Five Eyes
The Five Eyes is an Anglosphere intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries are party to the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence. Informally, "Five Eyes" can refer to the group of intelligence agencies of these countries. The term "Five Eyes" originated as shorthand for a "AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US Eyes Only" releasability caveat.
The origins of the FVEY can be traced to informal, secret meetings during World War II between British and American code-breakers that took place before the US formally entered the war. The alliance was formalized in the post-war era by the UKUSA Agreement in 1946. As the Cold War deepened, the intelligence sharing arrangement was formalised under the ECHELON surveillance system in the 1960s. This system was developed by the FVEY to monitor the communications of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc; it is now used to monitor communications worldwide. The FVEY expanded its surveillance capabilities during the course of the "war on terror", with much emphasis placed on monitoring the Internet. The alliance has grown into a robust global surveillance mechanism, adapting to new domains such as international terrorism, cyberattacks, and contemporary regional conflicts.
The alliance's activities, often shrouded in secrecy, have occasionally come under scrutiny for their implications on privacy and civil liberties, sparking debates and legal challenges. In the late 1990s, the existence of ECHELON was disclosed to the public, triggering a debate in the European Parliament and, to a lesser extent, the United States Congress and British Parliament. 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". Disclosures in the 2010s revealed FVEY was spying on one another's citizens and sharing the collected information with each other, although the FVEY nations maintain this was done legally.
Five Eyes is among the most comprehensive espionage alliances. Since processed intelligence is gathered from multiple sources, the information shared is not restricted to signals intelligence and often involves military intelligence, human intelligence, and geospatial intelligence. Five Eyes remains a key element in the intelligence and security landscape of each member country, providing them a strategic advantage in understanding and responding to global events.
Organisations
The following table provides an overview of most of the FVEY agencies that share data.| Country | Agency | Abbreviation | Role |
| Australia | Australian Secret Intelligence Service | ASIS | Human intelligence |
| Australia | Australian Signals Directorate | ASD | Signal intelligence |
| Australia | Australian Security Intelligence Organisation | ASIO | Security intelligence |
| Australia | Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation | AGO | Geo intelligence |
| Australia | Defence Intelligence Organisation | DIO | Defence intelligence |
| Canada | Canadian Forces Intelligence Command | CFINTCOM | Defence intelligence, geo intelligence, human intelligence |
| Canada | Communications Security Establishment | CSE | Signal intelligence |
| Canada | Canadian Security Intelligence Service | CSIS | Human intelligence, security intelligence |
| Canada | Royal Canadian Mounted Police | RCMP | Security intelligence |
| New Zealand | Directorate of Defence Intelligence and Security | DDIS | Defence intelligence |
| New Zealand | Government Communications Security Bureau | GCSB | Signal intelligence |
| New Zealand | New Zealand Security Intelligence Service | NZSIS | Human intelligence, security intelligence |
| Defence Intelligence | DI | Defence intelligence | |
| Government Communications Headquarters | GCHQ | Signal intelligence | |
| Security Service | MI5 | Security intelligence | |
| Secret Intelligence Service | MI6, SIS | Human intelligence | |
| United States | Central Intelligence Agency | CIA | Human intelligence |
| United States | Defense Intelligence Agency | DIA | Defense intelligence |
| United States | Federal Bureau of Investigation | FBI | Security intelligence |
| United States | National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency | NGA | Geo intelligence |
| United States | National Security Agency | NSA | Signal intelligence |
History
Origins (1941–1950s)
The informal origins of the Five Eyes alliance were secret meetings between British and US code-breakers at the British code-breaking establishment Bletchley Park in February 1941, before the US entry into the war. The first record of these meetings is a February 1941 diary entry from Alastair Denniston, head of Bletchley Park, reading "The Ys are coming!" with "Ys" referring to "Yanks". An entry from 10 February reads "Ys arrive". British and US intelligence shared extremely confidential information, including that the British had broken the German Enigma code and that the US had broken the Japanese Purple code. For the rest of the war, key figures like Denniston and code-breaking expert Alan Turing travelled back and forth across the Atlantic. The informal relationship established for wartime signals intelligence developed into a formal, signed agreement at the start of the Cold War.The formal Five Eyes alliance can be traced back to the August 1941 Atlantic Charter, which laid out Allied goals for the post-war world. On 17 May 1943, the UK and US governments signed the British–US Communication Intelligence Agreement, also known as the BRUSA Agreement, to facilitate co-operation between the US War Department and the British Government Code and Cypher School. On 5 March 1946, the two governments formalized their secret treaty as the UKUSA Agreement, the basis for all signal intelligence cooperation between the NSA and GCHQ up to the present.
