The “Five Eyes” network once described as a ‘super-national’ intelligence organization. Why was the alliance formed? What role has it played in keeping its nations safe from terror?
The ‘Five Eyes’ is a multilateral intelligence-sharing network shared by over 20 different agencies worldwide. Governance for those agencies falls between five English-speaking countries — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The coalition of nations, called five eyes (FVEY) is both surveillance-based and signals intelligence (SIGINT) command. Intelligence documents shared between the member countries are classified as ‘Secret—AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US Eyes Only,’ which inevitably gave the group its name as ‘Five Eyes.’
How did the Alliance Originate
An alliance between the U.S. and the U.K. evolved during the Second World War. The efforts were in response to counter the threat of a Cold War with the Soviet Union. The two nations located on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, had successfully deciphered German and Japanese codes. During the war, the two countries, forged a collaboration to share intelligence. Information related to signals such as radio, satellite, and internet communications, were passed in secret. In the aftermath of the war in 1946, the alliance was formalized through an agreement to cooperate in signals intelligence.
The treaty called the British-U.S. Communication Intelligence Agreement, or BRUSA (now known as the UKUSA Agreement), was signed between the State-Army-Navy Communication Intelligence Board (STANCIB) of the U.S. and the London Signal Intelligence Board (SIGINT) of Britain.
The scope of the organization was limited to “communication intelligence matters only” related to “unrestricted” exchange of intelligence products in six areas: collection of traffic; acquisition of communication documents and equipment; traffic analysis; cryptanalysis; decryption and translation; and acquisition of information regarding communication organizations, practices, procedures, and equipment.
The arrangement was later extended to ‘second party’ countries where Canada joined in 1948, and later Australia and New Zealand became part of the alliance in 1956.
Though the intelligence alliance was established over eighty years ago, it remains a top secret coalition of nations to this day. Even state leaders , were not privy to the establishment or existence of the group.
As a matter of fact, no government officially acknowledged the arrangement by name until nineteen ninety nine and the text of the agreement was first officially released in public after over sixty years in two thousand and ten.
How Does ‘Five Eyes’ Operate
The five member nations share a broad range of information, and data, accessible to their respective intelligence agencies. The partners are assigned respective SIGINT mandates.
A Canadian intelligence officer writes in a military journal (2020) that the US is responsible for Russia, northern China, most of Asia and Latin America. While Australia covers southern China, Indo-China and its close neighbours, such as Indonesia; the UK is in charge in Africa and west of the Urals within the former Soviet Union; and New Zealand is responsible for the Western Pacific, while Canada handles the polar regions of Russia.
The goal of the Five Eyes, has changed from following the collapse of the Soviet Union to the emergence of new global challenges like Islamic terrorism and the growing threats of Iran or South Korea. Likewise with a Gaza War, many nations are now monitoring of antisemitism, anti-Christian, or islamophobia.
For the five eyes, although the focus has widened to other areas of policy and operations the goal is still safety and security for its citizens. To achieve their goals, the Five Eyes have expanded to others areas of surveillance.
Those include: ocean and maritime surveillance, scientific and defence intelligence analysis, medical intelligence, geospatial intelligence, counterintelligence, counter-terrorism, and the continuous sharing of intelligence innovations via a secret collective database known as ‘Stone Ghost’.
To increase cooperation and maintain close ties between the nations, the Five Eyes Intelligence Oversight and Review Council (FIORC) was created in September 2016. The council is a “non-political intelligence oversight, review, and security entity” with the member countries.
The goal is to exchange views on subjects of mutual interest, compare best practices, explore areas of cooperation, and maintain contact with non-Five Eyes countries, among other overall council aims.
Privacy Before Safety
Several concerns regarding the privacy of citizens, of both member nations and those in other countries has arisen. Concerns around maintaining national security and also the methods used to gather intelligence by the alliance, are also questionable. Operations by the Five eyes have remained shrouded in mystery for decades.
In fact, the security alliance was embroiled in a major controversy in 2013 following the disclosure of classified documents by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor.
The documents revealed massive surveillance breaches and unauthorized monitoring of its own citizens. The programme jointly operated by the Five Eyes began to encroach of citizen privacy rights of its own member countries, causing public backlash.
“Five Eyes is more of a supra-national intelligence organization that doesn’t answer to the laws of its own countries.”
Edward Snowden
The U.K.-based charity Privacy International has made claims that bilateral agreements under the UKUSA reveal the outsourcing of surveillance activities to agencies without limiting their access to classified information. This type of widespread usage and access to personal information by non-governmental actors, may be even more cause for concern.
“There is no domestic legislation governing intelligence-sharing, meaning that many of these arrangements lack legal basis and therefore democratic legitimacy. The “third party rule”, often included in intelligence-sharing agreements, forbids the disclosure of inter-agency information to third parties, ousting the possibility of oversight,” it says.
In 2013, a Canadian court rebuked the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) for using the alliance to monitor the electronic communications of Canadian terror suspects overseas. The ruling concluded that Canadian spy agencies had deliberately misled judges to expand their surveilling powers. Albeit unlawfully, as reported by The Globe and Mail.
Federal agencies were illegally enlisting U.S. and British allies in global surveillance dragnets that risk harming Canadian terrorism suspects and could expose government agents to criminal charges, the report stated.
Network Infiltration
Recent developments have come to light that members of the Five Eyes have been infiltrated by terror networks around the world.
Sensitive information gathered by the alliance has the potential of being released by corrupt actors working with terror networks. One such example is that of Cameron Ortis was a director-ranked official with the National Intelligence Coordination Unit of RCMP—who in 2023 was found guilty of leaking classified top-secret information to members of an international Islamic terror network.
