That’s thanks to a little-known surveillance consortium that is undoubtedly the world’s most exclusive spy club. Nicknamed “Five Eyes,” it’s a top-secret intelligence-sharing alliance that was formed in 1946, whereby members agree to share intelligence they collect with one another. The club’s first members were the UK and the USA. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand joined later.

If you think you will get caught spying on your own citizens…order a club member to do it.

https://www.nestmann.com/the-worlds-most-exclusive-spy-club

By Mark Nestmann

To understand the scope of the US government spying on its own citizens, not to mention the rest of the world, you need a long attention span.

A case in point is a lawsuit filed a decade ago by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) against the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies. The lawsuit seeks to force the NSA to end its practice of “dragnet surveillance,” the interception and copying all internet traffic that passes through the US. The NSA refers to this surveillance program, which was exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, as Stellar Wind.

The lawsuit relies in part upon an unclassified draft report published in 2009 by the NSA acknowledging Stellar Wind’s existence. But in a Kafkaesque irony which is common in litigation involving the NSA, the agency refuses to acknowledge the report’s authenticity, even though the NSA wrote the report. Thus, the NSA argues, the court must disregard the document and dismiss the lawsuit.

Help for the EFF arrived in an unexpected form earlier this month, when Edward Snowden himself filed a declaration stating that the report was in fact genuine. Now the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals must decide whether to allow the lawsuit to proceed. Read the rest of this entry »