All Eyes On Us

Five eyes is a term related to awareness, in that our privacy isn't as protected or private as we thought. The term five eyes refers to the international surveillance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States to connect an share information. The information they can gather includes everything about you, ranging from browsing history, location history phone calls, etc.

The concept for the five eyes agencies came from the UKUSA Agreement, a treaty that was signed during World War II. The treaty stated that all parties must share unedited surveillance info with each other, and help monitor communications. The five eyes created ECHELON, which was the surveillance system to monitor the communications of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Block, but now private communications from all over can be monitored. 

There is also more than one group like this, including nine eyes and fourteen eyes. These groups include and add onto the five eyes agencies, accumulating more and more countries as the number of eyes goes up. This website helps to describe the difference in each group.

I found this concept to be frightening, yet not surprising. While this information collected could be used to help track down criminals hiding in foreign countries or to ensure the safety of the countries involved, it is a scary thought to know that we are always being watched and observed. The fact that any country in these alliances can access our information also puts us at unease, and is what makes technology and innovation deceiving. This article on the NSA and its documents concerning the five eyes alliance I found interesting, since it details the aims and goal for the five eyes group and how it connects to the NSA.