Five Eyes Alliance
“At the end of World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom continued their intelligence sharing-sharing efforts by signing the British-U.S. Communication agreement, which was later renamed to the UKUSA”.
This agreement was created as a way that the United States and the United Kingdom could split their intelligence sharing streamline in order to better handle global threats. At the time of the agreement, their number one priority to focus on was the Soviet Union.
In 1948 Canada joined the alliance and in 1956, Australia and New Zealand also joined, which led to a globalized intelligence sharing entity that could gather intelligence outside of the United States reach, and also led to the name The Five Eyes (FVEY) Alliance. The UKUSA agreement between the countries has only strengthened over time and has extended its surveillance to online activity. However, there was a downside to this extension. Extending their surveillance online meant that they would be able to find out any information about any person, including those who weren’t terrorists or criminals which was an invasion of privacy. No one knew about this agreement or this invasion of privacy until the Edward Snowden leak in 2013.
Edward Snowden is an American computer professional, who worked for the CIA as well as the National Security Agency (NSA). While working for the NSA Snowden copied and leaked classified information that exposed the government surveillance of citizens' online activity, which also contained evidence that the FVEY intelligence-sharing network was broader than they thought.
This leak created distrust between the citizens and the government, which it totally should have because what they were doing was not right. The intention that the FVEY Alliance had in the beginning before extending online was understandable especially if our lives could be in danger. But invading hundreds of thousands of citizens' privacy was crossing a line. But we see the government trying to cross lines all the time because they try to take advantage of the power that they have.
After learning about this matter in class, I most definitely want to become more private with my life and my information. And I think that we all should do this because if you have nothing to hide and then there should be no reason, they have access to our lives like that. One way that we could protect ourselves is by using a VPN and being “aware of the online laws and regulations of the country you reside in.” If you want to learn how to protect yourself online here is a video and a blog that I found called Cybersecurity 101 that can help you protect your privacy.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyeshttps://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/is-the-five-eyes-alliance-conspiring-to-spy-on-you/277190/
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