What began in Norway has spread to four other European countries, each of which is now investigating whether the U.S. embassy has been spying on local citizens.

 

A Norwegian television news station first reported how American officials in the Oslo embassy have overseen illegal surveillance of hundreds of residents since 2000. The spying was done by former employees of the Norwegian Security Police and Defense Forces who were hired by the U.S. to collect detailed sensitive information and footage of protesters. The information was then passed on to embassy staff who loaded it into a worldwide anti-terror database.

 

Philip Crowley, assistant secretary for the State Department in Washington, confirmed the spying took place, but also claimed it was done in cooperation with Norwegian authorities. A U.S. embassy spokesman in Oslo said the objective was to discover “possible suspect activities in the area surrounding the embassy.”

 

The news then spread to Sweden, where local officials said American surveillance also had been going on for at least 10 years. But Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask insisted neither the government nor the police knew about the activities until now.

 

The U.S. embassy in Stockholm admitted that it had a program to detect suspicious activities around its facilities. “It is not a secret program, nor is it an intelligence program,” declared the embassy in a statement. “It emerged from the lessons of such horrific terrorist attacks as the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam embassy bombings in 1998, in which our missions had been under hostile surveillance by the terrorists for some time before the attacks.”

 

In addition to Norway and Sweden, the governments of Iceland, Denmark and Finland have opened inquiries into whether citizens have been spied on by the U.S.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Swedish Justice Minister Confirms US Surveillance (Agence France-Presse/The Local)

US Embassy in Surveillance Scandal (by Michael Sandelson, The Foreigner)

Iceland Launches US Spy Inquiry (BBC News)

Finnish Security Police to Investigate Possible US Surveillance Work in Finland (Helsingin Sanomat)