What are the 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, and 14 Eyes Alliances?
Beware of the eyes 👁️
To understand how to regain and protect your online privacy, you need to be familiar with the most notorious intelligence sharing groups that, until about over a decade ago, very little was known about.
What is the Five Eyes?
The Five Eyes is an intelligence-sharing alliance that consists of five countries: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Created in 1946 as a result of bilateral treaties, the alliance's original mission was to keep an eye on the Soviet Union and their partners. However, it eventually became an organization that shares intelligence and surveillance on their citizens to provide security and stop global threats. They are at the top of the pyramid, so they get access to all the information.
OK, what about the Nine Eyes?
The Nine Eyes is an expansion of the Five Eyes, consisting of France, Norway, Denmark, and The Netherlands. Not much is known about them, but they conduct surveillance as well; however, that doesn't make them immune from being surveyed by the Five Eyes themselves. It should also be noted that just because they are extensions of the Five Eyes, that does not mean they have access to all of their information.
And the Fourteen Eyes?
Five Eyes + the Nine Eyes = Fourteen Eyes. Included in this group are Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Italy, and Spain. Similar to the Five and Nine Eyes, Fourteen does not get all of the information that the two alliances have collected.
What does this mean about privacy?
The three alliances conduct extensive and disturbing amounts of surveillance to fulfill their mission. However, it obviously comes at a cost: your right to privacy. As previously stated, they conduct huge operations on citizens in an attempt to thwart any global threats. How do they do this? By keeping a close eye on basically any digital activity that you do: phone calls, emails, video calls, internet activities, etc. Your business just became their business. Their overreach violates privacy rights, and even the members privacy laws might not protect you from this oversight.
Is there anything you can do?
Learning about the alliances and what they do is the first step. To better protect and retain your privacy, you need to be aware of them and their activities, as what they do matters.
There are many ways to protect yourself. Use an email provider or tool that supports end-to-end encryption. Use a secure and private messenger for texts and phone calls. Use a VPN. For any of these services, take a look at their location since some of them are hosted in countries that are in the alliances. But perhaps most of all, gain and share knowledge with others so we can all protect our online privacy. The knowledge you get not only takes back your privacy from countries but from bad actors in general.
Until Next Time,
Monique ✏️
Sources:
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/what-is-five-eyes/
https://www.privacyinternational.org/learn/five-eyes
https://cybernews.com/resources/5-eyes-9-eyes-14-eyes-countries/
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/five-eyes-surveillance/
https://www.techspot.com/article/2515-surveillance-intelligence-alliances/
https://www.tomsguide.com/features/what-is-five-eyes
https://allaboutcookies.org/what-is-the-five-eyes-alliance
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