Five Eyes
Based on Wikipedia: Five Eyes
In February 1941, ten months before Pearl Harbor dragged America into World War II, a small group of American code-breakers quietly slipped into Britain. Their destination was Bletchley Park, a Victorian mansion northwest of London that served as the nerve center of British intelligence. The head of Bletchley Park, Alastair Denniston, noted their arrival in his diary with characteristic British understatement: "The Ys are coming!" The "Ys" were Yanks.
What happened at those secret meetings would reshape global intelligence gathering for the next eighty years.
The British shared something extraordinary with their American visitors: they had cracked the German Enigma code, the encryption system the Nazis believed to be unbreakable. In return, the Americans revealed their own triumph—they had broken the Japanese Purple cipher. This mutual disclosure of closely guarded secrets laid the groundwork for what would become the most powerful intelligence alliance in history.
From Wartime Allies to Permanent Partners
The informal cooperation forged in wartime became something more durable when the Cold War began. In March 1946, the United States and United Kingdom signed a classified treaty called the UKUSA Agreement. The name was bland by design—it revealed nothing about what it actually did, which was establish a framework for sharing signals intelligence, the art of intercepting and decoding communications.
Canada joined in 1948. Australia and New Zealand followed in 1956. Together, these five English-speaking nations formed what insiders called "Five Eyes," a name derived from the classification marking stamped on shared documents: "AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US Eyes Only." If you weren't from one of those five countries, you couldn't see it.
The alliance expanded its reach during the Cold War through a surveillance system code-named ECHELON. Originally designed to monitor Soviet and Eastern Bloc communications, ECHELON grew into something far larger—a global network of listening posts, satellite intercepts, and undersea cable taps capable of vacuuming up communications from almost anywhere on Earth.
The Agencies Behind the Curtain
Each Five Eyes nation contributes its own intelligence services to the partnership. In the United States, the National Security Agency (NSA) handles signals intelligence, while the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) focuses on human intelligence—recruiting spies, running covert operations, and analyzing foreign governments. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) handles domestic security and counterintelligence.
Britain contributes Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), its signals intelligence agency, along with the Secret Intelligence Service (better known as MI6, which handles foreign espionage) and MI5 (which handles domestic security). Canada has the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) for signals work and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) for broader intelligence functions.
Australia brings the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). New Zealand contributes the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and the Security Intelligence Service (SIS).
What makes Five Eyes unusual isn't just that these agencies share intelligence. Plenty of countries share intelligence with allies. What distinguishes Five Eyes is the depth of the sharing. These agencies don't just exchange finished reports—they share raw intercepts, analytical methods, and access to each other's collection systems. They can query each other's databases. They coordinate operations. In some cases, officers from one country work directly inside another country's facilities.
A History of Covert Actions
The alliance has done more than just listen. Its member agencies have jointly orchestrated some of the Cold War's most consequential covert operations.
In 1953, MI6 and the CIA together overthrew Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh after he nationalized the country's oil industry. The operation, known as TPAJAX on the American side and Boot on the British side, installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as the country's ruler—a decision whose consequences still reverberate through Middle Eastern politics today.
In 1961, the same pair of agencies helped orchestrate the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo. President Eisenhower had authorized the operation the previous year. Lumumba's death plunged the country into decades of instability and dictatorship.
In 1973, Australia's ASIS and the CIA jointly supported the military coup that overthrew Chile's socialist President Salvador Allende, bringing General Augusto Pinochet to power.
Not all Five Eyes operations succeeded. During the Vietnam War, Australian and New Zealand operators in the Asia-Pacific supported American military operations while British signals officers in Hong Kong monitored North Vietnamese air defenses. The war ended in American defeat anyway.
The alliance also experienced security failures. For at least five years in the 1970s, a senior officer in Australia's ASIO named Ian George Peacock stole highly classified intelligence documents—including material shared by other Five Eyes partners—and sold them to the Soviet Union. He held the title "supervisor-E (espionage)" and had top-secret clearance. He retired in 1983 and died in 2006, his betrayal apparently never leading to prosecution.
ECHELON Goes Global
By the 1990s, ECHELON had evolved far beyond its Cold War origins. The system could intercept telephone calls, faxes, and emails transmitted by satellite or flowing through fiber optic cables. Listening stations spread across the globe—in places like Menwith Hill in England, Pine Gap in Australia, and Waihopai in New Zealand—collected massive volumes of private and commercial communications.
