Danish Military Intelligence Uses XKEYSCORE to Tap Cables in Cooperation with NSA
November 2nd, 2020Via: Electrospaces:
In an extensive piece from September 13, the renowned Danish newspaper Berlingske (founded in 1749) describes how the FE, in cooperation with the NSA, started to tap an international telecommunications cable in order to gather foreign intelligence.
In the mid-1990s, the NSA had found out that somewhere under Copenhagen there was a backbone cable containing phone calls, e-mails and text messages from and to countries like China and Russia, which was of great interest for the Americans.
Tapping that cable, however, was almost impossible without the help of the Danes, so the NSA asked the FE for access to the cable, but this request was denied, according to Berlingske.
Agreement with the United States
The US government did not give up, and in a letter sent directly to the Danish prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, US president Clinton asked his Danish colleague to reconsider the decision. And Nyrup, who was a sworn supporter of a close relationship with the US, said yes.
The cooperation was laid down in a document, which, according to Berlingske, all Danish defense ministers had to sign “so that any new minister could see that his predecessor – and his predecessors before his predecessors – with their signatures had been part of this small, exclusive circle of people who knew one of the kingdom’s biggest secrets.”
The code name for this cooperation is not known, but it’s most likely part of the NSA’s umbrella program RAMPART-A. Under this program, which started in 1992, foreign partners provide access to high-capacity international fiber-optic cables, while the US provides the equipment for transport, processing and analysis…
Research Credit: cgroove
