Five Eyes: The Oldest and Largest Spy Network in History

Updated: Jun 3, 2020

The Five Eyes (FVEY), consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States, is the oldest formalised spy network in the world. It was formed from intelligence exchanges between the Allied nations during WWII. The network, which initially focused on intelligence gathering from the Soviet Union after WWII, incorporated Canada and Australia in 1948, and New Zealand in 1956.

The result of the formation was a secretive and English-speaking global surveillance network. For the past seven decades, these five nations have operated with the purpose of spying on the world’s communications, and more recently, “mastering the internet”. Each nation is responsible for a region:

Australia

South and East Asia

Canada

Russia, Latin America, North Atlantic and Pacific Ocean

New Zealand

South Pacific and South East Asia

United Kingdom

Europe and Russia

United States

Africa, Caribbean, China, Greater Middle East and Russia

Exposure

The Five Eyes maintained complete secrecy until 1999 when the head of Australia's Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) became the first person to openly admit their country's involvement in the spy network. It was not until 2010 that documents were released confirming it's existence. Three years later in 2013, former NSA contractor and founder of WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden, leaked documents exposing the Five Eyes as a mass global surveillance network.

The documents showed that Five Eyes members intentionally spied on the citizens of other allied nations to circumnavigate privacy laws that blocked countries from spying on their own citizens. He described it as a "supra-national intelligence organisation that doesn't answer to the laws of it's own countries."

Notable Individuals and Controversy

Before the Iraq War, Five Eyes agents monitored UN weapons inspector Hans Blix. British agents were also exposed for bugging the office of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Additionally, the SIS (UK) and CIA (USA) signed a surveillance agreement with Muammar Gaddafi, Libya's former ruler.

The partnership allowed spying on Libyan dissidents in the West, in exchange for using Libya as a base for forced rendition (government-sponsored abduction of a person with the purpose of circumventing a countries laws on interrogation, detention and torture). The International Court of Justice ordered Australia and New Zealand to stop spying on East Timor in 2014. This was the first time the Five Eyes had been restricted by international law.

Since the existence of the Five Eyes has been a secret until the 2000s, the network had tallied some famous names into it's watch list. Here are a few:

Angela Merkel, John Lennon, Diana, Princess of Wales, Nelson Mandela, Charlie Chaplin, Jane Fonda and others.

Five, Six, Nine and Fourteen Eyes

The group is not only confined to sharing information to just each other, although the majority is only shared between members. Edward Snowden, for example, said the NSA has a "massive body" called the Foreign Affairs Directorate that is responsible for collaborating with foreign countries.

Six Eyes

The United States proposed to France to join the Five Eyes, or the "Six Eyes", in 2004. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy made it a requirement that France could be a signatory of the "no-spy agreement", which blocked other members from spying on each other. President Obama and the CIA did not approve and France subsequently refused.

Other countries such as Germany, Israel, Singapore and Japan are either are collaborating, have collaborated, or have been considered for membership of the Five Eyes.

Nine Eyes

Edward Snowden also revealed information that detailed a working agreement amongst the Five Eyes plus Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway.

Fourteen Eyes

This same agreement is the basis of a working agreement between the Five Eyes and nine other nations, also known as the "Fourteen Eyes". This would consist of the members of "Nine Eyes", plus Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden.

Big Brother

Contrary to complaints of the NSA and other Five Eyes agencies that the explosion of digital intelligence has put them "in the dark" and losing the visibility they once had, they are in fact the most powerful they have ever been.

Following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, the Five Eyes found ways to infiltrate all aspects of modern communication networks. These networks include:

collection of traffic;
acquisition of communications documents and equipment;
traffic analysis
cryptanalysis;
decryption and translation; and
acquisition of information regarding communications organisations, procedures, practises and equipment

Released NSA documents show that in March 2013, the agency collected 97 billion pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide.

A number of individuals from the European Court of Human Rights has maintained a position that secret surveillance, such as that carried out by Five Eyes, is a significant infringement on human rights.

Mass surveillance is one of the most dangerous, yet secretive weapons of modern states. Each and everyone of us in the Western world have had our privacy slowly dissolved by not only Five Eyes nations, but by the Fourteen Eyes, NATO and undoubtedly more secretive surveillance networks.

In the next few Statecraft articles, further questions will be raised on mass surveillance, cyber security and the present implications on liberty and human rights that surveillance poses.