Five Eyes Background Info
Sourced from QRes#7001
5 Eyes is name of the multilateral intelligence-sharing alliance created by the UKUSA Agreement. The agreement was originally conceived of as a post-WWII pact between the UK and the US in 1946 as a way to spy on foreign governments, specifically the USSR. Over the years, the treaty grew in both members and scope. As the Internet and the amount of data available for intercept grew exponentially, the agreement began to focus more on domestic surveillance.
The “five” in the 5 Eyes refers to the five Anglophone countries that observe the treaty: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. The treaty has built upon its Cold War roots to become the basis for ECHELON, a series of electronic spy stations around the globe that can intercept data transmitted via telephones, faxes, and computers. Essentially, ECHELON stations can intercept data from transmissions to and from satellite relays.
The 5 Eyes alliance is the foundation of an extensive web of partnerships between SIGINT agencies in Western nations to share intelligence with each other. In nearly all respects, the NSA is the global leader in SIGINT, thus most SIGINT agreements, be they multilateral like 5 Eyes or bilateral, focus on who has access to NSA data and technology. Signatories to the UKUSA Agreement are known as “second parties,” and they have the greatest amount of access to NSA data and the closest ties to the agency. Other Western nations, such as members of NATO or South Korea, are “third parties.” These third party agreements are formal, bilateral arrangements between the NSA and the national SIGINT agency. Third parties can still trade raw data with the NSA, but they have less access to its database.
Technically, second parties’ citizens are generally exempt from being spied on without approval from the host country, but the Snowden revelations have shown that the NSA has created a framework that could bypass these blocks. There have been no official comments from any 5 Eyes members and it is unclear if unapproved surveillance has been carried out by 5 Eyes members in the past. And no such restriction exists for third parties.
It is important to note that the membership of these different groups is constantly changing in response to global and political developments. Furthermore, the knowledge we have of these groups has come primarily from leaks, leading to a fuzzy picture and pointing out how little oversight these intelligence agencies, who have access to near infinite amounts of personal data, are subject to.