 show mapping fault lines where we discussed major geopolitical issues across the world. Today we're going to be talking about an issue which has caused quite a bit of uproar in European circles among the allies of the United States at least. And this pertains to revelations that came out on the 31st of May in a variety of European press organizations that the US had spied on its own allies, surprise. And they did this, of course, with the help of the Danish government, the Danish intelligence agency, which is called FE. And it involved the use of undersea cables. So basically the information says that the United States spied on Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of the opposition in Germany, as well as politicians and other figures in France, in Norway, in Sweden, in the Netherlands, etc. So we have with us, Praveen Prakas, I'll talk about this. Praveen, could you just maybe first take us through the technicalities involved in this issue? Because how exactly did the US use Denmark to spy on the leader of Germany, who is probably one of the most powerful political personalities in Europe? I don't want to make it about how they were spying on the leaders in Germany, the leaders of their allies and so on. The issue is really much bigger than that, which is that you have mass surveillance, where everybody is presumed to be somebody who's a criminal. And the onus of the proof that you're not a criminal is after they have seen all your communication scans through it, then they decide you're not a person of interest. So that's the assumption of the mass surveillance program. And the Snowden regulations made it clear that we have a mass surveillance program, not only in the United States, domestically, but also externally. And that program covers almost all parts of the world. This particular program has become public now with respect to Denmark, but it was public with respect to, for instance, NSA and GCHQ of the UK. And that was that all communication from other places which come to UK, because it's one of the major internet hubs in terms of the undersea cables, submarine cables, which come and have to land somewhere before going further. And if you look at the map of the undersea cables, submarine cables, you'll see that both from the United States, North America, South America, and from Africa, as well as from Asia, UK is a major hub. All those cables seem to land up in UK. So why was Denmark a similar hub? It's something we have to understand. Again, if you look at the map, you will see Denmark connects not only to Germany, Holland, and so on, but it also connects. And this is where the real interest from the United States lay. It also connects to the other European countries, as well as to Russia and further east. So Denmark is, and this is something we didn't realize that well, is a major also hub of internet cables. And this hub business makes it therefore possible to survey everybody's communication which passes to that hub. I think that's the important takeaway from this. The focus is how dare they spy on leaders of the allies? The question is they're spying on everybody, including the leaders of the allies. And of course, on their own people. In fact, they've spied on their own government. This is the astounding information that we have, that they're not only spying on friendly governments, they also spied on their own governments. Therefore, essentially the Danish intelligence agency was working on behalf of NSA against other allies and also against its own government. That's, I think, a big issue that at least should concern the Danish people. The issue is not restricted to hear this alone. That fact, it was known from 2013 that this has been going on and it has taken this law for the government to react. And that's the other part of the story that they did internally. Know about this. They came to know about this as soon as Northern revelations were there. They did set up an internal committee to see what's happening within the intelligence agency. Concerned after the report came, they were aware of the fact that this not only spied on people outside the country, allies, but they were also spying on their own government and their own people and passing this information to NSA. All this was known within the intelligence agency. But, however, the intelligence agency chiefs, one of whom became later on equivalent of the home secretary in government of India. So he became essentially the bureaucrat heading the entire police intelligence operations within the country. He also did not pass this information, apparently, to his superiors or if he did, they did also do no action on it. I find it very difficult to believe this information was not shared with the then government authorities. I'm sure they were because all civil servants protect themselves. So they're not going to not have any protection in this course, not having given this information to the superiors. But again, no action was taken. Denmark thought it's a small country. There's a price to be paid to be at the US high table and that they're also spying on their own people and of course on their allies. Now, interestingly enough, the anger that has come is more because it's about the leaders being spied on, not that there is a mass surveillance program which involves spying on its own citizens as well as other state citizens. And of course, somebody, the other people who are not at the table of God, not being discussed at all, that any cable passing to Denmark, therefore from other countries and all the communication thereof was therefore also being broken into and being also snooped upon. So this mass surveillance issue, which is what's not embraced. It was not about private surveillance of Angela Merkel and so on. It's really about mass surveillance. That is still the issue that has to gain focus. And recently an European court, EU court has passed a judgment. I think it's an European court which has passed a judgment which says mass surveillance per se is not legal. But the way it has also done it, the judgment is quite weak. In fact, it allows for it to take place, but with certain restrictions, certain safeguards and so on and an external body which will monitor what is being done, all these checks and balances as we have found do not really work. And all these checks and balances are in some, in this sense, relatively, you know, making a pretence that we are actually having checks and balances while in actual reality, they do not. So it has held, in fact, the GCHQ program in the because of the proportionality ABCD reasons. Again, I'm not a legal person. So I'm not, I'm not going to the legal part of the judgment. But I think these are very important issues that what we should bring out is not just the question of the spine on their allies, which I don't see as any different from spine on the rest of the world. The allies may take amrige at that. They may be unhappy that you are my friend and you spied on me. The point is spine not permission on the whole world is by itself something which we have to take on a completely different plane. And that's really the mass surveillance of states, both of its citizens and of people who incidentally, your communication