EOTO Awareness

 Five Eyes 

    

    Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The concept of this alliance started during World War II before the United States had even formally entered the war when British and US code breakers would meet in secret to discuss their goals for the post-war world. These secret meetings lead to the Atlantic Charter, which is a joint statement between the United States and the United Kingdom issued on August 14, 1941 that outlined these goals that they had previously talked about. The goals outlined are stated as follows; no expansion of territory, no territorial changes without the consent of the people, restored self-government, reduce trade restrictions, global cooperation, freedom from fear of any aspect of the government, freedom of the seas, abandonment of force, and disarmament of aggressor nations. The Atlantic Charter was signed on the first of January in 1942 and became the basis of today's United Nations. Interestingly enough, I found out that President Joe Biden, along with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, actually signed a document entitled the "New Atlantic Charter" just recently in June of this year. 

    Following the signing of the Atlantic Charter, the UKUSA Agreement took off. Each country part of this alliance are parties to the UKUSA Agreement which is a treaty agreeing to joint cooperation in signals intelligence. The United Kingdom and the United States were the first to sign this treaty in 1946. Canada was actually inspired to join this alliance by Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech and signed in 1948. Australia and New Zealand were the last to join this alliance and finally signed the treaty in 1956. The alliance formed with the UKUSA Agreement is now known as Five Eyes for the five countries that are a part of this union. 

    Today we have what is called the Five Eyes Intelligence Oversight and Review Council. This council focuses on all things signal intelligence, national assessment, defense intelligence. Members of this council exchange views and concerns, compare oversight methods; discussing practices that work and what does not, they claim to encourage transparency as a means to gain the trust of the public (take that as you will), and maintain contact with other similar councils, political offices, and other  countries unaffiliated with Five Eyes considered third parties when deemed appropriate. I would like to point out that there is actually not a whole lot of information out there about this topic which I think just goes to show the affect of these communication monitors. So all in all, I don't want to say that Five Eyes is basically just a big spy corporation but I'll let you come to your own conclusion on that.