FIVE EYES: Intelligence at what cost?
Max Pollack
Understanding the maze that is the United States’ defense treaties and obligations is an arduous task. The US has straightforward defense obligations (such as NATO) but also a smorgasbord of more contentious treaties. Taiwan is not recognized formally by the US, yet the US has a legal obligation to make sure the island can defend itself. One of the more complicated agreements the US is involved in is, the not very well named, AUSCANNZUKUS/Five nation framework. AUSCANNZUKUS is a combination of the names of the five countries involved: AUStralia, CANada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These five countries work very closely together on military matters. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, all countries assisted the US and UK in military actions in Iraq, against Saddam Hussein and ISIS. These are the nations that make up the core of the ‘Anglosphere’. They all have similar cultures, shared history, similar legal systems, a common language, and common national goals. And since these countries are allies, they wanted to make it so that they could easily share intelligence on common threats. In the world of espionage, this group of nations is more commonly known as the “Five Eyes” intelligence community. This intelligence sharing led to many intelligence breakthroughs during the cold war, war on terror, and the drug war. A large amount of ISIS’s defeat is owed to intelligence sharing as are numerous military victories.
This agreement is not without its criticisms, especially around legality and privacy. Edward Snowden released a treasure trove of documents relating to the intelligence community. Among these were plenty mentioning the activity of Five Eyes. Most of the allegedly illegal intelligence-gathering programs were partnerships between these nations. PRISM, ECHELON, and numerous others have been used to spy on regular citizens, engage in corporate espionage, and go well beyond their stated goals of spying on foreign militaries and diplomats. Echelon specifically was used to spy on members of the Five Eyes governments that were not well liked. Prime Minister Thatcher apparently had the NSA spy on two British ministers and US Senator Strom Thurmond was also put under surveillance by Five Eyes. Echelon also targeted Lady Diana, to which the over 1000-page long NSA report is still classified. Regular citizens were also targeted by the program for surveillance by their own countries, or more likely, the actual intelligence would be gathered by another five eyes nation and shared with all of them. For example, the NSA had a watchlist of on many prominent US activists that they could not legally spy on. The list was given to the British GCHQ who did the actual intelligence work. Reports were then given back to the NSA. One of the most prominent activists that was targeted by that specific program was actress Jane Fonda. The list goes on and features many innocent civilians and celebrities.
Whether or not you agree with the politics of the person being targeted, the five eyes community gathers intelligence on an unprecedented scale. Intelligence sharing has led to threats being eliminated quicker and saved the lives of many intelligence assets and civilians, however, they also provide a risk to privacy. These nations can skirt privacy laws by having other countries do the actual surveillance. Many of the programs in Snowden’s files did not get warrants, not even from the FISA Courts. They are also so large in scale that almost every communication in one of these five nations is monitored. Hell, there’s a large chance that this piece has used enough trigger words to be recorded in a Five Eyes database somewhere.
As citizens of these countries, we have to decide if our governments should be going this far in the name of security. The length of the discussion around these issues is much longer than this post but the debate on the utility of these programs versus privacy concerns is an important one.