Last edited Wed Dec 11, 2013, 02:48 PM - Edit history (2)
The treaties on gathering and sharing intelligence or not sharing it, goes back to around WW2.
The entire Anglosphere has been sharing information offically on the same basis it did during that war.
From a post by
Devon Rex, most knew this for years, just not this well laid out as this reference. DR was speaking in terms of a UK story, but there is a lot more, to it and I edited the format for easier reading and added my opinion:
I'll spell it out: UKUSA. It's the SIGINT Intelligence Agreement. BRUSA.
Might as well be signed in blood.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement
United Kingdom – United States of America Agreement (UKUSA) is a multilateral agreement for cooperation in signals intelligence between the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The alliance of intelligence operations is also known as Five Eyes (FVEY). It was first signed in March 1946 by the United Kingdom and the United States and later extended to encompass the three Commonwealth realms of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The UKUSA Agreement was a follow-up of the 1943 BRUSA Agreement, the World War II agreement on cooperation over intelligence matters.
This was a secret treaty, allegedly so secret that it was kept secret from the Australian Prime Ministers until 1973.
My note: It's obviously been all hugs and kisses in the forty years that passed since, so it's nothing:
The agreement established an alliance of five English-speaking countries for the purpose of sharing intelligence, especially signals intelligence. It formalized the intelligence sharing agreement in the Atlantic Charter, signed in 1941, before the entry of the U.S. into the conflict.
History:
The agreement originated from a ten-page British–U.S. Communication Intelligence Agreement, also known as BRUSA, that connected the signal intercept networks of the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) at the beginning of the Cold War. The document was signed on March 5, 1946 by Colonel Patrick Marr-Johnson for the U.K.'s London Signals Intelligence Board and Lieutenant General Hoyt Vandenberg for the U.S. State–Army–Navy Communication Intelligence Board. Although the original agreement states that the exchange would not be "prejudicial to national interests", the United States often blocked information sharing from Commonwealth countries. The full text of the agreement was released to the public on June 25, 2010.
Under the agreement, the GCHQ and the NSA shared intelligence on the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and several eastern European countries (known as Exotics). The network was expanded in the 1960s into the Echelon collection and analysis network.
Collection mechanisms:
The UKUSA alliance is often associated with the ECHELON system; however, processed intelligence is reliant on multiple sources of information and the intelligence shared is not restricted to signals intelligence.
The "Five Eyes" in question are –
USA – National Security Agency
United Kingdom – Government Communications Headquarters
Canada – Communications Security Establishment
Australia – Defence Signals Directorate
New Zealand – Government Communications Security Bureau
Global coverage:
Each member of the UKUSA alliance is officially assigned lead responsibility for intelligence collection and analysis in different parts of the globe.
Australia:
Australia hunts for communications originating in Indochina, Indonesia, and southern China.
Canada:
Formerly the northern portions of the former Soviet Union and conducting sweeps of all communications traffic that could be picked up from embassies around the world. In the post-Cold War era, a greater emphasis has been placed on monitoring satellite, radio and cellphone traffic originating from Central and South America, primarily in an effort to track drugs and non-aligned paramilitary groups in the region.*
New Zealand:
The Waihopai Valley Facility—base of the New Zealand branch of the ECHELON Program. New Zealand is responsible for the western Pacific. Listening posts in the South Island at Waihopai Valley just south-west of Blenheim, and on the North Island at Tangimoana. The Anti-Bases Campaign holds regular protests in order to have the listening posts closed down.
My Note: Perhaps someone will know if the protests have made them close down. Wikipedia does not show that ever happening. The people who are squalling don't know what their countries have signed onto, or why, obviously.
United Kingdom:
Europe, Africa, and European Russia.
United States:
Monitors most of Latin America, Asia, Asiatic Russia, and northern China.
http://election.democraticunderground.com/10023492002#post7
Devon Rex writes,
'Might as well be signed in blood.' That is true.
Millions of people died in WW2 and that's still taken seriously. True, it was before most of us were born but it formed the world we benefit from and live in.
It's NOT a secret and was NOT forced, it was for mutual protection in a world being overrun by fascists, who were NOT kidding around one damned bit. They still aren't, but are a lot slicker now and they will not be allowed to do what they did before the treaties.
The information gathered had shared is the legal property of all of those nations within the definition of the treaties. The agreement was literally written in the blood of millions of Allied combatants and civilians of all nations involved.
It was a period of total warfare before the Gevena accords as they stand now and the Nuremberg trials. Those nations didn't want to see it happen again, thus the firm support from treaty partners, both the government and many of the people who live within those nations.
That blood has long since dried for some and may be forgotten, but for others, it has meaning that guides how they lived their lives and it created our world.
I don't see anyone offering a solution in real life terms, that is not more media madness. It would require legislation to restrict these governments from taking private information as in Europe. Or the revocation of the treaties, which is never brought up in the 'news' stories, just agitation against the useful artifice of a malevolent and faceless 'them' and 'they.' But they do have a face, and some of those faces are buried but not forgotten.
We used to pass legislation in the progressive era of the 1970's to restrict individual information, but not this between government. But the government is no longer full of progressives, and even they did not revoke those treaties and won't.
The worry of individuals is just and well-considered. What goes on between governments is not the same. The treaty partners all work as a unit, as they are bound by law to do. Ignorance of history and civics is bad for all of us.
We dream of a world without any enemies and many of us are in vigorous debate over who the media's latest presentation of the 'enemy du jour' is as we see things today. I don't have any enemies abroad, mine are all in the USA.
It's SOP for governments to snoop on others, doing 'intelligence' is the practice of prophecy with a slightly better track record than reading sheep entrails. But it could be they are really doing a good job and preventing bad things. Telling the future is imperfect, since the human mind is capable of infinite variety, so we have this.
*That is why this is not 'secret' and it is not 'news.' No argument about posting it, they did their best to make it appear so. Was their plan to make use of a slow news day, ignore a more important story, or push Koch brothers, libertarian 'get rid of government, let us do things our way with no oversight?'
Which isn't good for most of us. The more people continue to pay attention to the siren call of faux freedom and unbridled liberty and ignore how the world has been constructed and consider there may be very good reasons for it, that it's not all black and white or childishly simple, and that maybe, just maybe, some of these guys know what they're doing better than the media is claiming.
Unwilling as most of us are, to just leave it at that, we have to get informed, get involved, make the government do the way we want by being there, literally. Because those who seek to dissolve the government, discredit its authority with these stories, and answer to authorities that are even worse.
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