What are the 'Five Eyes'? As Canada accuses India, what you need to know about the intelligence alliance
Accusation over Sikh activist’s slaying put Canada’s allies in uncomfortable position. But they can also help
Following Canada's accusation this week that agents with connections to the Indian government were responsible for the fatal shooting on Canadian soil of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, Canada's Five Eyes allies have so far been reluctant to wade too deeply into the incident.
The CBC's Evan Dyer reported this week that Canada had already indicated to the U.S. and the U.K. during and immediately following the G20 summit in New Delhi earlier this month that Canada's already difficult relations with India were about to get even rockier.
The public accusation has put Canada's top allies in an uncomfortable position while the West tries to pull India into a closer relationship as a potential ally against China, with the U.S. even creating the so-called "quad" alliance between the U.S., India, Australia and Japan.
Intelligence and national security expert Wesley Wark says all of the partners — including Canada — are in the same boat.
"They all have a really significant interest in trying to maintain good relations with India, to try and advance economic ties, to try and advance military ties in the context of looking for ways to counter China's expansion in the Asia-Pacific arena," he said.
The U.S., however, denied it refused to support Canada after a Washington Post report said Ottawa had tried and failed to get its four top allies — known collectively with Canada as the Five Eyes — to publicly condemn the murder.
A senior U.S. administration official told CBC News, "In fact, we very clearly and very publicly have done the opposite by expressing deep concern shortly after PM Trudeau made the announcement."
Here's a brief reminder of what Canada's intelligence alliance is — and why it's especially important to Canada right now.
What is the Five Eyes alliance?
The Five Eyes is an intelligence sharing network made up of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Its roots date back to an alliance originally created in 1946 between the United States and the United Kingdom as a way to share intelligence signals.
It was expanded in 1949 to include Canada and in 1955 to include Australia and New Zealand.
Other countries, termed "third party partners," share information with the alliance but are not formal partners.
What do they do?
The Five Eyes pool resources and share intelligence with each other. As technology has changed through the decades, the way countries gather and share information has, too. Where once they may have relied on radio signals, today much of it is done through digital tracking and interception.
Not every country contributes equally.
"The Five Eyes have a lot of intelligence capabilities that Canada doesn't have," said Wark, senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. "And in particular, that's true of the United States."
A recent report by David Johnston into foreign interference said Canada was a net beneficiary of the alliance, citing evidence that Canada "receives more from the Five Eyes alliance than it sends to that alliance."
Four Canadian agencies are involved with the Five Eyes:
- Communications Security Establishment (CSE), formerly called the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC).
- The RCMP.
- Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
- Canadian Forces Intelligence Command.
What information do they share?
While initially formed to gather intelligence on other foreign countries, for decades little was known about what information the Five Eyes collected and kept.
That changed in 2013, with the massive leak of intelligence documents out of the U.S. National Security Agency by whistleblower Edward Snowden which revealed the five nations were not only spying on foreign countries and on each other — but also collecting and keeping data on their own citizens.
While U.S. President Barack Obama admitted at the time that U.S. intelligence agencies had perhaps gone too far in their spying, Australia's prime minister, a fellow Five-Eyer, made no such concessions.
"We should never, never apologize for doing what's necessary to protect ourselves and to help our friends and that's exactly the Five Eyes arrangements are designed to do," Tony Abbott said at the time.
In the current case involving India, could the Five Eyes help Canada?
Wark says Canada's Five Eyes partners could be an important source of additional or corroborating information to "whatever the Canadian intelligence evidence about [the death of Nijjar] might have been" including the personalities involved, methods of operations, signals intelligence intercepts or other forms of knowledge.
"[Canada] would be able to learn more from the intelligence available and knowledge available to Five Eyes intelligence agencies that would support their own investigation and confirm ... whatever evidence base that Canada currently has about the Indian government's involvement and the degree of it," he said.
Richard Fadden, former CSIS director and national security adviser to Stephen Harper when he was prime minister, said the allies could also help Canada by applying political and diplomatic pressure on India to "make sure A) there's a cost to this and B) they never do this again."
Why would the other "eyes" be reluctant to more strongly support Canada on India right now?
Wark says Canada's allies are likely playing a bit of a waiting game, "just wanting to hear more from Canadian officials about what the Canadians know exactly and how their investigation is going."
He says it's pretty clear all the partners were briefed, probably up to the level of the national security and intelligence adviser, about the nature of Canadian suspicions about India's involvement, but that they will wait to make stronger statements "until the Canadians have advanced their own investigation and come up with more details that the Canadian government is willing to share publicly — and willing to allow our Five Eyes partners to share."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
