The Five Eyes intelligence sharing group – which is comprised of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States – has said that China’s imposition of new rules to disqualify elected legislators in Hong Kong appears to be part of a campaign to silence opponents.

The alliance has called on the Chinese Government to reverse course.

The comments are in response to Hong Kong’s decision to expel four opposition members from its legislature last week after Beijing provided city authorities with new powers to curb dissent. The move triggered mass resignations by Hong Kong’s pro-democracy opposition politicians.

It also raised concerns about the degree of the former British colony’s autonomy, promised under a “one country, two systems” formula when the UK ended its colonial rule and handed the island back to Beijing in 1997.

China Fears Five Eyes’ Interference in Hong Kong

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijan has expressed strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to repeated external interference in China’s internal affairs, warning the Five Eyes alliance not to harm China’s sovereignty and security.

However the Hong Kong protests are an opportunity for the Five Eyes group to defend the former British colony’s sovereignty from Chinese interference. The coronavirus has escalated the rivalry between the West and Beijing, and many Western nations are taking the threat that China poses far more seriously than they have ever done before.

Five Eyes Should be much More Than Just an Intelligence Alliance

Peter Martin, Kitty Donaldson and Kait Bolongaro of the Japan Times interviewed experts who told them that “intelligence around the world will always have a Chinese angle, will always look for Chinese threats just as we once saw events in Angola through the prism of the Soviet Union.”

The problem with Five Eyes is that it has no formal staff or official headquarters. Many people familiar with the intelligence sharing group claim that it is becoming more of a go-to forum for an array of emerging issues, of which Hong Kong is a typical example.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab signaled the changing role for the alliance in June when he appealed to Britain’s intelligence partners for “burden sharing” if Hong Kong residents fled the island in response to China’s sweeping national security law earlier this year.

The alliance’s traditional role is being transformed too. One current Five Eyes intelligence official told the Japan Times that information-sharing and joint work between the partners is the strongest it has ever been on many topics. Therefore, the group will continue to play a role in monitoring the situation in Hong Kong in the near future, even if the Chinese Government failed to provide an adequate response to their request to end the silencing of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy supporters.

It’s Time for Five Eyes to Modernize and Adapt

In order to provide the alliance with more clout in pressuring China to restore Hong Kong’s autonomy, there is no reason why Five Eyes should not be expanded, as I wrote in July. Many British Conservative MPs originally supported such a move at the time as they felt like the group could be enlarged to include Japan, which means it could be broadened into a strategic economic relationship that pools key reserves such as critical minerals and medical supplies.

Yet Japan would also be provided with the advantages of Five Eyes’ signals intelligence, defense intelligence, human intelligence and geospatial intelligence if they joined the alliance, as Beijing may pose a threat to Tokyo’s autonomy in the future.

With India also feeling threatened by Chinese hegemony, there is no reason why they cannot join Five Eyes as well. Either way, the current purpose of the alliance needs to change if they are serious about preventing China from expanding into Hong Kong and other territories.

Many Western nations now need to be more ambitious about Five Eyes’ purpose. It could be so much more than an intelligence sharing group, but until it moves beyond its current purpose, there is almost absolutely nothing they can do about Hong Kong in the meantime other than monitor the deteriorating situation there.

L'articolo Can the Five Eyes Alliance Save Hong Kong’s Pro-Democracy Movement? proviene da InsideOver.

The international intelligence alliance “Five Eyes” has renewed its efforts to gain access to encrypted content. The latest proposal, which is also supported by Japan and India, could significantly undermine the protection of users of Whatsapp and other services.

Although privacy on the Internet needs to be protected, it should not cause the security authorities and the technology companies themselves to have no access to “the most serious illegal online content and activities,” according to “Five Eyes” in a joint statement.

Why is This Issue Important?

The European Commission recently ceased the latest attempt to weaken end-to-end encryptions, meaning content that can only be viewed by the respective users in a conversation or interaction, by deleting related projects from its draft of the “Digital Services Act”. However, the topic remains relevant internationally.

In recent years numerous online platforms and many messengers services added the user protection of end-to-end encryption. Now the “Five Eyes” alliance has launched another attempt in its efforts. “Five Eyes” is the intelligence community cooperation between the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. With Japan and India’s support, “Five Eyes” are now calling for the tech companies to build back doors into their protective mechanism.

Five Eyes: End-to-End Encryption Hinders Vital Investigations

According to “Five Eyes,” encryption is a massive obstacle in investigative work. It also makes it impossible for the providers themselves to enforce their own guidelines effectively. Government officials expressed their proclivity to work with the companies concerned to “develop appropriate proposals” that would allow technology companies and governments to protect citizens and their privacy, guarantee cybersecurity and human rights while supporting technological innovations.

The bottom line for “Five Eyes” is that end-to-end encryption should not prevent cyber-crime from being combated effectively. Certain implementations of technology would make the platforms a “safe haven” for criminal activity and put “highly vulnerable members of society at risk according to their statement.

