EOTO: Five Eyes

At the end of World War II, five nations were united in their attempts to defeat the Soviet Union. Part of this was to eliminate the threat of Soviet spies and to better handle global threats, including the Soviet Union.

The Five Eyes alliance was created in 1946 and serves as an intelligence-sharing agency agreement between five English-speaking countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States; hence why it is referred to as "Five Eyes." These countries are part of the bilateral UK/USA Agreement (the United Kingdom-United States Communication Intelligence Act), which is a treaty for cooperation in sharing surveillance information. Abbreviated as FVEY by the government, this network monitors the electronic communication of citizens and foreign governments. 

This group works to reveal surveillance activities to corporations without limiting their access to classified information, contributing to the privatization of spying. Though, this brings attention to the fact that this form of spying is supposedly not in any way violating our fourth amendment rights as United States citizens, which states that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized (US Constitution).” Five Eyes has configured a way to get around the issue of privacy invasion issues by allowing for unlawful intrusions, which bypass legal limitations on state surveillance. There is currently no existing legislation controlling intelligence-sharing or surveillance. 

Each of the Five Eyes states conducts interception, collection, acquisition, analysis, and decryption activities. The members then share all the information that they obtained with the other members. This is how the agreement continues to remain secretive. 

Five Eyes now has integrated programs, staff, and bases. The intelligence-sharing pact has expanded beyond the five core countries to occasionally include other states such as Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the allied coalition of Afghanistan. 

Total Information Awareness is a mass detection program developed by the United States Information Awareness Office but is currently run by the Department of Defense. This program operated under this name from February to May 2003 before officially being renamed Terrorism Information Awareness. TIA’s foundation works to collect as much information as possible, on as many people as possible, to enter into a large database. The information that the program obtains is available to the government to sort through to identify terrorist or potential terrorist efforts. They use a human identification system to detect, recognize, and identify humans from great distances for crime prevention and homeland security purposes. The goal is to be able to collect surveillance on individuals, even if they are out of range, to eventually use a facial recognition system to identify them. Though protection is the highest value, this completely invades the privacy of people, violating our fourth amendment rights.