What is the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance? Are You Being Watched?

It is likely that most of you have never come across the phrase 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance, and even if you did, you might hardly know the surface. In this article, I am explaining the basics of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance, why you should know about this, and what you can do to protect your online activities, especially if you are using a VPN service or spend most of your time on the internet scrolling social media, browsing corn, or even doing bank transactions.

Understanding the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance is crucial for your online privacy and security. This article aims to simplify the concept, emphasizing the need for a VPN service. If you’re in the US or the UK, the NSA has likely already seen you load this article. To safeguard your privacy, consider switching to a VPN like NordVPN or ExpressVPN, both renowned for their privacy and security features. Once your VPN is active, let’s delve into the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance concept.

What is the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance Concept?

The 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance is a group of countries that agree to share international intelligence. These countries are known to spy on their citizens, collect sensitive and private data, and share this information with the other members of the alliance when requested.

But wait, that’s only the browsing data, right?

Well, not really.

The 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance employs sophisticated technologies like ECHELON, PRISM, XKeyscore, and others, which are capable of intercepting phone calls, faxes, emails, and communication data from tech giants like Microsoft, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, and Apple (including your chats), search history, and even Microsoft Word documents. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what we know about their surveillance capabilities.

Also Read: Free vs Paid VPN: Do You Really Need to Pay?

1. The 5 Eyes Alliance

In the mid of 1940s, the USA and the UK came into the first agreement to share international intelligence, and this was to tackle and stay a step ahead of the Soviet Union intelligence and, later, several other agencies like the KGB, which was a new formation at that time. This agreement or pact was named the UKUSA Agreement, and it involved intelligence cooperation between the NSA and GCHQ.

Soon, in the 1950s, three more countries joined the pact and formed the 5 Eyes Alliance. The three countries are Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

While it was aimed to secure their positions from their opponents, the agreement allowed the agencies to run all their citizens on full surveillance. This involved tapping phones, faxes, messages, and other digital form of communications. Later, the 2013 revelation from Edward Snowden, a former contractor of the NSA who is now believed to live in one of the Russian states, brought Xkeyscore into a bright light. The NSA, along with other intelligence, created this system to perform live surveillance on all the citizens and nationals from the US and the UK. The system is believed to be still active and can use your webcam, microphone, so-called encrypted messages, images, phone tapping, and everything else, which is a digital multimedia device and likely around you.

Also Read: VPN Tunneling: What is it and How Does it Work?

2. The 9 Eyes Alliance

With a growing share of international intelligence, more countries made a pact and joined the alliance to share data and other information about their citizens. 

In fact, the royals from the UK granted the Investigatory Powers Bill, which allows the government to keep its citizens under complete surveillance. In this case, the ISP needs to store all your data, messages, and other information for up to 2 years on their servers, which the government can access later. Also, in 2017, the US Senate passed a law where ISPs could retain data and sell it off later without the consent of the data owner. These are just a few of the many more instances for which you need to be data-conscious. 

The 9 Eyes Alliance introduces four new members to the 5 Eyes Alliance, and these countries are Denmark, France, Netherlands, and Norway. These countries now also monitor their citizen’s data and then share it with the partner countries when in need. 

3. The 14 Eyes Alliance and the Secret Partners

 With the increase in the need for intelligence, a few more countries have joined hands to grow the alliance and share international intelligence. So, you are constantly being monitored without your notice if you live in the countries that are partners of the alliance.

The 14 Eyes Alliance introduces five more countries, namely Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Sweden.

But that’s not all. There are even silent secret partners of this alliance who are suspected to be spying on their citizens and sharing their data with the 14 Eyes Alliance. It is suspected that countries like Japan, Singapore, Israel, and South Korea work as secret partners to the 14 Eyes Alliance. In fact, Japan is accused of being the future 6th alliance of the original 5 Eyes Alliance due to its closer intelligence sharing.

Here is the list of all 14 Eyes Alliance Partners and Silent Partners,

14 Eyes Alliance

• The USA
• The UK
• Canada
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Denmark
• France
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Germany
• Belgium
• Italy
• Spain
• Sweden

Silent Partners

• Japan
• Singapore
• Israel
• South Korea

Can VPNs Help Secure you from these Prying Eyes?

VPNs offer several methods to keep your identity secure and privacy maintained. But that’s only a partial truth.

If a VPN originates or operates from one of the countries in 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance, they are bound to share the user data with the government. This is also the reason why reputable VPNs like ExpressVPN and NordVPN set their operations from islands that do not fall under the jurisdiction of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance. Moreover, they follow a strict no-log policy with independent server audits to ensure that none of the crucial data is stored or sold.

If you already have a VPN service, you might do a few quick checks to know if your VPN stores data, trades it, or hand it to the government.

Here are a few assessments,

• Check for VPN Origin: The first and foremost assessment is to check for the VPN origin if it falls under the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance. Good research on the official VPN website should help you with this and if the VPN originates or is stationed in one of the 14 Eyes Alliance countries, stop using it right away to maintain your privacy.
• Look for No-Logs Policy: Most VPNs are susceptible to storing user data because they actually do. Data is the new oil, and VPNs get a good trade from advertisers, scammers, or other cyber criminals when they share this data with them. A no-logs policy states that none of the user data is stored on the VPN servers, collected, or shared with any third-party users. And when there is no data, what will the VPN share with the 14 Eyes Alliance?

FAQs on 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance

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Wrapping up: 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance – They Know You Read This Article

This pretty much sums up my guide on what the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance is and how our daily internet life is at risk. We recommend you not overshare, always use a secure channel of communication, and avoid VPNs that fall under the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliance jurisdiction. VPNs like NordVPN and ExpressVPN operate from islands that do not fall under the jurisdiction of these alliances and also offer you a secure channel for communication with the AES-256 military encryption standards.

The bottom line is that the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances spy on their citizens to protect their country against foreseen heinous crimes, but it is always questionable whether the data is in good hands. Of course, spying on someone’s life, violating their privacy, and leaving their security at risk is still an alarming issue for individuals and institutions. Using a VPN should be your first and foremost task, and not just any VPN but a reputable one. You can learn more about picking the right VPN from our guide – How to Choose a VPN. 

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