You wouldn‘t necessarily associate Switzerland with the thrills of the clandestine world of secret services and espionage, yet the story that recently broke here is worthy of a John Le Carre story.
Crypto AG was (it was split into two separate entities in 2018) a Zug based company which used to sell encryption equipment used by governments and its agencies around the world. Among the firm’s clients, for example, were the governments of Iran, Libya and Argentina.
According to documents which have recently been leaked by former employees to a German journalist, the company used to be controlled since the 1970s by a company owned by the CIA. And, so it seems the German secret service BND seems to have been closely involved as well, at least until 1993. By the way, the new entities deny any involvement with any secret service.
In a nutshell the company used to sell two types of encryption devices: secure ones no doubt to a few trusted governments (apparently Switzerland got secure equipment) and ones with a back door allowing the CIA to snoop to countries with which the US and its allies had an axe to grind. It is said that more than 100 countries got this ‘hackable’ version. The information thus obtained is said to have helped the US in liberating its hostages in 1980 in Tehran, facilitated the peace deal brokered by the US president Jimmy Carter between Egypt and Israel at Camp David in 1979, and information gained from Argentina during the Falklands war in 1982 was duly passed on to the U.K. authorities – and may have influenced the outcome of this conflict.
A select few people within the Swiss government are said to have been aware of this, but the authorities are launching a full enquiry now. Better late than never, I suppose, but as far as Swiss integrity and its neutrality is concerned, some tremendous damage has been done.
Having chastised the Chinese government and Huawei for the supposed backdoors in its equipment, it turns out that the Americans were at it for much longer and presumably on a much bigger scale. So where does that leave them? Answers on a postcard please (to the CIA, not to me though).
The grumpy older man 