EOTO #2: Five Eyes
I had the pleasure of doing my Each One Teach One project on the Five Eyes. Five Eyes came into effect in 1946 and is the world’s oldest intelligence partnership. In the past, it was used to monitor foreign communications among a number of countries, serving various political interests. Today, FVEY monitors the private communications of billions of people, worldwide.
In the 1950s during the Cold War, FVEY intelligence monitored communications from the Soviet Union, China and other Eastern Bloc countries. FVEY was also used in various different conflicts, such as the Vietnam War. Overall, FVEY had a solid track record in terms of what they were strictly used for.
The United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Canada are the five countries involved in Five Eyes, and each has three to five agencies involved in FVEY. America’s five include the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the NGA, and the DIA.
The Five Eyes Alliance uses signals intelligence to monitor the citizens of other FVEY member countries. By monitoring each other's citizens, FVEY can bypass domestic surveillance regulations. This is widely seen as an issue amongst people that learn about the group, as they ‘legally’ spy on each other. FVEY is basically a loophole that these five countries use to spy on their own citizens. Spying on your own people is illegal, but if you just so happen to receive the info from another country that is legally regulated to gather info on your citizens, it’s okay. FVEY collects information by intercepting private communications, and also receives records of user data from large technology companies.
Information about the Five Eyes Alliance was among the classified documents leaked to the public in 2013, by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. This stirred global controversy, as questions were raised about the line between surveillance and the invasion of online privacy. Though some previous knowledge about FVEY existed, the public was unaware of the full extent of data collection and the new revelations left much of the public feeling violated about their privacy rights.
Since the Snowden leak, the Five Eyes Alliance has faced large amounts of public distrust, with many people believing it to be a violation of basic human rights. Prior to the leak, it was thought that the Five Eyes Alliance intelligence activities were limited to foreign countries. However, the classified NSA documents leaked by Snowden showed that the Five Eyes were collecting and storing large amounts of electronic communications records from their own ordinary citizens. The documents revealed that the partner countries were monitoring the citizens of each other-- as a loophole, to bypass domestic spying laws for mass surveillance. Snowden has since been blackballed almost everywhere, and has since gained residency in Russia as of recently.
Everyone is targeted by FVEY, with companies ranging from Google to Visa to major oil companies, not to mention people like Charlie Chaplin, John Lennon, and Princess Diana. There is a serious privacy issue in the world, especially with the rise of social media, and Snowden’s findings were only proof that the government is getting information without consent. Who knows what WASN’T leaked in terms of what’s being spied on.
I didn’t know anything about the Five Eyes going into this project. I had always heard Edward Snowden’s name, but I had no clue just how important this knowledge is. I am very glad I picked FVEY for this project, as I am now well-informed and I honestly feel very vulnerable knowing the government has been doing this. All in all, people joke about the FBI agents on their phone and having to clear their search history every day, but in all honesty, they are not too far off.
https://nordvpn.com/blog/five-eyes-alliance/
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