Anatomy of the Deep State -- The Shadow Government that calls the shots

[Octafish]

98. We Asked the Five Eyes About What They Were Up To. Here's What They Said.

by Caroline Wilson Palow
Published on Sunday, February 23, 2014 by Privacy International

Would you like to read the current international agreements establishing the intelligence sharing arrangements that underpin the work of the NSA and GCHQ? The rules that govern massive, coordinated communications surveillance operations, hacking, and the exploitation of networks and devices in the name of national security and the public interest?

What about the guidelines that set the boundaries of what certain cooperating intelligence agencies can and cannot do to the citizens of their own countries, and to foreigners?

Well, you can’t.

While the Snowden revelations have exposed much about the extensive sharing of intelligence between the countries of the Five Eyes surveillance alliance - the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - we still have no way of accessing current versions of the treaties and agreements that underpin the arrangement. Up until those revelations, the very existence of the alliance - not to mention the extent of its activities and sharing - remained for the most part secret, with the exception of a few pieces of information gleaned by investigative journalists and academics. While Snowden has helped to shine a light on some of the Five Eyes activities, today we still remain in the dark about the rules that the Five Eyes allies have agreed to abide by.

That's why, in an attempt to begin to shine a light on the alliance, Privacy International and individuals associated with Privacy International sent Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to authorities in all five countries.

In the dark

The alliance began shortly after World War II, and its constituent governments share intelligence by default. Its existence has been noted in history books, and was confirmed by the release of a handful of historical documents (dating from 1940 to 1956) by the NSA and the UK National Archives in 2010. One of those documents, a draft of the original 1946 UKUSA agreement, explains that the exchange of collected signals intelligence (SIGINT) would be “unrestricted”, and that ““all raw traffic shall continue to be exchanged”. The draft also authorizes the (1) collection of traffic; (2) acquisition of communications documents and equipment; (3) traffic analysis; (4) cryptanalysis; (5) decryption and translation; and (6) acquisition of information regarding communications organizations, procedures, practices and equipment.

But we do not know how the sharing of such information is regulated - and we certainly have no insight into whether the human rights obligations of the Five Eyes countries are being taken into account. Indeed, what we do know raises concern that the agencies are playing a game of jurisdictional arbitrage, seeking to exploit differing standards in national legislation. Given the vast operational integration we now know the agencies enjoy, it is essential the legal framework governing this relationship is public.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/23-1

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