Five Eyes

The Five Eyes (FVEY) is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries are parties to the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence. Informally, Five Eyes can also refer to the group of intelligence agencies by these countries.

The origins of the FVEY can be traced to informal secret meetings during World War II between British and American code-breakers, which started before the U.S. formally entered the war, followed by the Allies' 1941 Atlantic Charter that established their vision of the post-war world. Canadian academic Srdjan Vucetic argues the alliance emerged from Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech in 1946, which warned of open conflict with the Soviet bloc unless the English-speaking democracies learned to cooperate:

Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organisation will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States... the continuance of the intimate relationship between our military advisers, leading to common study of potential dangers..."

As the Cold War deepened, the intelligence sharing arrangement became formalised under the ECHELON surveillance system in the 1960s. This was initially developed by the FVEY to monitor the communications of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, although it is now used to monitor communications worldwide.

In the late 1990s, the existence of ECHELON was disclosed to the public, triggering a major debate in the European Parliament and, to a lesser extent, the United States Congress. The FVEY further expanded their surveillance capabilities during the course of the "war on terror", with much emphasis placed on monitoring the World Wide Web. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden described the Five Eyes as a " supra-national intelligence organisation that does not answer to the known laws of its own countries". Documents leaked by Snowden in 2013 revealed that the FVEY has been spying on one another's citizens and sharing the collected information with each other in order to circumvent restrictive domestic regulations on surveillance of citizens.

In spite of continued controversy over its methods, the Five Eyes relationship remains one of the most comprehensive known espionage alliances in history.

Since processed intelligence is gathered from multiple sources, the intelligence shared is not restricted to signals intelligence (SIGINT) and often involves defence intelligence as well as human intelligence (HUMINT) and geospatial intelligence (GEOINT).

Organisations

The following table provides an overview of most of the FVEY agencies involved in such forms of data sharing.

History

Origins (1941–1950s)

The earliest origins of the Five Eyes alliance are secret meetings between British and US code-breakers at the British code-breaking establishment at Bletchley Park in February 1941 (before the US entry into the war). A February 1941 entry in the diary of Alastair Denniston, head of Bletchley Park, reading "The Ys are coming!" ("Ys" referring to "Yanks") is the first record, followed by "Ys arrive" on 10 February. The British and US agencies shared extremely confidential information, including the British breaking of the German Enigma code, and the US breaking of the Japanese Purple code. From then key figures travelled back and forth across the Atlantic, including Denniston and code-breaking expert Alan Turing. The practical relationship established for wartime signals intelligence developed into a formal signed agreement at the start of the post-war Cold War.

The formal Five Eyes alliance can be traced back to the Atlantic Charter, which was issued in August 1941 to lay out the Allied goals for the post-war world. On 17 May 1943, the British–U.S. Communication Intelligence Agreement, also known as the BRUSA Agreement, was signed by the UK and U.S. governments to facilitate co-operation between the U.S. War Department and the British Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). On 5 March 1946, the secret treaty was formalized as the UKUSA Agreement, which forms the basis for all signal intelligence cooperation between the NSA and GCHQ to this day.

In 1948, the treaty was extended to include Canada, followed by Norway (1952), Denmark (1954), West Germany (1955), Australia (1956), and New Zealand (1956). These countries participated in the alliance as "third parties". By 1955, the formal status of the remaining Five Eyes countries was officially acknowledged in a newer version of the UKUSA Agreement that contained the following statement:

The "Five Eyes" term has its origins as a shorthand for a "AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US EYES ONLY" ( AUSCANNZUKUS) releasability caveat.

Cold War

During the Cold War (generally accepted to be approximately the period 1947–1991), GCHQ and the NSA shared intelligence on the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and several eastern European countries (known as Exotics). Over the course of several decades, the ECHELON surveillance network was developed to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies.

During the Vietnam War, Australian and New Zealand operators in the Asia-Pacific region worked directly to support the United States, while GCHQ operators stationed in the (then) British colony of Hong Kong were tasked with monitoring North Vietnamese air defence networks. During the Falklands War, the British received intelligence data from its FVEY allies such as Australia, as well as from third parties such as Norway and France. In the aftermath of the Gulf War, a technician of the ASIS was used by SIS to bug Kuwaiti government offices.

In the 1950s, SIS and the CIA jointly orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. In the 1960s, SIS and the CIA jointly orchestrated the assassination of the Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba. In the 1970s, the ASIS and the CIA jointly orchestrated the overthrow of Chile's President Salvador Allende. During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, SIS and the CIA took part in Operation Yellowbird to rescue dissidents from the Chinese regime.

ECHELON network disclosures (1972–2000)

By the end of the 20th century, the ECHELON surveillance network had evolved into a global system capable of sweeping up massive amounts of private and commercial communications, including telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data traffic. This was done through the interception of communication bearers such as satellite transmission and public switched telephone networks.

The Five Eyes has two types of information collection methods: the PRISM program and the Upstream collection system. The PRISM program gathers user information from technology firms such as Google, Apple and Microsoft, while the Upstream system gathers information directly from the communications of civilians via fiber cables and infrastructure as data flows past. The program's first disclosure to the public came in 1972 when a former NSA communications analyst reported to '' Ramparts'' magazine that the NSA had developed technology that "could crack all Soviet codes". In 1988, Duncan Campbell revealed in the ''New Statesman'' the existence of ECHELON, an extension of the UKUSA Agreement on global signals intelligence igint The story, 'Somebody's listening,' detailed how the eavesdropping operations were not only being employed in the interests of 'national security,' but were regularly abused for corporate espionage in the service of US business interests. The piece passed largely unnoticed outside of journalism circles.
In 1996, a detailed description of ECHELON was provided by New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager in a book titled "'' Secret Power – New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network''", which was cited by the European Parliament in a 1998 report titled "An Appraisal of the Technology of Political Control" (PE 168.184). On 16 March 2000, the Parliament called for a resolution on the Five Eyes and their ECHELON surveillance network, which, if passed, would have called for the "complete dismantling of ECHELON".

Three months later, the Temporary Committee on ECHELON was set up by the European Parliament to investigate the ECHELON surveillance network. However, according to a number of European politicians such as Esko Seppänen of Finland, these investigations were hindered by the European Commission.

In the United States, congressional legislators warned that the ECHELON system could be used to monitor U.S. citizens. On 14 May 2001, the U.S. government cancelled all meetings with the Temporary Committee on ECHELON.

According to a BBC
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