RIP Five Eyes? Global Spying Network Under Threat

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Ever since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, mainstream speculation has ever-intensified that his second term in office could spell the end of Five Eyes, the international signals intelligence (SIGINT) spying network. Through this connivance, Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the US train an unblinking eye on the public and private communications of the world’s entire population. While few average citizens would mourn the passing of Five Eyes, fear of its demise are pronounced in certain quarters - first and foremost, London.

In February, the Financial Times reported key Trump aide Peter Navarro was pushing for Canada to be excluded from Five Eyes, and the proposal was “being discussed” by senior US officials. While denied by Navarro, the suggestion sparked anxieties among Western intelligence veterans, think tank pundits, and mainstream reporters Ottawa’s removal could precipitate the network’s outright collapse. In March, The Economist enquired, “Could Donald Trump imperil the Five Eyes spy pact?” In April, Politico pondered, “Can Britain live without American intelligence?”

Politico revealed developments such as Trump’s decision to halt intelligence sharing with Ukraine in March had prompted “current and former intelligence officials” to consider whether “it may be necessary for Britain to begin planning for the previously unthinkable,” and undo links between the two nations’ counterpart intelligence agencies. This is despite these ties “[going] so deep that it may be impossible to untangle them” - or at least for London “to replicate the US contribution.”

While the CIA and MI6 are well-known for working in lockstep, Five Eyes is the most intimate expression of this transatlantic espionage bromance, exclusion from which would drastically reduce Britain’s already evaporating clout and standing worldwide. As Politico notes, the global spying network accounts for “Britain’s status as a comparative heavyweight in the intelligence sphere” today. Its origins date back to 1946, and the signing of the secret UKUSA agreement. This formalised intelligence sharing between London and Washington that began decades earlier.

UKUSA’s terms

Ever since, UKUSA has granted Britain an outsized role and influence internationally. As this journalist exposed in May 2022, a shadowy cabal of British military and intelligence veterans - including disgraced former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove - covertly connived to install Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and ensure a ‘hard’ Brexit, due to fears military and intelligence integration between London and the EU could torpedo Five Eyes. Now, Trump’s bellicose approach to longstanding US allies could see their nightmare realised once and for all.

‘Sensitive Operations’

As a declassified 1997 briefing document makes clear, UKUSA provides for “unrestricted” exchange between the NSA and GCHQ of SIGINT gathered by both agencies, “except for those areas that are specifically excluded (e.g. US ONLY information) at the request of either party.” The alliance also allows the NSA to circumvent US legislation preventing it from spying on American citizens, by outsourcing this work to GCHQ, and vice versa. The agencies then share their respective intelligence yields with one another.

The sister agencies’ bond extends far further. The same file notes some “GCHQ [redacted] exist solely to satisfy NSA tasking” - the missing word presumably being “teams” or “units”, if not “divisions.” Reinforcing this inference, documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the NSA funded GCHQ to the tune of at least £100 million in 2010 - 2013 alone, in order to secure access to and influence over the latter’s intelligence-gathering programs. 

The files also indicate Britain’s lax surveillance laws and regulations represent a major “selling point” for Washington. London is moreover acutely aware of her need to provide a significant return on the NSA’s investment in GCHQ. An internal agency memo leaked by Snowden notes GCHQ “must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight” by Washington. An undated declassified NSA appraisal offers a lengthy “assessment of the UKUSA relationship”, and is rife with praise for GCHQ’s contributions:

“UKUSA…has been of inestimable value to NSA [sic] and cannot be abandoned...there is no doubt that UKUSA offers NSA much...unique collection from GCHQ conventional sites, use of UK [redacted] where the US has none...the compatibility of US and UK SIGINT systems...an especially competent cryptanalytic workforce…and, perhaps most important, a record of supporting the US as an ally in confronting world problems.”

However, “despite these outstanding areas of success”, the report also expresses significant concerns about certain aspects of the relationship. Markedly, the section detailing these anxieties is heavily redacted, with nine consecutive pages blanked out entirely. Still, an unexpurgated portion discussing the exchange of “large numbers” of staff between GCHQ and the NSA is illuminating. The contents suggest London frequently seeks to surreptitiously overstep UKUSA’s terms, and insert its cyber spies into sensitive “US ONLY” areas well-beyond their purview.

The section notes many GCHQ secondees to the NSA - particularly those “working sensitive missions” - “assume liaison-like functions”, serving “as lobbyists for [London] in policy matters.” In a “disturbing” cited example of this tendency, a GCHQ official was said to have once “lobbied hard” to parachute one of their operatives into a high-level position with its US counterpart. This was “rightly rejected” by the NSA, “as it would give GCHQ insight into certain sensitive operations we do not share.”

