The new information I learned comes from one of my groupmates, Nyar Freeman. In his presentation, he covered the topic of The Five Eyes: an intelligence network composed of the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and The United States. This organization was heightened in response to the September 11th terrorist attack, which is why I was drawn to this topic as September 11th was a major focus of my presentation as well. The main goal of the war on terror was to be able to conduct and exchange surveillance, but this was still all happening under the radar of course.
After doing some more online research on my own, I discovered just how far back this organization goes. Originally, I was under the impression that this group of nations mainly collaborated starting with the war on terror, keeping close eyes on the public to make sure a devastating attack wouldn't happen again. What I learned, though, was that this group had been working even as far back as the days of the cold war, monitoring for Soviet spies and trying to contain the spread of communism. Many articles do a much better job at explaining the history of the 5 eyes than I can in this short post, but as for myself, I was just impressed learning about how much more history there was to unpack than I had initially realized. Taking a secret international surveillance organization back over half a century makes me somewhat nervous in terms of what that means for our personal freedom, but if I were to highlight a positive it would definitely be that I feel the organization's intentions are certainly in good faith.
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