The public first learned about ECHELON in 1988, when British journalist Duncan Campbell published an article in the New Statesman magazine titled "Somebody's Listening." Campbell revealed that the surveillance network wasn't just being used for national security purposes—it was being abused for corporate espionage, helping American businesses gain advantages over foreign competitors. The article attracted little attention outside journalism circles.
Eight years later, New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager published a book called "Secret Power: New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network," providing the most detailed public description of ECHELON to date. The European Parliament took notice. In 1998, it published a report examining "the Technology of Political Control," and in March 2000, it called for a resolution demanding the "complete dismantling of ECHELON."
The resolution failed. Three months later, the European Parliament established a temporary committee to investigate ECHELON, but European Commission officials reportedly hindered the investigation. In the United States, some members of Congress warned that ECHELON could be used to monitor American citizens, but the government refused to acknowledge the system even existed. As late as May 2001, according to the BBC, "The US Government still refuses to admit that Echelon even exists."
The War on Terror Changes Everything
Four months later, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Everything changed.
In the aftermath of September 11, Five Eyes dramatically expanded its surveillance capabilities. The alliance's attention shifted from monitoring state adversaries to tracking terrorist networks—a fundamentally different challenge. Terrorist cells are smaller, more distributed, and communicate differently than governments or militaries. Finding them required casting a wider net.
New programs proliferated. PRISM, operated by the NSA with help from GCHQ and Australia's ASD, gathered user data directly from technology companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft. The Upstream collection program intercepted communications as they traveled through fiber optic cables. XKeyscore, another NSA program with contributions from Australian and New Zealand partners, allowed analysts to search through vast databases of intercepted communications. Tempora, run by GCHQ with NSA assistance, tapped into fiber optic cables carrying internet traffic to and from Britain. MUSCULAR, a joint GCHQ-NSA operation, secretly intercepted data flowing between the data centers of Google and Yahoo.
The alliance's surveillance apparatus grew so extensive that Five Eyes-affiliated agencies gained access to SIPRNet, the classified version of the internet used by the American government.
The Snowden Revelations
In 2013, a former NSA contractor named Edward Snowden began leaking classified documents to journalists. The revelations that followed transformed public understanding of modern surveillance.
Snowden's documents showed that Five Eyes had built surveillance capabilities far beyond what most people imagined. The programs weren't just targeting terrorists or foreign governments—they were collecting data on ordinary citizens in vast quantities. Phone records, emails, internet browsing histories, location data—the alliance was vacuuming it all up.
Perhaps most controversially, the documents revealed that Five Eyes members were spying on each other's citizens and then sharing the collected information. This arrangement appeared to circumvent domestic laws that restricted governments from surveilling their own people. If the NSA couldn't legally collect data on American citizens, GCHQ could do it and share the results. If GCHQ faced legal constraints in Britain, the NSA could return the favor.
Five Eyes nations insisted their activities were legal. Critics were unconvinced.
Snowden himself described the Five Eyes as "a supra-national intelligence organisation that does not answer to the known laws of its own countries." He fled first to Hong Kong, then to Russia, where he received asylum and remained for years, a fugitive from American justice who had revealed American secrets.
Beyond Signals Intelligence
While Five Eyes began as a signals intelligence partnership, it has grown into something broader. The alliance now shares military intelligence, human intelligence gathered by spies and informants, and geospatial intelligence derived from satellite imagery and mapping data. It has become one of the most comprehensive espionage partnerships in history.
The alliance has also become increasingly public about some of its activities, particularly when it comes to confronting adversaries. Five Eyes nations have jointly attributed cyberattacks to specific countries, called out disinformation campaigns, and coordinated sanctions.
This shift toward public action reflects a changing strategic environment. During the Cold War, intelligence agencies operated almost entirely in the shadows. Today, "naming and shaming" adversaries has become a tool of statecraft. When Five Eyes nations jointly announce that Russia conducted a cyberattack or China stole intellectual property, they're wielding intelligence as a diplomatic weapon.
The China Challenge
In recent years, China has emerged as the central preoccupation of Five Eyes intelligence agencies. The alliance has coordinated responses to Chinese activities ranging from intellectual property theft to influence operations to human rights abuses.
The conflict burst into public view in December 2018, when Canadian authorities arrested Meng Wanzhou, a top executive at Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, at Vancouver International Airport. She faced American charges of fraud and conspiracy related to evading sanctions on Iran. China responded by arresting two Canadian nationals, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, in what was widely viewed as hostage diplomacy.
