Each one Teach one:

    Five Eyes(FVEY) EOTO

     In our second round of Each One Teach One presentations, I learned a lot new things about topics on awareness, theories, the media-sphere, and media policies. This included the Five Eyes presentation. I found the presentation so interesting because I have never heard of the Five Eyes before. After the presentation, I was honestly not surprised that I have never heard of the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, or Fourteen Eyes before considering they do not technically want to be known about.

The Five Eyes formed in 1946 and is the world’s oldest intelligence partnership. In the past, it was used to monitor foreign communications among a number of countries, serving various political interests. Today, FVEY monitors the private communications of billions of people, worldwide. This is so crazy to think about how they have access to information on basically everyone in the world.

In the 1950s during the Cold War, FVEY intelligence monitored communications from the Soviet Union, China and other Eastern Bloc countries and was also used in the Vietnam war.

The Five Eyes Alliance monitors the citizens of other FVEY member countries. By monitoring each other's citizens, FVEY can bypass domestic surveillance regulations that would be illegal to do directly to their own citizens. The FVEY collects information by intercepting private communications, and can receive records of user data from large technology companies.

Information about the Five Eyes Alliance had been leaked to the public in 2013 through classified documents, by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. This raised questions about illegal surveillance and the invasion of online privacy. The public had been mostly unaware of the full extent of data collection and the exposure of this information left the public feeling violated about their privacy rights. 

The Five Eyes Alliance has faced large amounts of public distrust, with many believing it to be a violation of basic human rights. The documents revealed that the partner countries were monitoring the citizens of each other as a loophole, to bypass domestic spying laws for mass surveillance. Everyone can be targeted by FVEY, with companies like Google, Visa, major oil companies, being used to access any information the government needs. 

Overall, this presentation had opened my eyes to how much power our government has and the access they have to our not-so-private information. It made me more aware and conscious of my digital footprint and is information I believe everyone should be educated on in order to protect themselves and their rights to privacy.