![]() ![]() “Description of SIGINT Relations between NSA and GCHQ” (Dec ember 1985) Interestingly, President Truman’s memorandum was not among the documents the NSA released in 2010 relating to the history of the UKUSA Agreement, which cover the period between 19. This arrangement has not necessarily been clear to the public (nor was it clear, based on the wording of the 1972 memorandum, to the NSA itself). It begins by noting that “he question occasionally arises as to the governmental levels at which the UKUSA COMINT Agreement was authorized or approved” but quickly clarifies that “the President of the United States authorized an agreement in this field, and that the British Foreign Minister must have been aware of it.” (Compare that with, for example, the statement by David Lange, the former prime minister of New Zealand, who remarked that “it was not until I read book that I had any idea that we had been committed to an international integrated electronic network.” He continued that “it is an outrage that I and other ministers were told so little, and this raises the question of to whom those concerned saw themselves ultimately answerable.”)Īs support for the NSA’s history of the agreement, the memorandum attaches a 1945 memorandum from President Truman authorizing the then-secretary of war and the secretary of the Navy “to continue collaboration in the field of communication intelligence between the United States Army and Navy and the British, and to extend, modify or discontinue this collaboration, as determined to be in the best interests of the United States.” This presidential memorandum is of particular interest because it provides evidence that the president directly authorized the various military branches to determine the future course and contours of the UKUSA Agreement. “Historical Note on the UKUSA COMINT Agreement,” which provides further insight into the formation of the agreement. In 1972, a historical officer at the NSA produced a “Memorandum for the Record” entitled 27, 1972) (attaching President Truman Memorandum ) “Historical Note on the UKUSA COMINT Agreement” (Oct. Snapshots of the UKUSA Agreement from the 1970s to the 1990sĪmong the records the government has produced is a series of documents, dating from the 1970s to the 1990s, that aid our understanding of the history and nature of the UKUSA Agreement, particularly as it has evolved over time. Nevertheless, critical questions regarding the Five Eyes alliance, including its implications for the constitutional rights of Americans, remain. Privacy International has also made available on its website the records the government disclosed. Below, we summarize the most interesting of these disclosures and how they update what we know about the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangement. In September 2018, the NSA released several additional batches of records, containing disclosures that significantly enhance our understanding of the history and nature of the UKUSA Agreement. We’ve written previously about some of the records disclosed by the government and what they reveal about the government’s approach to classification and publication of these types of agreements. An appendix to that agreement elaborates further that the Five Eyes are to share “continuously, currently and without request” both “raw” (that is, unanalyzed) intelligence in addition to “end product” (intelligence that has been subjected to analysis or interpretation).īeginning in December 2017, the NSA and the State Department began making disclosures in response to the lawsuit. ![]() That version of the agreement provides that the Five Eyes are to share, by default, all SIGINT they gather, as well as methods and techniques relating to SIGINT operations. The Five Eyes alliance emerged from spying arrangements forged during World War II and facilitates the sharing of signals intelligence (SIGINT) among the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand.Īt the time Privacy International and MFIA filed the lawsuit, the most recent publicly available version of the agreement governing the Five Eyes alliance-known as the UKUSA Agreement-dated back to 1955. In July 2017, Privacy International and Yale Law School’s Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic (MFIA) filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the State Department, and the National Archives and Records Administration seeking access to records related to the Five Eyes alliance under the Freedom of Information Act. ![]()
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