Norwegians not under surveillance

A spokesman for the US Embassy in Oslo says the surveillance around the embassy is not directed against Norway or ordinary citizens, but against terrorists with targets around the world.

Embassy spokesman Terry Moore says the only mission of the Surveillance Detection Unit (SDU) is to detect suspicious activities around the embassy. He says ordinary citizens have nothing to fear, and neither do they who have demonstrated against the US.

- It is important to remember the reason for the surveillance program. It goes back to the bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998. The suveillance was started to prvent similar attacks in the future, Moore says to NRK.

He rejects reports which claim that the Norwegians working for the SDU have tapped telephones or monitored e-mail or other electronic communication. They have only monitored the embassy and its surroundings, Moore says.

A former police investigator, Leif Karsten Hansen, says in an interview with Dagbladet on Sunday that he helped set up the controversial SDU at the US Embassy in Oslo. He describes the activity as unproblematic. He denies that the group kept a log of personal information about Norwegian citizens.

Source: NRK/Aftenposten/Norway Post