Snowden and the Five Eyes
The Snowden disclosures lay out the satellite-intelligence partnerships of the Five Eyes in unprecedented detail. Allied governments, embarrassed in public, quietly start funding sovereign communications alternatives.
A working catalogue entry, kept current. Each paragraph is drawn from the publicly documented record.
Beginning in June 2013, disclosures by NSA contractor Edward Snowden expose the satellite-intelligence partnerships of the Five Eyes — particularly programmes such as RAMPART-A and TURMOIL — in unprecedented detail. Allied governments embarrassed in public quietly start funding sovereign communications alternatives.
Commercial satellite operators reconsider their willingness to host US-government tasking on shared payloads, and a new generation of European, Brazilian and South-East-Asian sovereign satellite-communications procurements gets greenlit. The Snowden disclosures are arguably the single most consequential trigger for non-American sovereign communications spending in the post-Cold-War era.
Each entry is publicly documented. Have a correction or a stronger source? Send it to the editorial team via the contact form.
