We live in the digital era, where we conduct most of our daily activities through the internet. And as far as all of us know, the internet isn’t the safest place on the earth. But neither is the outside world, isn’t it? One of our biggest concerns while using the internet is our privacy. But that shouldn’t be our only concern, as many people are clueless when it comes to the way governments of certain countries are rampling up their surveillance.
In this article, not only you’ll learn more about the way governments our invading our lives without us even knowing it, but you’ll also find out how to avoid that from happening.
5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, 14 Eyes
The subtitle above describes an alliance of now 14 countries that constantly work together when it comes to sharing data. Basically, the governments of these 14 countries are using expansions of the famous ECHELON surveillance system in order to get the personal information of their citizens. So if you live in one of the member countries of the alliance, be aware of the fact that your government is able to invade your online privacy, share your personal information with other countries, and you don’t even have to know it.
Alliances such as the one that is our subject of matter right now, are the reason why spying has become the global problem that it is right now. This kind of organizations make it easier for governments to control your data and use it. For example, in the United States, it is not allowed for the NSA to spy on the American citizens. But given the fact that US is part of the 14 Eyes, they can easily have an organization from another member country spy on American citizens. But that isn’t always the case.
How It All Began?
This organization is far more old than you would imagine; it was actually formed in the 1940s. In its original format, it was called 5 Eyes and it started as an alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom ( the UKUSA agreement). This alliance allowed the two countries to exchange information, and soon enough, 3 other nations came to be a part of the alliance: Canada, New Zealand and Australia. These 5 countries made up the 5 Eyes.
Later, 9 other countries have joined the alliance, mostly european countries like Norway, France and The Netherlands. The last country that has joined the alliance is Sweden and this is why today we refer to the group of countries as 14 Eyes.
What Can You Do?
As mentioned before, one of our biggest problems right now at a global scale, is our privacy. In order to protect ourselves from privacy invasions or leak of personal information, it’s good to be aware of things like 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, 14 Eyes. More so, it is recommended to try and make other people around us aware.
Let’s say you found out that your government is able to extract your personal information and share that info with 13 other countries, without even needing your permission. You obviously don’t want that, and you ask yourself what can you do about it.
Luckily, there is this protocol called VPN (Virtual Private Network), that you can use in order to get a secure internet connection and hide your data traffic. For our example, be aware that you can actually get a VPN connection that protects your privacy not only in your own country, but in all member countries of 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, 14 Eyes.
On another note, you might want to be aware of how imperative is data security when it comes to your mobile phone. You, as most people around you nowadays, tend to use mobile apps in order to do all sorts of common things like shopping, ordering food or paying bills. Make sure you know what happens to your data once you use certain mobile apps.
Times have change, and one of our biggest problems at a global level, is that people are not aware of that, and are not aware of how important is their privacy. Not many people know about the systems that governments use in order to monitor us, and those of us who do, can’t really do something to stop this. Fortunately, there are ways to protect our privacy from the government and from any other source on the internet; we just need to become aware of them, and make other people aware too.
