Five Eyes Alliance: The Knowns & Unknowns

on

Five Eyes Alliance: The Knowns & Unknowns



An Overview

The Five Eyes (FVEY) is an intelligence alliance involving Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Rising out of the Cold War era, the United States and the United Kingdom formed a pact known as UKUSA to work together against the Soviet Union intelligence. In the late ’50s, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand joined the UKUSA and formed the Five Eyes. Together, these five countries surveil online activity.


Five Eyes was not publicly known for many years after its formation. It began in 1941 but was not brought to the public’s attention until 2003. During this time, many still did not know much. It was not until 2013 when documents were leaked by a former National Security Agency (NSA) employee that any substantial information was available about FVEY. Edward Snowden was the former NSA CIA agent who leaked the documents that revealed surveillance information and led to a wonderment about the NSA and people’s privacy. Snowden had ethical concerns about the FVEY which is why he became the American whistleblower who leaked the classified information.


Fives Eyes Affect on Society

Surveillance of the public’s online activity can cause a sense of fear or invasion upon people. Five Eyes is an alliance that in simple terms, spies on people and shares information found between their allies. Depending on who you are, surveillance of online activity may not matter as much as it would to others but no matter who you are, you should be aware. The Five Eyes use specific technical programs to collect and analyze data such as:

Echelon, a system that “collects and processes information derived from intercepting civil satellite communications” (Privacy International, The Five Eyes Fact Sheet).

Thinthread, an “analysis tool that creates graphs showing relationships and patterns that can tell analysis which targets they should look at and which calls they should listen to” (Privacy International, The Five Eyes Fact Sheet).

Tempora, “a program that collects intelligence via undersea fiber optic cable taps” (Privacy International, The Five Eyes Fact Sheet).


Other Surveillance Alliances to Know

-9 Eyes: the Five Eyes plus Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway

-14 Eyes: the Nine Eyes plus Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Sweden


How to Protect Yourself Online

  1. Be mindful, think about your email and how you use it. Consider this:

“Gmail was found to be giving third parties full access to user emails and also tracking all 

purchases via receipts in your inbox. Advertisers are allowed to scan Yahoo and AOL accounts 

to “identify and segment potential customers by picking up on contextual buying signals, and 

past purchases.” Yahoo was [also] found to be scanning emails in real-time for US surveillance 

agencies” (Sven Taylor, Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and 14 Eyes In-Depth Explanation).

  1. Use a VPN

  2. Install a firewall or antivirus software



Link to Privacy International’s The Five Eyes Fact Sheet: https://privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/1204/five-eyes-fact-sheet


Link to Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and 14 Eyes In-Dept Explanation by Sven Taylor: https://restoreprivacy.com/5-eyes-9-eyes-14-eyes/

Comments

Post a Comment