What Does Five Eyes Want?

A joint statement calls for the providers to consider public safety “by design” in their services. Authorities ought to be provided access to platform content in a “readable and usable format” if there is a “legal authorization” – such as a court order. Moreover, tech companies ought to enter into an exchange with the authorities and other stakeholders to advise on such access solutions. The latter aims to establish a consensus that allows the authorities to access content under extraordinary circumstances, while users can still communicate securely and encrypted. The Five Eyes alliance publicly postulated similar demands in 2018 and 2019.

Whether such a solution is technically conceivable remains a significant debate among the relevant actors. Secure end-to-end encryption is usually implemented so that the operators themselves do not have the keys to read user content. If they provide the authorities access, this design is not possible, as they must have this key to allow investigators to read along or make certain content legible on their behalf.

Loss of Privacy Has More Implications Than Surveillance Oversight

The storage of this key and the implementation of other back doors means a loss of security for all users per se. Because if cyber criminals succeed in attacking a provider’s server or tracking down such a back door, they can also see the communication between users. Such a door would also be open to the misuse of keys by employees of tech companies.

Some countries have already implemented the elimination of encryption into law, for example, in Australia. In Russia, the authorities are also heavily targeting encrypted messengers and trying to ban the Telegram service, but have largely failed at a technical level.

Finding a balance between consumer privacy concerns on the one hand and crime and terrorist prevention on the other will continue to spark debate and a coherent solution that satisfies both sides remains – for now – almost inconceivable.

L'articolo Five Eyes Renews its Efforts to Access End-to-End Encryption proviene da InsideOver.

The Guardian reports that the Five Eyes intelligence alliance could soon be enlarged to include Japan and broadened into a strategic economic relationship that pools key strategic reserves such as critical minerals and medical supplies. News of the potential development has come from statements made by various center-right British politicians. This sentiment is strong among British Conservative MPs in particular, who are working internationally to tackle the Chinese threat to Western hegemony.

Renewed Focus on China’s Global Ambitions

The renewed focus comes as a result of the coronavirus pandemic’s exposure of the West’s various key strategic dependencies on China. Plans to increase production of rare and semi-rare materials from America, Canada and Australia in order to reduce these nations’ dependency on Chinese stocks, will be announced under Five Eyes auspices.

Critical minerals are the key components in a wide range of consumer products like mobile phones, TVs and laptops. On average, China has accounted for more than 90 percent of the worldwide production and supply of rare earths during the past decade, according to the US Geological Survey.

COVID-19 has Changed Everything

Many Conservative MPs are also keen to form an economic alliance that could compete with Beijing, especially as post-Brexit Britain looks to form new trading partnerships outside of the EU and China.

Prior to COVID-19, there were many signs that the Sino-Japanese relationship was improving. In 2019, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force conducted good will exercises with the Chinese Navy for the first time. Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan’s attendance at Emperor Naruhito’s enthronement ceremony was also significant.

However, there were also many reasons to believe that the partnership had deep defects. Tokyo was concerned about the testing of missile systems such as the CM-401 and the use of precision strike systems against medium-sized ships, naval task forces and offshore facilities.

Japan Has Many Reason to Join Five Eyes

The digital component of China’s Belt and Road initiative also concerned Japan, as the divergence of their digital economies would require businesses to duplicate and then localize their business platforms for each economy. This would have increased costs for businesses by cutting supply chains.

After the coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese Embassy confirmed that Japan attempted to help China by sending 380,000 pairs of gloves, 150,000 protective suits and 75,000 protective goggles in February. Chinese central and local governments and citizens returned the favor by donating a significant amount of medical supplies to Japan since March. Despite this good will, joining Five Eyes would provide Japan with more advantages than its current limited partnership with China.

By politically and economically expanding the Five Eyes alliance, Japan can diversify its supply chains. Earlier this year, the Japanese Government committed $2.2 billion to help domestic companies move their supply chains in general, not just in China.

According to the Japan-China Joint Opinion Survey, only 15 percent of Japanese respondents have a favorable view of China. Therefore, it could be more popular for the Japanese Government to strengthen its ties with the West.

Many Democracies Must Rethink Their Relationship to China

To be fair, the concept of the Five Eyes alliance is slightly outdated, too. The alliance was formed in 1941 after the Second World War when Japan had just been defeated by the Allied powers. Times have changed and if Tokyo joined the alliance now, it would be provided with the advantages of the Five Eyes’ signals intelligence, defense intelligence, human intelligence and geo-spatial intelligence.

Despite Edward Snowden’s revelation in 2013 that Five Eyes had been used to spy on one another’s citizens, Bruce Ferguson, the former head of New Zealand’s foreign spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, told The Associated Press at the time that the alliance’s information gathering capability “is like gold.”

