US and German intelligence services had access to the top secret communications of governments around the world, from after World War II to the beginning of this century.
US, German and Swiss media reported the services got the access through their hidden control of Crypto AG, an encryption company, which was a top supplier of devices for encoding communications to some 120 countries, including Iran, South American governments, India and Pakistan.
Unknown to those governments, Crypto was secretly owned by the US Central Intelligence Agency and Germany’s BND Federal Intelligence Service. It took millions of dollars for giving access to the secrets of its clients. Russia and China never made use of Crypto’s products.
The CIA officers who oversaw the operation and the Crypto executives who enabled it are reportedly identified via an internal CIA history of the top-secret program.
“Foreign governments were paying good money to the US and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two (and possibly as many as five or six) foreign countries”, the history says.
“We have no connections to the CIA or the BND and we never had”, Crypto said in a statement. The CIA had no immediate comment on the story.
US, German intelligence services spied on governments for decades
EPA/OLIVER BERG
An illustration picture shows network cables hanging from a computer screen which shows rows of binary code in Cologne, Germany, 20 January 2014. The discussion about the spying by US intelligence service NSA has not quieted down after the speech by US President Obama. On 17 January 2014, US President Barack Obama held a press conference where he announced that he was ordering changes to the United States' intelligence gathering policies.
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