UKUSA Community
Australia Canada New Zealand United Kingdom United States of America

The UK–USA Security Agreement is an agreement or treaty that established an alliance of five English-speaking countries for the purpose of sharing intelligence, especially signals intelligence. The alliance comprises Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. This agreement started as an extension of the historic BRUSA Agreement.

The community is derived from an intelligence sharing agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States signed immediately following the Second World War to capitalize on intelligence relationships built up during that conflict. This formalized the intelligence sharing agreement in the Atlantic charter, signed in 1941, following the cessation of the conflict.^[1]

[edit] Collection mechanisms

The UKUSA alliance is often associated with the ECHELON system; however, processed intelligence is reliant on multiple sources of information and the intelligence shared is not restricted to signals intelligence.

[edit] Global coverage

Each member of the UKUSA alliance is officially assigned lead responsibility for intelligence collection and analysis in different parts of the globe.

[edit] Australia

Australia hunts for communications originating in Indochina, Indonesia and southern China.

[edit] Canada

Formerly the northern portions of the former Soviet Union and conducting sweeps of all communications traffic that could be picked up from embassies around the world. In the post-Cold War era, a greater emphasis has been placed on monitoring satellite, radio and cellphone traffic originating from Central and South America, primarily in an effort to track drugs and non-aligned paramilitary groups in the region.

[edit] New Zealand

The Waihopai Valley Facility—base of the New Zealand branch of the ECHELON Program.

New Zealand is responsible for the western Pacific. She maintains listening posts in the South Island at Waihopai Valley just south-west of Blenheim, and on the North Island at Tangimoana.

[edit] United Kingdom

Europe and Russia west of the Urals as well as Africa.

[edit] United States

Monitors most of Latin America, Asia, Asiatic Russia and northern China.

[edit] See also

• ABCA Armies
• The Technical Cooperation Program (TTCP)
• Combined Communications Electronics Board

Related:

• Anglosphere
• Commonwealth of Nations

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Bryden, John. Best Kept Secret: Canadian Secret Intelligence in the Second World War. Toronto: Lester Publishing, 1993.
• Hamilton, Dwight. Inside Canadian Intelligence: Exposing the New Realities of Espionage and International Terrorism. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2006.
• Frost, Mike and Michel Gratton. Spyworld: Inside the Canadian and American Intelligence Establishments. Toronto: Doubleday Canada Limited, 1994.
• Richelson, Jeffrey T.; Ball, Desmond (1985). The Ties That Bind: Intelligence Cooperation Between the UKUSA Countries. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN 0-04-327092-1.
• Richelson, Jeffrey T. The United States Intelligence Community, fifth ed. Westview Press, Boulder, Colo.; ISBN 978-0-8133-4362-4; 2008.
• Rosen, Philip. The Communications Security Establishment: Canada’s Most Secret Intelligence Agency. Ottawa: Library of Parliament Research Branch, 1993.
• Rudner, Martin. Canada’s Communications Security Establishment: From the Cold War to Globalization in Intelligence and National Security. Volume 16 Number 1 (Spring 2001). 97–128.
• Secret Power, New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network; Craig Potton Publishing, Nelson, NZ; ISBN 0-908802-35-8; 1996 (ONLINE EDITION)
• Whitaker, Reginald. Cold War Alchemy: How America, Britain, and Canada Transformed Espionage into Subversion in Intelligence and National Security.