Originally Posted by dyna mo

five eyes alliance

UKUSA is a multilateral agreement for cooperation in signals intelligence between the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

The alliance of intelligence operations is also known as Five Eyes

Emerging from an informal agreement related to the 1941 Atlantic Charter, the secret treaty was renewed with the passage of the 1943 BRUSA Agreement, before being officially enacted on 5 March 1946 by the United Kingdom and the United States. In the following years, it was extended to encompass the three Commonwealth realms of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Other countries, know as "third parties", such as West Germany, the Philippines and several Scandinavian countries also joined the UKUSA community.

Much of the sharing of information is performed via the ultra-sensitive STONEGHOST network, which contains "the Western world's most closely guarded secrets". Besides laying down rules for intelligence sharing, the agreement formalized and cemented the "Special Relationship" between the UK and the USA.

Due to its status as a secret treaty, its existence was not known to the Prime Minister of Australia until 1973, and it was not disclosed to the public until 2005.

On 25 June 2010, for the first time in history, the full text of the agreement was publicly released by Britain's National Archives, and can now be viewed online. Shortly after is release, the seven-page UKUSA Agreement was recognized by Time magazine as one of the Cold War's most important documents, with immense historical significance.