Hello and welcome to journey to the fringe, the podcast that if nothing else can be described as weekly.
United States’ National Security Agency (NSA)
Great Britain’s General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) 
Canada’s Communications Security Establishment (CSE)
New Zealand’s General Communications Security Bureau (GCSB)
the Australian Signal Directorate (ASD).


Deepstate:

Started as informal information exchanges between the US and UK in early 1941 pre atlantic charter.

The formal Five Eyes alliance can be traced back to the Atlantic Charter, which was issued in August 1941 to lay out the Allied goals for the post-war world. On 17 May 1943, the British–U.S. Communication Intelligence Agreement, also known as the BRUSA Agreement, was signed by the UK and U.S. governments to facilitate co-operation between the U.S. War Department and the British Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). On 5 March 1946, the secret treaty was formalized as the UKUSA Agreement, 

In 1948, the treaty was extended to include Canada, followed by Norway (1952), Denmark (1954), West Germany (1955), Australia (1956), and New Zealand (1956).[18] These countries participated in the alliance as "third parties". By 1955, the formal status of the remaining Five Eyes countries was officially acknowledged in a newer version of the UKUSA Agreement that contained the following statement:
At this time only Canada, Australia and New Zealand will be regarded as UKUSA-collaborating Commonwealth countries
coldwar:
During the Cold War, GCHQ and the NSA shared intelligence on the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and several eastern European countries. Over the course of several decades, the five eyes monitored the Soviet Union and its allies.
During the Vietnam War, Australian and New Zealand operators in the Asia-Pacific region worked directly to support the United States, while GCHQ operators stationed in the (then) British colony of Hong Kong were tasked with monitoring North Vietnamese air defence networks.[22][23] During the Falklands War, the British received intelligence data from its FVEY allies such as Australia, as well as from third parties such as Norway and France.[24][25][26] In the aftermath of the Gulf War, a technician of the ASIS was used by SIS to bug Kuwaiti government offices.[25]
In the 1950s, SIS and the CIA jointly orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.[27][28][29][30] In the 1960s, SIS and the CIA jointly orchestrated the assassination of the Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba.[31][32][33] In the 1970s, the ASIS and the CIA jointly orchestrated the overthrow of Chile's President Salvador Allende.[34][35][36][37] During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, SIS and the CIA took part in Operation Yellowbird to rescue dissidents from the Chinese regime
The press slowly finds out about this shit:
In the aftermath of the 1973 Murphy raids on the headquarters of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the existence of the UKUSA Agreement was revealed to Australia's Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. After learning about the agreement, Whitlam discovered that Pine Gap, a secret surveillance station close to Alice Springs, Northern Territory, had been operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).[22][23][24][25]
At the height of the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, the use and control of Pine Gap by the CIA was strongly opposed by Whitlam, who fired the chief of the ASIO before being dismissed as prime minister.[26]
The existence of several intelligence agencies of the Five Eyes was not revealed until the following years:
1974
In Canada, an investigative television report on CBC News's newsmagazine program The Fifth Estate revealed the existence of the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC).[27][28]
1975
In the United States, the Church Committee of the Senate revealed the existence of the National Security Agency (NSA).[29][30]
1976
In Britain, an investigative article in Time Out magazine revealed the existence of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).[31]
1977
In Australia, the Hope Commission revealed the existence of Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) and the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD).[32]
1980
In New Zealand, the existence of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) was officially disclosed on a "limited basis".[33]
In 1999, the Australian government acknowledged that it "does co-operate with counterpart signals intelligence organisations overseas under the UKUSA relationship."[34][35]
The existence of the UKUSA Agreement, however, was not publicly revealed until 2005.[13] The contents of the agreement were officially disclosed to the public on 25 June 2010. Four days later, the agreement was described by Time magazine as one of the "most important documents in the history of the Cold War."[13]
 
In 2013, documents leaked by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the existence of numerous surveillance programs jointly operated by the Five Eyes. The following list includes several notable examples reported in the media:
The Five Eyes alliance is sort of an artifact of the post World War II era where the Anglophone countries are the major powers banded together to sort of co-operate and share the costs of intelligence gathering infrastructure. … The result of this was over decades and decades some sort of a supra-national intelligence organisation that doesn't answer to the laws of its own countries.