passes through a particular country. That means my community in the US passes to UK or Denmark, then that is open game. Of course, if it passes to US through US, it is open game for us. So those are the issues that I think we need to think about globally, because all governments seem to be moving today in terms of mass surveillance, including the Indian government. So it's not something which is not that we're not addressing. We need to address those issues as well. And as you know, the WhatsApp encryption weakening the government of India is demanding or really ending into encryption as far as state is concerned, also falls into the bracket, give us right to all communications. And I think that's the real issue that we have to think about. Absolutely. And this comes actually just a year or so after the revelations of how crypto AG had been used over the decades, incidentally, where the Americans worked in collaboration with the Germans to spy on the rest of the world. And now ironically, we have a situation where the Germans were spied on using the Danish. That's an interesting issue because crypto AG was used to break all the communication which people thought was secure within each government. So when governments communicate with their embassies, for instance, or they communicate with their teams, which go to international negotiations, then they use cryptographic modes of communication. And this was really originally done by using hardware, that you had hardware on both sides. And therefore, you could talk to each other. The Swiss company, crypto AG, because Switzerland has history of being independent in terms of not being aligned to blocks. Therefore, it was considered neutral. Most people took Swiss neutrality on phase value and at phase value and decided too that therefore the crypto equipment would also be safe. So the first surveillance, not mass surveillance, but surveillance of breaking cryptographic encryption of government to government communication or internal government communications. This was done essentially by, of course, the CIA as well as at the time, the German intelligence agency worked together. They in fact had bought crypto AG effectively. And as owners of the company, they had access to everything crypto AG was doing. And as we know, again, the German intelligence was sharing what the Americans were doing. Again, spying on their allies. This is one of the issues that had come up on the crypto AG that the Germans were also party to essentially spying on their fellow governments. They were unhappy about it in terms of internally, they had some disquiet about it, but they went along with it before pulling out finally from the crypto AG itself. But the point is Germany claimed today that this is very wrong because you spied on us also then makes a question, what were you doing for all the years? And you know, it's not just spying on your allies. The issue is that you spied on the whole world's internal communication of governments. And this is something which I think goes beyond simple spying for your self interest. I think these are things which are of a different order. But at the same time, we have to say mass surveillance is a completely different volume altogether. And therefore, you could still say it is legitimate to spy on governments. But is it legitimate to spy on citizens, your own citizens and other country's citizens, just because a cable passes to your country, I think is a much larger issue. And I think the issue is the focus should really be on the issue of mass surveillance here. And that's why the government to governments find that each government spies on other governments is something which is yes, if you do it in allies within your own quote unquote alliances, if you spy on your friends, it is something which is to be condemned by those countries. But as far as we are concerned, if we are not in an alliance, I still am bothered about the fact that my encryption as a country, my encryption, all my communication was broken. And that was known that I say, see, I had access to this information, just as a German state. And this is something which countries should have protested. But as you know, none of the countries who are known to have been affected by this, including India, actually officially protested to the US government. Or if they did, we don't know about it. Prabhir, finally, just returning to a point you had hinted at earlier, of course, the Danish issue is just one. It is obviously quite likely that there are many other relationships that are there, we just still undergo, we just still hid it. And you mentioned something about how this is not only of course, only about the US allies in Western Europe, but also about Eastern Europe and potentially Russia as well. So in light of the global cable map, how do we see the possibilities or risks over here? Yeah, I think we need to look at also not only the undersea cables, but also what are the other cabling that is there? You know, it's always been of interest to me or a question mark for me, why is Estonia so important? For instance, the United States calculations, you can always see that Estonia has a very special place in all of this. And they have been backed by various agencies to digitize their economy, digitize everything that they do. I suspect that one of the reasons why this close relationship exists between the United States and Estonia is also to do with what is a kind of mass surveillance that's been carried out beyond the borders of Estonia itself. So it becomes a local hub, just as Denmark is a local hub between the Nordic countries and Holland and Germany and Denmark itself. It's a local hub, but there's a larger impact of Denmark because it's also a hub for a lot of other internet traffic that comes from Eastern Europe, Central Asia, even China, if it is not coming to the undersea cables. A lot of it may go to Denmark. Similarly, Estonia is a local hub. So we have to look at some of these issues now that we have found that Denmark would seem to be a rather innocuous small country tucked away somewhere among the Nordic countries. And its only claim to fame had been about really as raiders, the names of famous raiders just as the Nordic countries were. So apart from that, we didn't know much about what they do or they do not do. Suddenly we find that they were an important player in this masterpin scheme of the United States. So I have a suspicion now that we need to look at some of the other countries as well and what is the role they're playing in all of this. So I think this is not to be taken just as Denmark and GCHQ. I think there are more hubs than we know about. We know about Australia, we know about New Zealand, but they don't have the density of cabling or connections that for instance Europe has. We also need to look at, for instance, other countries in Southeast Asia quite closely having lost Philippines Marcos after Marcos left, Philippines has not been a stable ally. What are the new allies and what is the role of mass surveillance using some of these allies? I think it's something we need to look at. Thank you so much for you for talking to us. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching this.