UKUSA was extended to include Canada in 1948, followed by Norway in 1952, Denmark in 1954, West Germany in 1955, and Australia and New Zealand in 1956. These countries participated in the alliance as "third parties". By 1955, a newer version of the UKUSA Agreement officially acknowledged the formal status of the remaining Five Eyes countries with the following statement:
Cold War
During the Cold War, GCHQ and the NSA shared intelligence on the Soviet Union, 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.In 1953, SIS and the CIA jointly orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.
From 1955 through 1975 during the Vietnam War, Australian and New Zealander operators in the Asia-Pacific region worked to directly support the United States while GCHQ operators stationed in British Hong Kong as part of GCHQ Hong Kong were tasked with monitoring North Vietnamese air defence networks.
In 1961, SIS and the CIA jointly orchestrated the assassination of the Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba, an operation authorized by out-going US President Dwight D. Eisenhower the year before in 1960.
In 1973, the ASIS and the CIA jointly orchestrated the overthrow of Chile's President Salvador Allende.
Over a period of at least five years in the 1970s, a senior officer named Ian George Peacock, who was in the counterespionage unit of Australia's ASIO, stole highly classified intelligence documents that had been shared with Australia and sold them to the Soviet Union. Peacock held the title of supervisor-E and had top-secret security clearance. He retired from the ASIO in 1983 and died in 2006.
During the Falklands War in 1982, the United Kingdom received intelligence data from its FVEY allies as well as from third parties like Norway and France.
In 1989, during the Tiananmen Square protests, SIS and the CIA took part in Operation Yellowbird to exfiltrate dissidents from China.
In the aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991, an ASIS technician bugged Kuwaiti government offices for SIS.
ECHELON network disclosures (1972–2000)
By the end of the 20th century, the FVEY members had developed the ECHELON surveillance network into a global system capable of collecting massive amounts of private and commercial communications including telephone calls, fax, email, and other data traffic. The network's information comes from intercepted communication bearers such as satellite transmissions and public switched telephone networks.Two of the FVEY information collection mechanisms are 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 civilian communications as they travel through infrastructure like fiber cables. The program was first disclosed to the public in 1972 when a former NSA communications analyst reported to Ramparts magazine that the Agency had developed technology that "could crack all Soviet codes".
In a 1988 piece in the New Statesman called "Somebody's listening", Duncan Campbell revealed the existence of ECHELON, an extension of the UKUSA Agreement on global signals intelligence. The story detailed how 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, New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager provided a detailed description of ECHELON in a book titled Secret Power – New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network. The European Parliament cited the book in a 1998 report titled "An Appraisal of the Technology of Political Control". On 16 March 2000, the Parliament called for a resolution on the Five Eyes and its ECHELON surveillance network which would have called for the "complete dismantling of ECHELON".
Three months later, the European Parliament established the Temporary Committee on ECHELON to investigate the ECHELON surveillance network. However, according to a number of European politicians such as Esko Seppänen of Finland, the European Commission hindered these investigations.
In the United States, congressional legislators warned that the ECHELON system could be used to monitor US citizens. On 14 May 2001, the US government cancelled all meetings with the Temporary Committee on ECHELON. According to a BBC report from May 2001, "The US Government still refuses to admit that Echelon even exists."