Iceland Thinks US May Be Spying on Its Citizens

All five Nordic nations now suspect the US has been using its embassies to spy on their citizens: Iceland has joined Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland in launching a probe into whether American embassies acted illegally by carrying out surveillance of protesters without permission from national authorities, the BBC reports. Top prosecutors in the countries involved believe the embassies may have violated several laws.

A recent report on Norwegian television claimed that the US Embassy was photographing protesters and adding information about them to a counter-terrorism database. The State Department says no espionage has taken place and that the US is merely carrying out a legal counter-surveillance program in response to security threats to its embassies, which was put in place after attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania 12 years ago. (More espionage stories.)