The Five Eyes links the intelligence agencies of Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States through arrangements for sharing signals intelligence. The operation has its origins in the Cold War but expanded significantly after September 11. Edward Snowden’s disclosures in 2013 exposed how intelligence gathered under national surveillance powers circulated among its members. The communications available for collection pass through companies that store and transmit data across national borders.
Encryption can restrict government access if the decryption keys are under the control of the person using a service. An intelligence agency seeking readable information must then compel a technical change that would create an access point within a system designed to exclude third parties. But that change could also give another government or a criminal network a possible route into protected information. A national surveillance order can therefore weaken the security of a service supplied internationally.
These potential vulnerabilities have prompted digital rights organizations from several countries to coordinate their opposition to the surveillance powers that governments are exercising through technology companies.
Britain Tries Again
In February 2025, the British Home Office issued Apple with its first reported Technical Capability Notice. According to published accounts, the notice required changes to Advanced Data Protection , an optional iCloud security feature that stores decryption keys on devices controlled by the account holder. In practice, a business communicating with overseas affiliates could store confidential documents in iCloud Drive without Apple being able to provide readable copies to a government. Apple lacks the keys needed to read information protected by the service, so compliance with the reported notice would require a technical change to its operation.
Reports indicated that the notice covered encrypted data belonging to Americans, drawing opposition from Washington. On February 13, 2025, the Global Encryption Coalition sent Home Secretary Yvette Cooper an open letter signed by 109 organizations and specialists. The letter rejected the technical premise behind the Home Office’s demand by saying that “there is no way to provide government access to end-to-end encrypted data without breaking end-to-end encryption.”
Apple withdrew Advanced Data Protection from Britain and challenged the order before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the court that reviews complaints about the use of British surveillance powers.
Privacy International and Liberty filed a human rights complaint in March 2025. They asked the tribunal to review the home secretary’s authority to issue secret technical orders.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced in August 2025 that Britain had agreed to withdraw the demand affecting Americans; reports in October noted that the Home Office had replaced it with a second notice of narrower scope.
Apple filed a new complaint before the tribunal in July 2026 following that second Home Office demand. Press reports describe the notice as covering “British users,” a term left undefined by the secrecy surrounding the order. In September 2026, the tribunal will determine how the human rights complaint and Apple’s new case should proceed.
From Hacking Litigation to Mass Participation
British hacking powers had already drawn opposition from several continents. In 2016, Privacy International joined service providers and digital rights organizations from Britain, Germany, South Korea, and the United States in a European human rights case against overseas hacking by Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters. Earlier British proceedings included providers from the Netherlands and Zimbabwe . Privacy International then secured a High Court ruling that barred intelligence agencies from using one statutory power to issue general hacking warrants.
Snowden’s disclosures also generated mass participation. The Stop Watching Us coalition organized a march in Washington in October 2013. Four months later, The Day We Fight Back enlisted over 6,000 websites across six continents. Privacy organizations subsequently concentrated much of their activity in courts and legislatures.
Jane Duncan and Allen Munoriyarwa’s Democratising Spy Watching examines public opposition to intelligence-driven surveillance in eight southern African countries. In Botswana, opposition to the 2022 Criminal Procedure and Evidence Bill forced the government to replace warrantless interception with a requirement for High Court approval. Mauritian organizers used protest and litigation to force the destruction of a central fingerprint database created for the national identity card system. South Africa’s Right2Know Campaign mobilized against legislation that threatened severe penalties for journalists and whistleblowers who disclosed classified evidence of wrongdoing.
Surveillance realism describes the acceptance of pervasive monitoring as an unavoidable feature of digital life. But across southern Africa, public campaigns challenged the assumption that state surveillance lay beyond democratic control.
Civil Society Reaches Washington
Civil society pressure reached another Five Eyes government during the 2026 debate over Section 702, the provision in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows the U.S. government to conduct mass, warrantless surveillance of electronic communications by targeting foreigners abroad and sweeping in communications involving U.S. citizens. In January, 28 organizations urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to add stronger privacy safeguards to any reauthorization bill. The Electronic Privacy Information Center worked with a bipartisan coalition supporting warrant requirements and tighter limits on government access to collected communications.
The House rejected an extension on June 11, allowing Section 702 to expire the following day. A court authorization approved in March 2026, according to lawmakers and congressional aides, remains valid after the provision’s expiration and may sustain collection until March 2027. Section 702 also authorized U.S. agencies to require assistance from American communications providers when targeting non-Americans abroad. The reported Apple notices show how another Five Eyes government can impose surveillance requirements on an American provider.
Opposition to these surveillance powers remains led by specialist civil society organizations. These campaigns already cross Five Eyes borders. The next step is broader public mobilization of the kind documented across southern Africa, where organized communities worked alongside specialist organizations in challenging surveillance powers.
The post The Five Eyes Have Global Reach and So Do Their Opponents appeared first on Foreign Policy In Focus .
The Five Eyes Have Global Reach and So Do Their Opponents
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at FPIP.