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National Defense / Geopolitics / : Five Eyes: Electronic Espionage on a Global Scale

2009-2020.oborona.ru

June 22, 2021

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The intelligence community of five Anglo-Saxon countries (UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) published a 15-page report in May this year accusing China of “hiding information about the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus.” Situationally, this document attracted global attention because it was released on behalf of the so-called Five Eyes (FVEY) alliance, which back in 2018 announced that it would focus most of its attention on electronic spying on Russia and China. During the period of excessive enthusiasm in the United States for electronic surveillance data, such reports are considered almost the ultimate truth, which creates a large space for the manipulation of public opinion. Especially when they are “sanctified” by an authoritative source, which in the Anglo-Saxon intelligence community is considered to be the Five Eyes alliance. What kind of structure is this?

Evgeniy Krutikov

Strictly speaking, legally there is no Five Eyes alliance. There is AUSCANNZUKUS. The American passion for complex abbreviations and acronyms sometimes gives rise to such unpronounceable letter combinations. If you look closely, you can distinguish the names of the founding and permanent members of this intelligence alliance: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Situationally, other Western countries also join this alliance, so the number of eyes of this monster sometimes increases up to 19.

In short, in practice, cooperation between Western intelligence agencies under the Five Eyes program consists of the total interception of telephone and electronic conversations, as well as data from third countries (primarily China and Russia) using special electronic tracking stations located in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Great Britain, and special computer protocols. At the same time, the UK and the countries of the Pacific region, including Canada, are deprived of the right to independently process and analyze the extracted data sets. All information received from total interception is automatically sent to the American National Security Agency (NSA), where it is decrypted and processed. At tracking stations in Australia and New Zealand, Americans are constantly present - full-time employees of the NSA, who, among other functions, make sure that none of the partners from the US National Security Agency hides anything.

In Australia, such “occupation” behavior of the Americans periodically causes a rebellion among individual local employees, but the matter has never gone beyond rare parliamentary requests. That is, in essence, we are talking about the system of primary provision of the US NSA with an array of “raw” unprocessed information, which the Americans use for their own purposes. The UK and Pacific countries play the role of "ammunition carriers" for the NSA and nothing more. Their territory and geographical location are used to provide complete electronic coverage of China and part of Russia. Independent attempts by, say, New Zealand to use the monstrous system of electronic surveillance at hand for their own purposes and interests, as a rule, lead to cartoonish consequences.

The first agreement on cooperation between US and British intelligence services and the exchange of intelligence data was reached back in 1940 by Churchill and Roosevelt. At the beginning of World War II, they suddenly realized that their intelligence systems did not fit together and did not exchange information at all. Due to a number of external circumstances, both key Anglo-Saxon countries were still suspicious of each other and there was no complete exchange of intelligence information during that period.

And in 1946, under new historical circumstances, a formal bilateral agreement (UKUSA) was reached, which was later joined by Canada (1948), Australia and New Zealand (1956). A number of other countries (Norway, Denmark, West Germany) were also involved in the exchange of intelligence data, but had the status of “third parties” in this alliance. In 2009, France wanted to join the Five Eyes, but members of the alliance did not want to see Paris as a full member. From time to time, the “Nine Eyes” (5 mentioned countries + Norway, Denmark, Holland, France), “14 Eyes”, “41 Eyes” alliances arose, but all of them are not nearly as connected in the exchange of information as the core of the “Five Eyes” "

Initially in the 1940s. Radio tracking stations appeared in Australia and New Zealand due to their geographical location. Long-wave transmitters were the main form of information transmission, and due to atmospheric reflection effects, these waves were perfectly audible in the southern and southeastern parts of the Pacific Ocean. After the transition to shortwave radio stations, this effect disappeared, but after the end of World War II, the rapid growth of computer and electronic technologies began. As a result, the broadcast monitoring system developed in parallel with the improvement of communications. As a result, this area of ​​military and dual technologies began its own arms race, comparable to the textbook “armor - projectile”.

The Five Eyes alliance was directly related to the creation of the now famous Echelon global tracking system. The exchange of information took place during the Vietnam War, the Falklands War, the Gulf War, and the operation in Libya to overthrow Gaddafi. After the events of 9/11, the alliance briefly focused on the war on global terror and global surveillance.

A special attitude towards the Five Eyes alliance arose after the revelations of Edward Snowden. He drew public attention to the fact that the interception and tracking system does not filter the information received, but records it in one large array, which is then processed by US NSA specialists. Firstly, this is a violation of human rights, and secondly, at some point the Five Eyes began to monitor their own citizens. Finally, thirdly, the NSA does not have the ability to work with such a super-giant amount of metadata. To make their lives easier, Americans eventually switched to the infamous Xkeyscore protocol.

This system includes more than 700 servers located both within the NSA and outside the United States, primarily in American embassies. Presumably, one of these servers is located in the American embassy in Moscow, another one is located on the territory of the US diplomatic mission in Kiev and, possibly, in the American embassy in Beijing.

The main tracking and interception centers (antenna complexes) are located in Australia and New Zealand and are subordinate to the Australian Signal Defense Agency and the Government Communications Security Service. This:

1. Government Communications Security Service surveillance center in the Weihopai Valley, South Island, New Zealand.

2. Australian satellite reconnaissance station in the town of Geraldton.

3. Pine Gap station near Alice Springs in the very center of Australia.

4. Shoel Bay station near Darwin.

5. Australian Navy facility "Harman" near Canberra.

Objects located in Canada use other tracking protocols, and their share in the total interception array is noticeably smaller. It is believed that the system can store metadata for several days, which is enough to process it. At the primary level, Xkeyscore can determine the nationality of foreign citizens and analyze the language of electronic messages, which allows you to reduce the amount of “junk” data. In the future, the NSA expects that improving this system will make it possible to abandon the storage on servers of data that is useless for intelligence through primary filtering. This will eliminate the most important problem of this entire system - metadata that there is no one, nothing and no reason to process.

