Maximator (named after a type of beer from the German brewery Augustiner-Bräu) is an alliance between the secret services of Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden, comparable to the Five Eyes. It was founded in 1976 on the initiative of the Danish secret service and has operated largely undetected since then. The most important tool for reconnaissance and decryption was the sale of encryption devices with weak encryption methods. This was done via Crypto AG, a supposedly private Swiss company secretly owned by the BND and the CIA.