Earlier in February, the world read about years of espionage activity published by the Washington Post with the headline “The intelligence coup of the century.”
It was revealed that US and German intelligence had been listening to countries since the Cold War, using crypto devices produced by Swiss-based firm Crypto AG. It was revealed by documents that nearly 120 countries, including Turkey, had purchased devices from Crypto AG.
Two of the “biggest” US competitors, the Soviet Union (Russia today) and China, did not buy products from the company was underlined. Nevertheless, it is thought that intelligence agencies listening to communications with other countries may have access to a large number of classified information about Russia and China.
Germany left the firm in the early 1990s and there was no exact date for when the CIA put an end to its operations, the Washington Post said
The company's products are still being used around the world.
Following the emergence of the crypto incident, the Swiss Parliament asked the Control Delegation to investigate.
The delegation presented its investigative report on November 10th (2020). The report said the Swiss Intelligence Service had known since 1993 that “Crypto AG was used as a shell company by the intelligence services.” The country's left-leaning parties have called for the establishment of a full-fledged parliamentary commission to investigate the leak in depth.
The Swiss government is required to make an official statement on the report by June 2021.