‘Closely Monitoring’

GCHQ and the NSA are nonetheless party to all “sensitive operations” conducted by other members of the Five Eyes nexus. The quintet’s global SIGINT system, intercepting private and commercial communications the world over, is codenamed ECHELON. Under its auspices, an international constellation of tracking stations hoovers every phone call, text message, email, and more transmitted in its surrounding sphere, amounting to millions every hour. ECHELON also collects data from taps on the internet, and monitoring pods placed on underwater cables by US Navy submarines. 

According to a 2001 European Parliament report, around 80% of SIGINT captured by the Five Eyes station in Kojarena, Australia - which employs US and British staff in key posts - is sent automatically to GCHQ and the NSA, without ever being seen or read in Australia. While every Five Eyes member theoretically has the right to veto requests for intelligence collected by another, “when you’re a junior ally like Australia or New Zealand, you never refuse,” journalist Duncan Campbell records. 

This blanket acquiescence comes despite apparent worries among members about what their ostensible allies might do with certain intelligence requested from them. However, no such qualms seemingly apply to Five Eyes’ human intelligence operations. In 2017, WikiLeaks revealed the CIA dispatched spies from Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand to extensively infiltrate and surveil political parties running in France’s 2012 elections, which the Agency was “closely monitoring”:

“Of particular interest is President Sarkozy, the Socialist Party (PS), and other potential candidates’ plans and intentions…Analysts assess the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the current ruling party, is not assured of winning the presidential election and, as a result, analysts are interested in the electoral strategy of…non-ruling parties. Additional information on these topics will help analysts assess, and prepare key US policymakers for, the post-election French political landscape and the potential impact on US-France relations.”

Intelligence Five Eyes members were tasked by the CIA with digging up in France

Covert Five Eyes infiltrators were to “report on deliberations” by the then-French President, identify “rising party leaders, newly developed political parties or movements, and emerging presidential candidates,” root out “major sources of funding for the presidential candidates and registered parties,” and more. That same year, Five Eyes members were also tasked by Washington with intercepting and reporting on all French company negotiations and contracts valued in excess of $200 million. Their findings were shared with various US government entities, including the Treasury and Federal Reserve.

This activity - targeted at a putative ally - is particularly perverse given that in 2014, then-US Attorney General Eric Holder declared Washington “categorically denounces” any and all corporate espionage, and “[does] not collect intelligence to provide a competitive advantage to US companies, or US commercial sectors.” Conversely, British laws on foreign intelligence-gathering overtly state one of GCHQ’s purposes is the promotion of London’s “economic well-being...in relation to the actions or intentions of persons outside the British Islands.”

‘An Outrage’

The capabilities of ECHELON were scrutinised by a European Parliament committee in 2000, which published its final report the next year. As the probe was nearing completion, investigators travelled to Washington to quiz representatives of the US intelligence community, including the CIA and NSA. Upon arrival though, their assorted summits were abruptly cancelled, which “concerned and dismayed” the European delegation. Officially, ECHELON remained completely secret until 2015, following Edward Snowden’s disclosures. 

Such obfuscation and concealment is par for the course for Five Eyes. UKUSA’s own existence wasn’t publicly admitted until 2005, and only five years later was the full text of its seven-page founding document publicly released. Amply testifying to the intense veil of secrecy surrounding the spying network, Australia’s Prime Minister Gough Whitlam remained unaware of his country’s involvement in it until 1973, 17 years after Canberra became a member. This followed police raids on the offices of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

Australia’s Pine Gap spying base, a core component of ECHELON

Launched due to ASIO withholding information from the Australian government, James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s then-counterintelligence chief, was so perturbed by the arrangement’s exposure Down Under he sought to have Whitlam ousted from office via cloak-and-dagger tactics. So it was in November 1975, the popular premier was toppled from power, removed from his democratically elected post upon the orders of Queen Elizabeth II’s representative, Governor General John Kerr, as a result of CIA and MI6 connivance.

Meanwhile, David Lange, New Zealand’s Prime Minister 1984 - 1989, was likewise in the dark all along as to the “international integrated electronic network” to which his country was committed throughout his time in government. He only learned about the operations of Five Eyes after reading Secret Power, a book published in 1996 detailing the activities of Wellington’s Government Communications Security Bureau. Lange chillingly remarked in the work’s foreword:

“It is an outrage that I and other ministers were told so little, and this raises the question of to whom those concerned saw themselves ultimately answerable.”

Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA and GCHQ’s multifarious abuses sparked worldwide public and state-level uproar, and numerous long-running legal battles. Resultantly, the European Court of Human Rights in 2018 and 2021 ruled GCHQ’s “population-scale” surveillance to be completely unlawful. Yet, the operations of Five Eyes have all along endured untrammelled. It would be a deeply bitter irony if the international spying network’s long-overdue end was brought about by the very entity to which constituent nations and spying agencies are “ultimately answerable” - namely, the US Empire.