With China provoking other countries such as India as well, there is no reason why the alliance cannot continue to grow in size in the long-term.

The coronavirus is a warning sign for many democracies in general to change their relationship with China. Both Tokyo and Beijing have had a strained relationship caused by the former’s failure to fully acknowledge the atrocities Japan committed against China during World War Two. Despite the fact that Sino-Japanese relations were improving prior to COVID-19, it was already becoming clear that Japanese supply chains were too dependent upon China. For the sake of Japan’s security and economy, they must join Five Eyes as soon as possible.

L'articolo Why the Five Eyes Alliance Should be Expanded proviene da InsideOver.

US diplomats have been pressed to explain why their boss, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said Washington would “disconnect” from Australia if China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) threatened US intelligence security. The southern Australian state of Victoria is part of the BRI, but it has yet to lay out concrete plans for the project. Furthermore, Australia has expressly prohibited telecommunications projects between the two nations.

Pompeo: ‘We Will Simply Separate’

“I don’t know the nature of those projects precisely, but to the extent they have an adverse impact on our ability to protect telecommunications from our private citizens, or security networks for our defense and intelligence communities, we will simply disconnect, we will simply separate,” Pompeo said. “We’re going to preserve trust in networks for important information. We hope our friends and partners and allies across the world, especially our Five Eyes partners like Australia, will do the same.”

Among the Five Eyes partners, New Zealand, Australia, and the US have banned Huawei and ZTE from building 5G networks in their states. Canada and the UK have also launched investigations into whether there are valid security concerns, possibly leaning towards banning the companies as well.

The possible security implications of Chinese, state-owned manufacturers providing 5G infrastructure for a Five Eyes partner are at the root of Pompeo’s argument and the reason he suggested severing America’s intelligence ties with Australia. The secretary made the comment in an interview on Sky News, a conservative-leaning channel, as the Guardian reported.

When Maximum Pressure Consumes You

Pompeo’s rushed reaction to Victoria’s partnership with Beijing is a result of the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign against Huawei and ZTE. As soon as US President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning them from building 5G networks on the basis of national security, his advisors moved quickly to pressure America’s allies to follow suit. Many of them complied and Australia was actually one of the first.

Therefore, Pompeo’s speediness to find a solution lacks a problem. The Australian government has perhaps been the most aligned with Washington on the issue. Furthermore, the BRI’s status in Victoria is also still up for debate. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, responding to Pompeo’s statement, said Canberra had initially opposed an agreement with Beijing. In fact, all that exists presently is a non-binding deal.

The threat of Chinese espionage through 5G telecommunications giants, whether real or not (no credible evidence has been provided yet), has the Trump administration over eager to pursue Chinese companies. Consequently, it is landing harsh and swift blows upon its allies, even Israel, which Pompeo said might have cooperation problems in the future due to its deals with China.

Pompeo admitted he did not know the status and scope of Victoria’s projects, when in fact none currently exist, so the best course would have been to avoid commenting. Instead, the US secretary laid bare the most extreme possible reaction in an undiplomatic manner. His underlings were forced to pick up the pieces from the interview.

Cleaning Up Pompeo’s Mess

The US ambassador to Australia, Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., said Pompeo didn’t mean anything by the remark, as Reuters reported.

“The United States has absolute confidence in the Australian government’s ability to protect the security of its telecommunications networks and those of its Five Eyes partners,” Culvahouse said. “The Secretary was asked to address a hypothetical, and he carefully noted he was not familiar with the State of Victoria’s BRI discussions.”

In America, Pompeo’s suggestion of cutting off one of the oldest US allies reverberated throughout Capitol Hill. The ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee called Pompeo’s remarks “thoughtless.”

“Only in the Trump Admin would our most senior diplomat casually threaten to ‘disconnect’ from a long standing ally,” Chairman Eliot Engel, D–N.Y., said in a tweet from the committee.

Pompeo’s Terrible Timing

Finally, Pompeo’s comment came at the worst time for another reason: Australia is presently engaged in a trade spat with China following a COVID-19 fallout. Canberra is calling for an independent investigation into the origins of the virus and in retaliation, Beijing imposed an 80% increase in barley tariffs.

Pompeo should be familiar with Australia’s row with China because only a week prior, Pompeo was commending Canberra for standing up against Beijing, as Newsweek reported.

“We stand with Australia and the more than 120 nations who have taken up the American call for an inquiry into the origins of the virus so we can understand what went wrong and save lives,” Pompeo said on May 20.

The idea that the US secretary could be so quick to formulate a reaction despite admitting he knew none of the facts could have been a diplomatic disaster had America’s ambassador not stepped up to clarify the remark. Instead of jumping the gun, Pompeo should recognize what Washington has in Canberra — a willing, trustworthy ally that is under Beijing’s skin almost as much as the US.

L'articolo Why Did Mike Pompeo Say the US Could Sever Ties With Australia? proviene da InsideOver.