Analysts saw this as the beginning of a direct clash between China and the Five Eyes alliance. The South China Morning Post reported that Beijing viewed the events as "a fight waged with the world's oldest intelligence alliance."
The confrontation intensified over the question of whether Huawei should be allowed to build 5G telecommunications networks in Five Eyes countries. American officials, particularly Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, lobbied allies to exclude Huawei on security grounds, arguing that the company could be compelled by Chinese law to help Chinese intelligence agencies access networks it had built.
Australia was the first Five Eyes member to ban Huawei from its 5G network. The United Kingdom initially signaled it would allow limited Huawei participation, but reversed course in 2021, announcing it would remove all Huawei equipment from its 5G infrastructure by 2027.
New Zealand Charts Its Own Course
Not all Five Eyes members have moved in lockstep on China.
In April 2021, New Zealand's Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta publicly declared that New Zealand would not let the Five Eyes alliance dictate its relationship with China. She said New Zealand was "uncomfortable with expanding the remit" of the intelligence grouping beyond its traditional security focus. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern echoed these remarks, stating that while New Zealand remained committed to Five Eyes, it would not use the network as "the first point of communication for non-security matters."
The comments provoked sharp criticism from some quarters. Australia expressed concern that Wellington was undermining collective efforts to counter Chinese aggression. British commentators accused New Zealand of breaking ranks. Meanwhile, China's Global Times praised New Zealand for putting its national interests ahead of the alliance.
The episode revealed tensions within Five Eyes about how confrontational to be toward China and whether an intelligence alliance should expand into broader foreign policy coordination. New Zealand, heavily dependent on trade with China, had strong economic incentives to maintain good relations with Beijing.
The situation shifted after New Zealand's 2023 general election brought a new government to power. The incoming Foreign Minister Winston Peters promised closer cooperation with Five Eyes partners. According to The Economist, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told the magazine he was looking to "diversify New Zealand's diplomatic and trade relationships away from its reliance on China."
China Responds
China has not remained passive as Five Eyes coordination has increased. In April 2021, China's Ministry of State Security announced new security measures for employees at companies considered at risk of foreign infiltration. Workers traveling to Five Eyes countries would be required to report their destinations, schedules, and meetings with foreign contacts to Chinese authorities. They would undergo "pre-departure spying education" and use different electronic devices while abroad than at home.
The measures reflected Beijing's view that the Five Eyes alliance had moved from intelligence gathering to active confrontation.
When Five Eyes foreign ministers issued a joint statement in December 2021 criticizing the exclusion of opposition candidates in Hong Kong elections—arguing it violated the Sino-British Joint Declaration that governed Hong Kong's handover from Britain to China—Beijing shot back that the elections were fair and accused the alliance of interfering in Hong Kong's domestic affairs.
What the Future Holds
Five Eyes faces a strategic landscape very different from the one that existed when Alastair Denniston welcomed those American code-breakers to Bletchley Park in 1941.
The alliance was built to counter nation-state adversaries through signals intelligence—intercepting and decoding communications between governments and militaries. Today's challenges include non-state terrorist networks, cyber criminals, disinformation campaigns, and great power competition with a China whose technological capabilities approach and in some areas exceed those of Five Eyes members.
The internet age has created surveillance opportunities that Cold War intelligence officers could scarcely have imagined. But it has also created new vulnerabilities. The same interconnected systems that allow intelligence agencies to collect data on adversaries allow adversaries to collect data on Five Eyes nations and to attack critical infrastructure.
Privacy concerns that once seemed abstract have become concrete. The Snowden revelations prompted legal reforms in several Five Eyes countries, though critics argue these changes didn't go far enough. The tension between security and civil liberties—how much surveillance is too much, what oversight is appropriate, where to draw lines in a world where almost all communication is digital—remains unresolved.
What seems certain is that Five Eyes will remain central to the intelligence and security architecture of its member nations. The depth of cooperation built over eight decades cannot easily be replicated. For Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, access to American intelligence capabilities provides strategic advantages they could not achieve alone. For the United States, the alliance extends its global reach and provides partners who share language, legal traditions, and—mostly—strategic outlook.
The informal meetings at Bletchley Park created something that has proved remarkably durable. Whether the alliance adapts successfully to the challenges of the twenty-first century remains to be seen.