However, increasing surveillance and strong intelligence cooperation had already been in place in countries like Denmark, with Muslim communities bearing the brunt of this security pressure. In the mid-2000s the Danish government struggled with the backlash of the 2005 Prophet Muhammad cartoon controversy and later with its participation in the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.

At that time, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) and the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) stepped up their efforts to recruit Muslim citizens as informers. The intelligence services even distributed advertisements such as the one to the right looking for informers.