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Content type: News & Analysis
According to Snowden documents analysed by Privacy International, the Australian Signals Directorate had access to and used PRISM, a secret US National Security Agency program which provides access to user data held by Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
This is the third spy agency of the 'Five Eyes' alliance confirmed to have had secret access to Silicon Valley company data - an alliance whose rules and policies remain classified. Earlier this year, a British court ruled that GCHQ access to…
Content type: Press release
Human Rights Watch and three individuals have today lodged a legal challenge to establish whether their communications were part of those unlawfully shared between the US National Security Agency (NSA) and UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
Despite billions of records being shared every day between the NSA and GCHQ, and that historical sharing having been declared unlawful [PDF], the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has not yet confirmed to any claimant that their…
Content type: Long Read
Few revelations have been been as troubling for the right to privacy as uncovering the scope of the Five Eyes alliance. The intelligence club made up of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States has integrated its collection efforts, staff, bases, and analysis programs. Yet the legal rulebook governing how the agencies ensure the most comprehensive joint surveillance effort in the history of mankind remains secret.
The little that is known suggests a…
Content type: News & Analysis
The central premise of international intelligence cooperation is that states are able to both access valuable partner information to protect their national security, and focus their own resources elsewhere in a mutually beneficial way. But is it really a quid-pro-quo partnership?
As the Intercept recently revealed, German policy-makers certainly have reason to doubt that this would be the case. What Germany has learned, like many others before them, is that dependence on the…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International, Bytes for All and other human rights groups are celebrating a major victory against the Five Eyes today as the UK surveillance tribunal rules that GCHQ acted unlawfully in accessing millions of private communications collected by the NSA up until December 2014.
Today’s judgement represents a monumental leap forward in efforts to make intelligence agencies such as GCHQ and NSA accountable to the millions of individuals whose privacy they have violated.
The…
Content type: Press release
British intelligence services acted unlawfully in accessing millions of people’s personal communications collected by the NSA, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled today. The decision marks the first time that the Tribunal, the only UK court empowered to oversee GHCQ, MI5 and MI6, has ever ruled against the intelligence and security services in its 15 year history.
The Tribunal declared that intelligence sharing between the United States and the…
Content type: News & Analysis
Intelligence sharing agreements can be open and transparent. In fact, the Five Eyes have already disclosed information sharing agreements that relate to key international law enforcement and national security measures.
They’re called mutual legal assistance treaties, or MLATs, and they’ve existed between the Five Eyes, excluding New Zealand, for decades. MLATs define the scope of cooperation between States in criminal investigations: States share sensitive information in criminal…