UKUSA
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'UKUSA' is the somewhat obvious acronym accorded the March 1946 secret agreement between the UK and USA concerning Communications intelligence sharing and under which the global Echelon system was built. Both the agreement itself and the Echelon system continue in operation (July 2010) with the technical capabilities of Echelon undoubtedly vastly greater than envisaged for it at the outset. Part of the agreement states:
- “It will be contrary to this agreement to reveal its existence to any third party whatever” and that “each party will seek the agreement of the other to any action with third parties and will take no action until its advisibility is agreed upon.”
This explains why, in spite of its existence being widely accepted for decades, it has never been officially acknowledged.
The consequent Ministerial 'Omerta' has recently produced moments of high farce, as in the matter of allegations of UK collusion in torture, with the then UK Home Secretary David Miliband going through all manner of contortions to explain why intelligence documents that proved Binyam Mohammed's allegations could not be made public. [1] Pre-emptive deflection of attention on the agreement has often taken the form of emphasising an alleged UK-USA 'Special Relationship' - an ambiguous phrase usually understood in cultural/language etc terms but equally applicable in logic to the UKUSA agreement itself - all of which is illustrative of the devious workings of the bureaucratic mind when faced with a dilema.
The agreement has probably undergone it's own evolution too. However, as is amply illustrated by ministerial evasions it is not only still operational but highly valued by the UK - crocodile tears and backside-covering notwithstanding.
A series of documents relating to the setting up of the agreement and the first few years of its operation were declassified in June 2010 and are available on the UK National Archives web site [2]. A more substantial collection covering the period 1940-1956 is available from the US NSA website. [3]
A draft of the original agreement dated 1 November 1945 in available on the WikiSpooks site and linked to below
Contents
"The 5 Eyes"
This phrase is used to refer to the members of UKUSA.
Known members
All 5 of the members already have pages here:
| Member | Description |
|---|---|
| Australia | A large island nation in the southern hemisphere which is pioneering universal surveillance of its citizenry. |
| Canada | If tar sands are counted, Canada possesses the 3rd largest oil reserves of any nation state. |
| New Zealand | An island state next to Australia which "has become a preferred bolthole for the ultra rich". Aggressively used contact tracing and lockdowns during the COVID-19 event. |
| UK | The biggest Island in Europe. It was a world power with massive influence for over 4 centuries. |
| US | The United States is the single biggest military spender in the world, with a higher 2020 expenditure than the next ten countries combined. Its infrastructure has been described to be in disrepair since the late 1980s. |
Related Documents
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:GCHQ and Me: My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers | Article | 3 August 2015 | Duncan Campbell | No one at the May 2015 conference on intelligence, security and privacy argued against greater openness. Thanks to Edward Snowden and those who courageously came before, the need for public accountability and review has become unassailable. |
| Document:Julian Assange at Moment of Truth | Video transcript | 15 September 2014 | Julian Assange | Speech by Julian Assange to the Moment of Truth event in New Zealand on 15 September 2014 |
| Document:UK Intelligence And Security Report, 2003 | report | June 2003 | Richard M. Bennett Katie Bennett | A compendious summary of the UK Intelligence And Security agencies, including people, events and places. |
| File:Hw-80-2.pdf | agreement | 1 November 1945 | US UK | The 1945 draft UK-USA agreement |
| File:Secret Power.pdf | book | 1996 | Nicky Hager | A detailed account of how the integration of New Zealand into the UKUSA global signals interception system was achieved with neither the knowledge not consent of the country's senior politicians - in particular Prime minister David Lange who wrote the foreword to this book. It also deals with the infamous Rainbow Warrior incident in detail |
See Also
- GCHQ
- Echelon
- File:Hw-80-2.pdf - Draft of the UKUSA agreement dated 1 November 1945
External Links
- Wikipedia UKUSA Agreement main page
- The Document that formalised the 'special-relationship' with the US
- Not so secret: deal at the heart of UK-US intelligence - The Guardian 25 June 2010
