The “Five Eyes”: a Global Strategy for a Panoptic State.

Introduction

In 2013, it was revealed that the global coalition “Five Eyes”[1] had built an intricate global framework for the surveillance and storage of all communications (Ball, 2013). The “Five Eyes” alliance is a direct result of the UKUSA Signals Intelligence Agreement, first signed in 1946, and is just one of the hundreds of other revelations made public through the Snowden files. Various agencies from within the “Five Eyes” are fully involved in mass data gathering, a process initiated by the NSA. These agencies include the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) (UK), Communications Security Establishment (CSE) (Canada), Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) (Canada), and many more (Rudner, 2008). From the first leak showing the recording “of millions of Verizon customers daily” (Greenwald, 2013) to the latest leak that showcases New Zealand’s role in “spying on Pacific allies for ‘Five Eyes’ and [the] NSA” (Manhire, 2015), it is clear that a global strategy to “knowing it all” (Greenwald, 2014) is underway. The expansion of these surveillance programs has been justified as targeting terrorism and protecting state sovereignty, and in many cases is kept secret. While terrorism is a real threat in our world today, it is not a scapegoat for programs that clearly breach the freedoms and rights of all people. These programs bring forth concerns regarding state sovereignty, privacy, and the eventual panoptical state[2]. Furthermore, the global effort by the “Five Eyes” is in itself a greater threat than that which it tries to combat.

State Sovereignty

With the rise of the smartphone and more importantly internet use, regulation and policing has become increasingly difficult. The freedom that the internet implies scares global leaders because, in their eyes, it harms state sovereignty (Sassen, 1999). However, I argue that politics and state sovereignty in the post-911, mobile world must evolve as technology in the world does. Trade, communications and agriculture in our world depend on technology and the internet; this platform has expanded to new heights and in the process, connected the whole world together (Sassen, 1999). However, with the release of the Snowden files, we are seeing that the “Five Eyes” play a much larger role in the world and the internet than previously imagined. Phone calls, emails, photographs, and other documents are all being recorded and stored by P­RISM, a program that relies on backchannels and partnerships with large technology companies and until the leaks, was kept secret (Gellman & Poitras, 2013). The NSA also, through their Boundless Informant program, records and stores metadata[3] which is far easier to organize and analyze than the content in itself (Greenwald & MacAskill, 2013). And the expansion of CCTV systems that watch the unconnected world completes the panoptic state (Moss, 2014). World leaders (Spiegel, 2013), activists (Johnston, 1990; Hanson 1982), journalists, and entrepreneurs (Quilliam, 2013) are being blacklisted and targeted by these surveillance agencies, and all of this data ends up in the servers of the NSA (Gellman & Poitras, 2013). These measures are all done in defense of state sovereignty and combatting terrorism.­ Is it really a battle of state sovereignty if the only state that ultimately gets to remain sovereign is the US? No, it is a dangerous example of the abuse of power and authority, it is ironic that the same politicians advocating for the secrecy of these programs and their vitality to national security, also tell the public they should not have a problem with surveillance if they have nothing to hide.

Got Something To Hide?

The argument ‘If You Have Nothing to Hide, You Have Nothing to Fear’ (Lizza, 2013) is often made when discussing the NSA and the Snowden files; this is a false pretense. We do have something to hide, all of us. Depending on where you live, personal information such as sexuality, race, cultural background, and personal biases can be open to biased interpretation and in many cases misinterpretation. While some of us might not want to admit it, the world is divided by differences. That is why this personal information can be manipulated and be used against everyone.

On the other hand it is argued that these intelligence agencies only want to target terrorists, but data and metadata is being collected on everyone, not just those who are labelled terrorists. The NSA uses what is called a “three degree” system which allows the NSA to target up to 27 million people for one suspected terrorist (The Guardian, 2013) . As outlined by a leaked government document, the definition for labelling terrorists is vast and includes everything from “actions that fall far short of bombings” to acts that are “intended to influence government policy through intimidation” (Scahill & Devereaunx, 2014). This falls dangerously close to potentially limiting freedom of speech and freedom of association as the interpretation of intimidation can be very varied. The definition of terrorism used by the NSA is so broad (Greenwald, 2013) and the power to label someone a terrorist lies with so many people in the 19 different US agencies and countless other foreign agencies, that it is essentially uncontrollable and the possibility for mistakes is huge (Scahill & Devereaunx, 2014). The judgement to label someone a terrorist is really in the eyes of the beholder as cultural and social biases may lead individuals to come to various, different conclusions. Moreover, these labels are not something that we can dispute, no one is told they are blacklisted and there is no opportunity given to dispute the label, “not even death provides a guarantee of getting off the list” (Scahill & Devereaunx, 2014).

