Five Eyes is a group of intelligence agencies from five western nations including the USA, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada that was initially founded many years ago and kept secret to share intelligence between the nations, originally with the Cold War.
Recently it has appeared in the news as the organization is encouraging member countries to pass laws about encryption done on computers and with networks.
They have strongly encouraged a law to be passed to allow police and other law enforcement agencies such as the FBI to be given back doors in to any encryption method used in these countries.
Encryption is where we mix up the information so someone not authorized to read it, cannot read it with out the proper key or authorization. It is how we can shop on the Internet and pay bills using our credit card numbers and bank account numbers and them not be stolen. It is a constant race between good guys to get better encryption and bad guys trying to break it.
Five Eyes says the back door is needed so the law enforcement people can get in files to either prevent terrorism or to respond and catch the terrorists.
The tech industry, including myself, response is that is a back door is built in then it is just a question of the bad guys finding it more quickly and stealing information and there by destroying the e-economy.
In the last couple weeks Australia passed a law that does what Five Eyes wants and the question is now how will and can the various tech companies doing encryption comply and also still secure our information. The days of the Wild West Web may be returning as every thing becomes exposed.
Dwight
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