Presently:
Compared to the world’s most notorious spy services– CIA, Mossad, and GRU—the Five Eyes is virtually unknown. Yet, as an organization, the Five Eyes collects and disseminates far more intelligence with less oversight than any national intelligence service, and it does so on global scale. The watchdog group Privacy International has dubbed the alliance “the five eyed monster.”
 
While their agencies have collaborated for decades, representatives of the Five Eyes had never been seen together in public until they shared a stage in Aspen Colorado in November 2018.

CSIS ACT:
Collection of information concerning foreign states and persons
16 (1) Subject to this section, the Service may, in relation to the defence of Canada or the conduct of the international affairs of Canada, assist the Minister of National Defence or the Minister of Foreign Affairs, within Canada, in the collection of information or intelligence relating to the capabilities, intentions or activities of
(a) any foreign state or group of foreign states; or
(b) any person other than
(i) a Canadian citizen,
(ii) a permanent resident within the meaning of subsection 2(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or
(iii) a corporation incorporated by or under an Act of Parliament or of the legislature of a province.
Marginal note:
Limitation
(2) The assistance provided pursuant to subsection (1) shall not be directed at any person referred to in subparagraph (1)(b)(i), (ii) or (iii).
 
Security assessments
13 (1) The Service may provide security assessments to departments of the Government of Canada.

(3) The Service may, with the approval of the Minister after consultation by the Minister with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, enter into an arrangement with the government of a foreign state or an institution thereof or an international organization of states or an institution thereof authorizing the Service to provide the government, institution or organization with security assessments.
 

Controversies:
In recent years, documents of the FVEY have shown that they are intentionally spying on one another's citizens and sharing the collected information with each other.[11][12][13][14][87] Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the advocacy group Liberty, claimed that the FVEY alliance increases the ability of member states to "subcontract their dirty work" to each other.[88] The former NSA contractor Edward Snowden described the FVEY as a "supra-national intelligence organisation that doesn't answer to the laws of its own countries".[10]
As a result of Snowden's disclosures, the FVEY alliance has become the subject of a growing amount of controversy in parts of the world:
 Canada: In late 2013, Canadian federal judge Richard Mosley strongly rebuked the CSIS for outsourcing its surveillance of Canadians to overseas partner agencies. A 51-page court ruling asserts that the CSIS and other Canadian federal agencies have been illegally enlisting FVEY allies in global surveillance dragnets, while keeping domestic federal courts in the dark.[89][90][91]
 New Zealand: In 2014, the NZSIS and the GCSB of New Zealand were asked by the New Zealand Parliament to clarify if they had received any monetary contributions from members of the FVEY alliance. Both agencies withheld relevant information and refused to disclose any possible monetary contributions from the FVEY.[92] David Cunliffe, leader of the Labour Party, asserted that the public is entitled to be informed.[92]
 European Union: In early 2014, the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs released a draft report which confirmed that the intelligence agencies of New Zealand and Canada have cooperated with the NSA under the Five Eyes programme and may have been actively sharing the personal data of EU citizens.


What exactly is included in five eyes?
Part of the answer lies in a fact that Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US have come to share many extraordinary five-way partnerships, not “just” the spy alliance. The intensification of inter-governmental ties has been nothing short of remarkable — look no further than various joint statements on encryption, Hong Kong, or Nagorno-Karabakh. Thus, when Nanaia Mahuta, the new New Zealand foreign minister spoke at a joint press conference with her Australian counterpart Marise Payne on April 22, 2021, she felt strongly compelled to clarify that the government in Wellington was against such “expansion,” including when it comes to the China policy: “The Five Eyes arrangement is about a security and intelligence framework. It’s not necessary, all the time on every issue, to invoke Five Eyes as your first port of call in terms of creating a coalition of support around particular issues in the human rights space.”
In addition to policy expansion, we have also seen an expansion in transparency and knowledge. Compared to even five years ago, the media and therefore the citizens know more about the nature of “Five Eyes work” done by spies, soldiers, and diplomats. The two expansions are indeed connected.

