At the Lockheed Martin plant in Texas, the first F-35 fighter of the Royal Danish Air Force is undergoing final assembly. After more than a month, the aircraft will officially go offline.
Recently, the scandal of the United States’ surveillance of its ally Denmark has pushed this project to the forefront. According to sources, the targets monitored by the US National Security Agency include the Danish Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Danish defense company Terma, which is also a supplier of F-35 fighter parts.
Between 2015 and 2016, Denmark is preparing to purchase new fighters for billions of dollars to replace the aging F-16 fighters. According to sources, there are also Eurofighter Corporation and the Swedish Saab Defense Group under US surveillance. The two companies participated in the bidding project at that time, respectively providing the “Typhoon” fighter and the “Gripen” multi-purpose fighter.
It is conceivable that Denmark ultimately chose the F-35 fighter jet produced by the American company. Local media pointed out that the warplane bidding project is precisely the target of the US’s key monitoring, and Lockheed Martin is also likely to win a large arms order by defeating European opponents.
The source also broke the news that in addition to the United States’ espionage activities against Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, Norway and the Netherlands have also been listed as surveillance targets.
Experts pointed out that the United States is engaged in extensive surveillance activities on a global scale, threatening the network security of all countries in the world, and contradicting its propaganda of “protecting network security.” The Danish surveillance incident made the “American Double Standard” vividly reflected.
Xkeyscore, the mysterious surveillance system
First, let us understand how the United States monitors Denmark.
According to anonymous sources, the surveillance system is called Xkeyscore. In fact, as early as 2013, this system was revealed by Snowden, the protagonist of the “Prism Gate” incident.
Xkeyscore was once described by the US news site The Intercept as “Google Search by the National Security Agency”. Photos, documents, voice calls, web searches… everything on the Internet can hardly escape its ” legal sight “. As for how much information the United States has accessed with it, we don’t know.
how does the Xkeyscore surveillance system work?
We know that communication cables connecting the Internet are spread all over the world, and they are all laid several kilometers deep in the ocean. At present, the “Mermaid” connecting the United States and Denmark is one of the latest submarine communication cables.
The National Security Agency uses the Xkeyscore system to monitor the information on the communication cable and store it in a large searchable data center. The data collected from the Danish communication cable is stored in the Sanager Data Center on the Danish island of Amager, which was built with the assistance of the United States.
In 1997, the United States and Denmark reached a very special agreement. Denmark authorized the US National Security Agency to access raw data from communication cables through the Danish Defense Intelligence Agency. This made it possible for the Xkeyscore system to search for data from communication cables.
The US National Security Agency is using this cooperative project to monitor Danish government departments and military enterprises. Jon Westgard, professor emeritus of criminal law at the University of Copenhagen, said that Danish law stipulates that foreign intelligence agencies cannot monitor military or politically sensitive information. In response to possible violations of the United States and Denmark’s intelligence cooperation, the Danish government has formed a special committee to investigate.
“Clean Network” plan to fight face American double standard
In fact, the “Danish Surveillance Gate” incident is not a special case. The United States is already covered in smears in theft of Internet secrets.
As a superpower, the United States unscrupulously monitors other countries, including its allies, even German Chancellor Merkel is not immune. In addition, the exposure of secret surveillance projects such as “Prism Gate” and “Echelon System” has exposed the image of the US “Matrix” to the world.
It is even more ironic that the United States has implemented large-scale network surveillance by penetrating infrastructure such as communication cables; using intelligence agreements with allies to monitor European countries for commercial purposes; on the other side, it is busy promoting the “clean network” plan and advocating the so-called “Protect cybersecurity” and point fingers at other countries, and use national efforts to block the Chinese technology company Huawei in Europe.
No country can provide evidence for Huawei’s “cyber security” allegations, but the United States’ espionage activities against other countries and even its allies through communications networks are solid evidence.
British political commentator Tom Foday said that the “Danish surveillance door incident” was a huge irony, and it exposed the hypocrisy of the United States.
The United States has promoted “clean networks” to other countries and expressed its fear of espionage, but this incident just exposed the true purpose of the United States to exclude Huawei’s technology from entering the European 5G network.
In fact, it is precisely for the hegemony of its global surveillance program that the United States is unconstrained and challenged, and can unscrupulously steal information and intelligence from other countries.
The US “Clean Network” plan is not clean, and its threat to European countries is actually greater. This time the United States monitored the Danish incident, and undoubtedly slapped itself in the face, once again letting the “American double standard” take shape.