In addition, the Five Eyes used other tracking systems. For example, PRISM, Tempora, MUSCULAR and STATEROOM.

A large amount of information comes from the German intelligence service BND. The Germans provide the NSA with about 500 million files every month, of which approximately 180 million are obtained through Xkeyscore.

After leaks to the press about the practice of total collection of information (not only as a result of Snowden’s revelations), some IT companies, meeting the indignant consumers, began to develop their own, enhanced encryption systems. Ordinary users began to protect their data using available means such as available encryption systems and closed browsers like Tor. In response to this spontaneous self-defense, the Five Eyes leadership called the largest IT companies on the carpet and gave them an ultimatum: either stop data encryption or provide the US NSA with the source codes.

This meeting took place in Australia and caused a lot of noise. Almost all the most famous companies and brands were hit: Microsoft (Hotmail), Google (Google Mail), Yahoo!, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, AOL, Apple and Paltalk. As a result, by decision of an American court, they were forced to cooperate with the NSA and the FBI. Americans were able to view photos and videos on the Internet, monitor voice chats, correspondence on social networks, email, sending files and various telephone chats, including the popular WatsApp and Viber.

We repeat: the main and main consumer of intercepted information and metadata is only the US National Security Agency. The intelligence systems of other members of the Five Eyes receive nothing or are content with purely regional information according to special agreements on the geographical division of spheres of influence.

Sometimes this takes caricatured forms. For Australia and New Zealand, the priority targets for collecting information were mainly Samoa, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Fiji and Tonga - countries that are not the most dangerous in terms of terrorism and global threats. Previously, Samoa - the only country on the planet with which New Zealand has a friendship treaty - carried out all communications with foreign countries through the Pacific Intelsat satellite, which was monitored by the New Zealand intelligence center in Waihopai. But in 2009, Samoa laid a submarine cable all the way to Hawaii, and the New Zealanders were left out of work.

In the electronic intelligence document released by Snowden, there were only tears: “Unfortunately, electronic intelligence has already lost access to subscribers in Samoa due to the recently laid cable to Hawaii. In all likelihood, by the end of the year, almost all lines, with the exception of a few reserve ones, will go off the air.” Then New Zealand counterintelligence officers, with the help of the army, began spying on the commercial cable-laying vessel Ile De Re, which was laying a new cable line.

Military personnel from the joint electronic warfare center, with the help of forces and assets of the New Zealand Ministry of Defense, monitored the movement of the vessel daily in March 2009, providing the Government Communications Security Service with information on the progress of work. However, there was no practical benefit in this. The ship was steadily laying a cable that made the work of the New Zealand "listeners" pointless, and they wasted resources just to watch him do it.

The only Western country that itself does not seek to join the Five Eyes alliance, and is not particularly invited there, is France. The Anglo-Saxon intelligence community views French intelligence as unreliable, corrupt and overly emotional. From the “Five Eyes” there were proposals for Paris to simply transfer its own information to the alliance within the framework of “Atlantic cooperation” for free. No retaliatory steps were expected. There was also no question of the Five Eyes sharing anything with the French. Paris naturally refused such “cooperation”. The attempt of the then French President Nicolas Sarkozy to “integrate into the system” was part of his general strengthening of cooperation with NATO, but it also failed.

In Canada, unlike Australia and New Zealand, there are no facilities as large in area and in the amount of information intercepted as, for example, the antenna complex in Waihopai or the Harman center. But the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (not to be confused with the Royal Mounted Police, useful mainly for creating the setting of Hollywood films with its red uniform and distinctive hats) through the Center for Security Intelligence (CSE) provides surveillance of about two dozen foreign countries, as well as interception of data directly in Canada.

At the same time, monitoring of open Wi-Fi networks, for example, airports and railways, is actively used; all emails of foreign citizens, as well as citizens of Canada and the USA with foreign subscribers, are monitored. In addition, it is planned to build metadata repositories in Canada, which require large spaces, huge energy resources and remoteness of the territory. Alberta has it all.

There is still no consensus among experts and analysts about how effective such a global tracking system is, including the protocols used by the Five Eyes Alliance. There is an opinion that obtaining such a gigantic array of metadata, of which no more than one percent may be of real intelligence interest, is just a waste of significant financial and technical resources. On the other hand, the US NSA, which monopolizes this system, claims that technology will very soon allow a significant increase in efficiency. But at the same time, there is a constant process of improving encryption systems, which is very difficult to keep up with. And in the end, no matter how fascinated humanity is with electronics, not all negotiations and communication take place through gadgets. Blind faith in electronic means of tracking has never yielded a 100% intelligence result.

But to consider the “Five Eyes” and the tactics of total collection of information used by them only as a horror story for the average person, another “urban legend”, such as malicious chipping, would be too irresponsible. The Five Eyes is a global monster of electronic surveillance, completely subordinated to the interests of the American intelligence community, in which other Anglo-Saxon countries and several “junior partners” who have joined them play only a subordinate role. And now he has his sights set on Russia and China. You need to know this and counteract it.