Cryptographer Jansen made these claims about Philips in the context of Cryptoleaks, the international media collaboration exposing Operation Rubicon. This ‘global intelligence coup of the century’ enabled the American NSA and the German Bundesnachrichtendienst to secretly break encoded messages sent by more than a hundred countries for decades. Highly classified evaluation papers detailing Operation Rubicon are in the possession of Argos, VPRO/HUMAN's platform for investigative journalism .
The device that Philips compromised is the Aroflex, a telex machine that was used for encrypted communication between NATO-allies. The Turkish government was so pleased with the device that they wanted to order more of them, to use for communication with their embassies and for internal communication within the army. The Americans wanted to supply them with an intentionally 'weakened' version, in order to gain access to the Turkish communication. Germany refused to cooperate. ‘The NSA turned to Philips, who complied,’ according to the German evaluation paper on Operation Rubicon.