“What you see from this is that the claim that this is all about national security or terrorism is completely belied by what these agencies are actually doing in secret,” says Greenwald. “And these two documents are very conclusive about the fact that part of what they are doing is spying on energy companies, obviously for economic advantage.  And has nothing to do with national security.”

Uppdrag granskning: Is this being done at the request of the NSA? “I think it’s actually equal cooperation. The NSA seems impressed by how

much money and how much technological sophistication the Swedish have been able to assemble when building their own surveillance system. And they seem to work together when they perceive that their interests are mutually aligned and share information readily about a whole variety of topics, again having nothing to do with national security, including the energy sector in Russia.”

“If you look at what western countries have said, about China in particular, they’ve said that the Chinese are using their surveillance powers to spy on western companies in order to gain unfair economic advantage for Chinese industry and Chinese companies,” says Glenn Greenwald. “And that this undermine the ability of countries to freely compete with one another, that it’s an abuse of surveillance power, that it breaks international trust in institutions and that it violates international law.

“And yet here you find the United States and its closest allies in the espionage world, including Sweden, doing exactly that which they have long

vehemently accused China of doing and have rigorously condemned over and over.”

Sven Bergman