Five Eyes
Intelligence partnership linking Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States
| Five Eyes
| |
|---|---|
| Logo |  GCHQ headquarters, one of the agencies in the partnership. |
| Type | Intelligence partnership |
| Area served | Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States |
Five Eyes is the name used for the intelligence partnership of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Its signals-intelligence core comprises the Australian Signals Directorate, Communications Security Establishment, Government Communications Security Bureau, Government Communications Headquarters and National Security Agency.[1]
Signals intelligence and wider cooperation
Bill Robinson describes a partnership originating in wartime and post-war signals-intelligence cooperation that subsequently extended to a broader range of intelligence, security and law-enforcement activities involving several agencies. The terms Five Eyes and UKUSA therefore overlap, but the wider network is not confined to one bilateral document or to the work of the five signals-intelligence agencies.[1]
Privacy and the Canadian example
Bill Robinson notes that the Communications Security Establishment’s routine suppression of Canadian identities in reports did not delete the underlying identifying information. Foreign partners could request disclosure: from July 2017 to June 2018, 102 requests concerned disclosure to Five Eyes agencies, compared with 24 for other foreign agencies. Robinson cautions that these published figures did not disclose the number of identities actually released.[2]
See also
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Bill Robinson, “The Communications Security Establishment (CSE)”, chapter 4 in Stephanie Carvin, Thomas Juneau and Craig Forcese (eds), Top Secret Canada: Understanding the Canadian Intelligence and National Security Community, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020, pp. 72–73.
- ↑ Bill Robinson, “The Communications Security Establishment (CSE)”, chapter 4 in Stephanie Carvin, Thomas Juneau and Craig Forcese (eds), Top Secret Canada: Understanding the Canadian Intelligence and National Security Community, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020, pp. 82–84.