5/9/14 Eye Alliance Countries - What You Need to Know
As we know, the centralization of privacy protection services, such as VPNs, will always expose us to an alliance of eyes. Here we will break down what these alliances are, and where they reside.
The Five Eyes Club - What is it?
The Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance, aka the Five Eyes Club, emerged during the Cold War era when several countries signed an intelligence sharing agreement (UKUSA). Initially, the U.S. and Britain agreed to exchange data, so they tried to combat the intelligence of the USSR.
In the late 50s, Canada, Australia and New Zealand joined the treaty. These five English-speaking countries formed the Five Eyes Club, as it is known today. Over time, the data-sharing treaty linking these five countries became more and more advanced, and now it also includes surveillance of online activities.
For years, the five countries kept the existence of this treaty a secret. It wasn't discovered until 2003, but it wasn't until 10 years later, in 2013, when Edward Snowden made public a series of secret NSA documents, that the extent of the problem became clear.
These documents made it clear that the government was massively spying on the online activities of its citizens, and also indicated that the international intelligence sharing network was much wider than previously thought.
In addition to the countries that joined the Five Eyes Club, there were other countries and treaties. Thus, there were two treaties, and she formed the Nine Eyes and Fourteen Eyes clubs. They are not as cohesive as Five Eyes, but that does not stop them from seriously threatening Internet privacy.
Here are the countries in each treaty:
Five Eyes: U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand
Nine Eyes: Five Eyes member countries + Denmark, France, Holland, Norway
Fourteen Eyes: Nine Eyes member countries + Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain
France, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway: these countries participate in the alliance on other terms. For example, Denmark has licensed the NSA to install fiber-optic cables in and out of its territory. In return, the NSA gave the Danish intelligence agency access to all of its technology and equipment. All in all, all of these countries, like the first five, you should avoid when choosing a VPN service!
In essence, Nine Eyes and Fourteen Eyes are a kind of extensions of the original treaty. These countries may pass far less information to others than the Five Eyes member countries, but they still actively and willingly share intelligence information with other countries.
The official name of Fourteen Eyes alliance is SIGINT Seniors Europe (SSEUR). It was created so that these countries could also participate in the recording and transmission of citizen data.
In addition to these three agreements that are known for certain, it is worth noting that quite a few other countries have either been caught red-handed sharing intelligence with Fourteen Eyes member countries, or are suspected of doing so.
These countries include Israel, Japan, Singapore, South Korea
Does the jurisdiction of the VPN service matter?
It's pretty hard to determine what impact a VPN service's jurisdiction has on your data privacy. After all, these surveillance alliances operate all over the world, tracking the actions of their citizens and more. Consequently, while many may advise you to look for an "offshore" VPN service, it may not be the solution you're looking for at all.
We recently discovered that the U.S. authorities have obliged PureVPN, a "no-logging" VPN service registered in Hong Kong, to turn over all the data on the user to them so they can arrest and charge the person. What is truly shocking, all this happened in a country that is not part of any "5/9/14 eye alliances", and with a VPN service that makes a promise to make "invisible" the activity of its users!
Stories like this prove that advertising promises of no logging are not always true. It is advisable to use the services of VPN-services, which are registered in such places as Panama and the British Virgin Islands - these are some of the few countries where they will not comply with the requirements of foreign government agencies. Still, take a few minutes to review your candidate's privacy policy and user reviews for that service before subscribing.
A democratic regime - privacy by default?
The U.S. Constitution protects freedom of speech and of the press, that's a fact. No one disputes that the U.S. does seek to protect free access to the Internet, nor does it ignore data privacy issues.
But more and more people are expressing concerns about U.S. interference with privacy and oversight of online activity. A reasonable question arises: Is data privacy really important to the U.S.? Increasingly, the authorities are attributing this surveillance to the fight against terrorism.
The U.S. also has access to one of the most sophisticated online surveillance systems in the world. Moreover, this country is a founding member of the Five Eyes, which means that the U.S. is at the heart of a network of international intelligence-sharing treaties.
NYM
So, we've figured out who these alliances with eyes are. They are official organizations, they have founding documents, they have public faces, and they act without hiding themselves, everything about them can be found in the public domain. They do not hide that they know a lot about us.
But there are other alliances in the world that don't operate publicly, they can also be criminal hacker groups reselling your data.
Centralized services can't solve the privacy problem. That's why the NYM team is developing their solution - an overlay decentralized mixnode network that encrypts, masks, and mixes all your data at the network level so that it's impossible to figure out who is talking, who is talking to whom, and when they are talking. There is no one to ask, no one to threaten to steal anyone's data, the network is decentralized, the nodes work all over the world, the node holders know nothing about you, they just keep the network running and get paid for it. NYM is a new era and you will soon realize it.
Read more about them on their social media, website and blog.
https://nymtech.net/download/ (NymConnect App)
https://nymtech.net
https://nymtech.net/blog/#news
https://nymtech.net/blog#videos
https://discord.gg/nym
https://www.youtube.com/nymtech
https://twitter.com/nymproject