Norway admits it knew about U.S. spying

Authorities in Norway have admitted that they knew the U.S. embassy in Oslo was conducting surveillance in the city following spying revelations across the Nordic region. Norwegian officials had previously claimed that they knew nothing about the controversial programme.

“Norwegian authorities, via the Oslo police, have the responsibility to protect the embassies’ security … In this work, both the Oslo police and local security services gained insight into safety at the American embassy, but said that they have not come across offenses in this regard,” the Ministry of Justice said in a statement this week.

In a separate statement, the Oslo police admitted that it had “known that employees at the American embassy had observed and sometimes taken photos of demonstrators ‘outside the fence’, and that some of these employees have been former police employees.”

Knut Storberget, the Norwegian justice minister, said the government never gave permission to the U.S. to establish a surveillance unit, but added that “such permission is not required according to international or Norwegian law”.

Speaking in a statement, the U.S. embassy in Oslo said it hoped the minister’s comment “has clarified the speculation and misinformation about this programme and the Embassy’s security measures”.

The announcement comes after almost two weeks of revelations in Nordic countries about U.S. embassies carrying out surveillance around their mission building. It is believed that the programmes, which have been going on for 10 years, extended to taking photographs of, monitoring, and storing the personal information of demonstrators.

Danish intelligence agency PET admitted that it knew about surveillance at the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen, but Sweden is investigating whether international laws have been broken, claiming it never knew about the programme. Washington insists that the spying was solely aimed at protecting its mission and that no laws have been broken.