepared to answer for this when he soon visits Europe since, of course, he was deeply involved in this scandal the first time around. There should be an explicit requirement for full public disclosure not only from Denmark, but their senior partner as well.”