In 2008 Australian intelligence agencies offered to share the confidential information about Australians with the U.S. It was reported by the Australian edition of The Guardian newspaper, referring to the new documents submitted by Edward Snowden.
According to the newspaper, it is a previously unknown cooperation page of the five countries intelligence that makes up the so-called Group of Five Eyes (“Five Eyes”). Besides the U.S. and Australia, it includes Canada, United Kingdom and New Zealand. As it was previously reported, the purpose of the contract of Five Eyes is not only spying on terrorists, its main task is to collect political, diplomatic and economic information.
According to The Guardian, Agency of the Radio Technical Defense of Australia offers to share “unsorted data” with colleagues which contained "medical, legal or religious information" about Australians. However, it is not clear whether U.S. intelligence agencies used this proposal.
Revelatory article caused a wave of indignation in Australian Parliament. Lawmakers from the Party of “Green” required giving an explanation. In response, the General Attorney George Brandies said that the message in the newspaper is based on "untested draft document, which does not contain information about any action of any Australian institution."
However, not only Australian intelligence agencies helped Americans to watch the citizens of their country. There were hundreds of thousands of British who were "Under the hood". According to the documents released by Edward Snowden, an agreement of 2007 about the mutual exchange of intelligence allows U.S. NSA to store information about phone calls and metadata of Briton.
