With growing international outcry about NSA surveillance of anything and everything on the entire planet, there is growing interest among US allies about “no spy” agreements. They are confirmed to exist, and French President Francois Hollande made clear he’d like to get in on that.
President Obama, ever ready with a flat out lie about the NSA, insisted to Hollande that there is no such thing as a “no-spy agreement” with the United States, capping it off with a condescending statement about how much he likes Britain and France and wouldn’t be able to choose between them.
The agreement in question, the UKUSA agreement, also dubbed the Five Eyes Agreement, is a pledge from all five English language speaking nations to engage in mutual surveillance of the rest of the planet and not spy on each other except with explicit permission.
The idea at the time (the document is from the dawn of the Cold War) was to circumvent domestic surveillance limitations by having one another carry out that spying as foreign operations. In the era of total information awareness and the US wanting to spy on anyone and everyone, its only real value is that the cooperation limits the US ability to target the other four members.
Manipulation is the name of the game, playing the people is the game. Now if something comes out of Obama manipulative politics then USG will grab the opportunity and call it to its advantage, like when Obama declared the end of Iraq war? if nothing comes out of the gamble, they don't care no matter the consequences, like Syria. Or the spy agreements and etc. But for now threatening France with sanction is enough, WH will wait and see if anything will develop.
Absolutely no Australian Involvement in five eyes…………. No such thing as Pine Gap nor was there any other NSA bases in Australia ever! No new bases being built at Geraldton, and as the United States doesn't have exclusive bases in Australia, they obviously must not have anything to do with the US!