The document signed in Washington on 5 March 1946 – dubbed BRUSA, and then UKUSA Agreement – does not mention military cooperation or military conflict once, and neither do the subsequent iterations of this document, which Australia, Canada and New Zealand signed in the following years as they each formally joined the alliance as “equal partners.” (Some of these documents have now been declassified and released to the public, allowing historians to compare between different versions.)

 
In 2013, documents leaked by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the existence of numerous surveillance programs jointly operated by the Five Eyes. The following list includes several notable examples reported in the media:
PRISM – Operated by the NSA together with GCHQ and the ASD[60][61]
XKeyscore – Operated by the NSA with contributions from the ASD and the GCSB[62]
Tempora – Operated by GCHQ with contributions from the NSA[63][64]
MUSCULAR – Operated by GCHQ and the NSA[65]
 
STATEROOM is the code name of a highly secretive signals intelligence collection program involving the interception of international radio, telecommunications and internet traffic. It is operated out of the diplomatic missions of the signatories to the UKUSA Agreement and the members of the ECHELON network including Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.[1][2]
In almost a hundred U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide, Stateroom operations are conducted by the Special Collection Service (SCS), a unit that is jointly operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA).[3]
According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the true mission of Stateroom personnel is generally not revealed to the rest of the diplomatic staff at the facilities where they are assigned
In the United States, the U.S. Special Collection Service (SCS) contributes to Stateroom. The SCS is jointly operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA).[3] On 23 November 2013, the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad released a top secret NSA presentation leaked by Edward Snowden, which shows the presence of SCS operations in numerous U.S. diplomatic missions located in the following cities: Athens (Greece), Bangkok (Thailand), Berlin (Germany), Brasília (Brazil), Budapest (Hungary), Frankfurt (Germany), Geneva (Switzerland), Lagos (Nigeria), Milan (Italy), New Delhi (India), Paris (France), Prague (Czech Republic), Vienna (Austria), Zagreb (Croatia).
In October 2013, reports by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden led to the revelation of the SCS having systematically wiretapped Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel's private cell phone over a period of over 10 years, among other activities to wiretap and systematically record large amounts of European and South American leaders' and citizens' communications.[11]
Other SCS locations include Baku (Azerbaijan), Kyiv (Ukraine), Madrid (Spain), Moscow (Russia), Pristina (Kosovo), Rome (Italy), Sarajevo (Bosnia), Tbilisi (Georgia), and Tirana (Albania).
 
TheTwo Michaels:

On December 10, 2018, two Canadian citizens were arrested in China, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, later getting coined the moniker, the Two Michaels. The Chinese government charged them with espionage, whereupon they went to trial. On August 11, 2021, Spavor was sentenced by the court to eleven years’ imprisonment, all his assets in China seized (50,000 renminbi) and eventual deportation for spying, with Kovrig’s court case continuing.

2022 proposed new members: South Korea, Japan, India and Germany

What can be done?
The public should have clarity as to the circumstances in which Five Eyes intelligence agencies will exchange information and the procedure governing such exchange, including limiting the sharing of intelligence to what is necessary and proportionate.

Governments must extend domestic and international constraints applicable to state surveillance to international intelligence-sharing agreements to prevent the emergence of parallel surveillance frameworks with double-standards.

In order to avoid the mishandling of intelligence information, due diligence obligations must be imposed on states obtaining, accessing, using, analysis retaining and sharing intelligence information. In particular, states must be required to analyse the accuracy or verifiability of the information received prior to acting upon it, and ensure the agencies with whom the information is shared do not have a negative human rights record,  

Oversight mechanisms must be implemented to review, monitor and express recommendations on all aspects of intelligence-sharing agreements, ensuring that States comply with due diligence obligations.