Norwegian Police Security Service
 Norwegian Police Security Service  (Intelligence agency)    | |
|---|---|
| Abbreviation | PST |
| Formation | 1937 |
| Parent organization | Norway/Ministry/Justice and Public Security |
| Headquarters | Oslo, Norway |
| The intelligence agency of the Norwegian police | |
The Norwegian Police Security Service (Norwegian: Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste - PST) is the intelligence agency of the Norwegian police. The agency was until 2001 known as POT (Politiets overvåkningstjeneste).
From "fact checker" to spook
In June 2023, Kristoffer Egeberg, editor of "Norway's only independent fact checker" Faktisk.no, quit his job to start working for PST and lead their section for open source intelligence. "Digging and researching in open online sources is really the essence of what I have been working on in recent years. It will therefore be incredibly exciting to have the opportunity to participate in the development of this field at PST", said Egeberg. He claimed that this would be a new development in his career: "I look forward to learning the intelligence profession and working for society in a different way than through journalism".[1]
Doing work for Israel
In November 2024, the Department of sociology and political science at NTNU invited its employees to a lecture on threats and security challenges to the knowledge sector, held by an employee of PST. To illustrate the point about politically motivated violence and "extremism", the PST agent involuntarily exposed their real activities and mentality by using a picture of some older newspaper headlines about racism and [[hatred of Jews], as well as a recent picture of NTNU professor and Palestine activist Bassam Hussein. The Academic Network for Palestine at NTNU, where Hussein himself was involved referred to the incident as "character assassination and structural racism at a closed lecture".[2]
In 2018, Jacob Wærness, a former member of PST was arrested in France as part of the inquiry into cement-maker Lafarge's dealings with the Islamic State (IS) armed group and other jihadists in Syria. Wærness said that company bosses, seven of who have been charged in the investigation, knew of negotiations with the Islamist militias fighting Bashar al-Assad's government[3], paying them money and supplying large amounts of military important cement.
