Five Eyes nations start new club for competition regulators and paint target on digital giants The nations of the five eyes alliance – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA – have started a new club that will see their respective competition agencies “share intelligence, case theories and investigative techniques to better coordinate investigations across international borders”. The new club operates has …
So this "club" includes the USA...
Given that Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple spent $20million in the first half of this year on lobbying congress, you will have to forgive me in my belief that any effort to break their monopolistic deadlock by the other four will immediately be undermined by the USA.
I hope to be proved wrong... but I won't hold my breath
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So, most of these countries seem to have some sort of legislation preventing their eavesdropping on their own citizens without a warrant (or at least some sort of quasi-legal process), but how many of them have any restrictions on bugging a citizen of another 5 eyes member, possibly at the request of the citizen's own country?
One suspects that you could replace 'citizen' with 'corporate entity' as required.
Eric Arthur Blair would have loved it.
According to reports in the news in Canada, they do exactly that. They interpret bugging laws such that eavesdropping doesn't count as eavesdropping if one country collects the data but doesn't look at it and then passes it on to another country who then look at it. The first country didn't eavesdrop because although they tapped the communications they didn't look at it. The second country didn't eavesdrop because they didn't tap the communications, they just read the data passed on to them.
The same is done when spying on companies based in other countries to gather commercial information. It was reported in the press a few years ago that when the US wanted commercial information about mining and oil companies and the ministry of natural resources in Brazil, they told Canada what they wanted and the latter raided the requested servers. The data was then passed on to the US. The Americans could then quite truthfully say the didn't break into the servers. The data was then analysed and passed on to American oil companies who used it to help frame their bids on offshore oil development leases in Brazil.
Now that technology has made Canada's geographic position less relevant when it comes to collecting signals intelligence from the Soviets/Russia, I suspect that the main service Canada provides to the "5 Eyes" is an intelligence agency that operates with few restrictions or oversight by parliament to do the dirty work that the Americans want to be able to deny being involved in. The favours are of course returned as needed.
Several peace activists gained access to the Mt Hood radar & listening facility in NZ & damaged some of the ‘golfball’ screens around the dishes. when prosecuted they claimed urgent necessity & were acquitted.
That NZ despite it’s otherwise semi-non-aligned foreign policy (we are friends & trading partners of Iran for eg) is a member of Five Eyes is a bone of contention in quite a lot of NZ society. Quite why NZ is needed when Aussie is not that far away is never really explained.
The last time a National (Tory) govt so much as mooted relaxing NZ’s Nuclear Free status to please the Yanks the howls & mobilisation of civil society forced a quick, humiliating climb down. The US ambassador was left in no doubt that the NZ public value it as a shibboleth of our foreign policy. It defines who we are in the world.
Our friends keep electing us to the UN security council whenever our possible turn comes up because we are trusted honest brokers with our hearts in the right place. We helped craft the criticism of Israel which the ending Obama administration did not veto. Marking an unusual event. NZ & Israel do not have friendly relations after Mossad hit squads were found using stolen/cloned NZ passports on not one but several occasions after promising not to do it again. Ambassadors were removed. I’m not sure if they are back or if relations are still in the deep freeze.
Our good relations with much of the Arab/Moslem world influences these things. Our Jacinda is big there. You don’t get your picture projected onto the Burj Khalifa without the very top approving it.
I'm sure France and Germany would love to be part of that club.
On the other hand, I'm also convinced that the USA and the UK would constantly disagree with German suggestions - if this new club is going to be managed the way I think it is : a front for pretending to do something about the Wild West that is the global Internet.
In any case, I hope they have thought of a procedure for adding members. They're going to need one.
To imagine and/or believe that anyone, or anything such as a international cabal of nationalistic bods masquerading as the security of any nation, that actually can do as they please, does not and will always do as they please, as they have always done since discovering that some can, is risible ...... for they are surely no more than just human bots and are riddled with fundamental weaknesses and systemic vulnerabilities ripe for exploitation and exhaustion.
It's perfectly natural, ..... so get used to it, now that y'all know.
Quote: ".....all five nations have expressed different degrees of frustration with the likes of Google and Facebook....."
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No....not frustration....it's actually jealousy and envy. "The likes of Google and Facebook" are MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE at snooping!!!
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Perhaps GCHQ and the NSA should be privatised.....perhaps sold to Tencent or ByteDance....two other organisations for the Five Eyes to eye with jealousy and envy!!
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Just saying!
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