page_title: Global surveillance
section_title: Australia
hierarchical_section_title: Global surveillance / International cooperation / Australia
caption_attribution_description: English: Pine Gap Defence Base, as viewed from Mount Gillen, Alice Springs
context_page_description: Global mass surveillance refers to the mass surveillance of entire populations across national borders. Its roots can be traced back to the middle of the 20th century when the UKUSA Agreement was jointly enacted by the United Kingdom and the United States, which later expanded to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to create the present Five Eyes alliance. The alliance developed cooperation arrangements with several "third-party" nations. Eventually, this resulted in the establishment of a global surveillance network, code-named "ECHELON".
  Its existence, however, was not widely acknowledged by governments and the mainstream media until the global surveillance disclosures by Edward Snowden triggered a debate about the right to privacy in the Digital Age.
context_section_description: The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), formerly known as the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), shares information on Australian citizens with the other members of the UKUSA Agreement. According to a 2008 Five Eyes document leaked by Snowden, data of Australian citizens shared with foreign countries include "bulk, unselected, unminimised metadata" as well as "medical, legal or religious information".
  In close cooperation with other members of the Five Eyes community, the ASD runs secret surveillance facilities in many parts of Southeast Asia without the knowledge of Australian diplomats. In addition, the ASD cooperates with the Security and Intelligence Division (SID) of the Republic of Singapore in an international operation to intercept underwater telecommunications cables across the Eastern Hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean.
  In March 2017 it was reported that, on advice from the  Five Eyes intelligence alliance, more than 500 Iraqi and Syrian refugees, have been refused entry to Australia, in the last year.
caption: Pine Gap, near the Australian town of Alice Springs, is run by the CIA and it is part of the global surveillance program ECHELON.[90][91]
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