As all this data is kept private from the public, the opportunity for the government or any other body that has access to this information to abuse and manipulate this data exists. If someone were to be charged for a crime on the basis of ‘evidence’ found via NSA data collecting, how do we know it has not been manipulated and/or some other data has not been included in the charge that may help the charged? Some examples of this kind of manipulation can be seen within the CSIS when they destroyed wiretap evidence directly relating to the 1985 Air India Flight 182 (Mansbridge, 1987) and more recently when the “CSIS kept [a federal] judge in the dark on foreign spying” (Bronskill, 2014). Furthermore, how can we be assured that we should have nothing to hide if even some of the highest ranking politicians are worried about their privacy? Recently, it was revealed that Hilary Clinton used a private, personal email account instead of using a federal account as required while she was Secretary of State (Schmidt, 2015). Not only is this hypocritical, but it shows that privacy is important for everyone, not just Hilary Clinton.

The Panoptical State

Since the initial Snowden leaks, it has since been revealed that, through very strategic loopholes, for the most part, the “five eyes” alliance is in fact operating legally in their own respective states (Lord, 2014; Tencer, 2013; Roberts, 2013; Greenwald & Gallagher, 2014; BBC, 2014). I argue that the large scale of these surveillance programs is an abuse of power, a gross violation of the authority that these states have been granted by the people and an attempt to transform the world into a panoptic society.

The US is currently the world’s largest economy (World Bank, 2014) and is unmatched in military and scientific output (BBC, 2012; SCIENCEWATCH, 2009). Therefore, when the US wants to establish a global surveillance program, it makes sense that states such as Canada and the UK, who have vested interests with the US, would support them in the process. The NSA program tries to combat terrorism, and the ultimate goal of terrorism is to accomplish various ideological and political goals through the use of fear and intimidation (Richardson, 2008). The NSA while trying to combat terrorism has become a victim of their own demise; people are more scared of the NSA watching them than they are of being bombed by some terrorist group (PewResearchCenter, 2013; Newport, 2013).

In his book Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault demonstrates the complex and outreaching nature of Panopticism, a social theory that I argue perfectly describes the efforts of the NSA to become omniscient. Foucault describes a society in which it does not actually matter if one is in fact being watched; the ability for the state to do so forces the people to obey and abide by all rules in risk of being caught (Foucault, 1975). These surveillance programs do exactly this; they separate the connection between the state and the people that democracy once advocated for. These surveillance programs capture all forms of communication, including the connected and unconnected world and, through the fear of being caught, society will now contort itself to the image that the state wants it to be.

Conclusion

In its efforts to curb terrorism, the “Five Eyes” surveillance alliance spreads more fear than any terrorist could ever hope to imagine. Democracy has failed; we are now living in a world which is ruled by the bourgeoisie and the proletariat must conform to these new standards or face the wrath of the state. For now, the people will not fight back, these systems have not put enough of a strain on individuals but it will, and when it does, the people will fight back and bring the system down to its knees and tear off the head of the beast that is the state.

[1] The Five Eyes alliance includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

[2] Panopticism is a social theory that Michel Foucault builds on and connects power and punishment together through elaborate detail. It is derived from Jeremy Bentham’s Panoticon, an intricate prison design which allows a single person to watch and observe all prisoners individually. It is designed in a way so that the prisoners never know if at a single moment they are being watched so therefore they are always suspecting and consequently obeying by the rules.

[3] Metadata is information about content and not the content in itself: name, time, size, location, etc.

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Originally published at sukhvirgill.com on March 16, 2015.