Head of Danish intelligence suspended after whistleblowers hand over information

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53889612

by Hasknewbie • 6 years ago

143 116 6 years ago

Svip• 6 years ago

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).

macmac• 6 years ago

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

erk__3• 6 years ago

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

fit2rule• 6 years ago

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.

erk__3• 6 years ago

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

demygale• 6 years ago

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.

simlevesque• 6 years ago

is this a joke ? ever heard of the NSA ?

aksss2• 6 years ago

“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...

gruez• 6 years ago

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).

throw_this_one13• 6 years ago

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.

theplague42• 6 years ago

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

Vinnl• 6 years ago

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

mindslight2• 6 years ago

PRC and Russia both have constitutions...

jandrese• 6 years ago

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

secondcoming3• 6 years ago

How would they track all the white supremacists?

motohagiography• 6 years ago

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?

Rumperuu• 6 years ago

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...

triceratops3• 6 years ago

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

coliveira3• 6 years ago

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.

wiredone• 6 years ago

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.

YarickR2• 6 years ago

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

merlinbeard• 6 years ago

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

secondcoming3• 6 years ago

Can you expand on that, it sounds interesting

throw_this_one13• 6 years ago

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?

fmajid• 6 years ago

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.

null_deref• 6 years ago

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)?

jessaustin7• 6 years ago

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.

CompuHacker• 6 years ago

"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.

hansjorg• 6 years ago

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).

oh_sigh2• 6 years ago

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.

gostsamo8• 6 years ago

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.

ashtonkem4• 6 years ago

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.

leftyted• 6 years ago

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.

Tarq0n• 6 years ago

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.

tpmx5• 6 years ago

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

cstpdk• 6 years ago

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

tpmx5• 6 years ago

What kind of targets is he accused of targetting?

Fr8TRN• 6 years ago

You are absolutely correct.

Pick-A-Hill2019• 6 years ago

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."

ThinkBeat• 6 years ago

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).

nabla92• 6 years ago

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.

gostsamo8• 6 years ago

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?

nabla92• 6 years ago

Thereat model to their own citizens, yes.

wojciii2• 6 years ago

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.

sandworm101• 6 years ago

>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.

contingencies3• 6 years ago

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

throw_this_one13• 6 years ago

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.

tgv2• 6 years ago

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.

contingencies3• 6 years ago

What are the budgets?

ArkVark• 6 years ago

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

sebastien_b• 6 years ago

Well done!

mintyc• 6 years ago

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

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

Head of Danish intelligence suspended after whistleblowers hand over information

Related Stories