'Safeguarding Secrets' report reveals Five Eyes' alleged unlawful conduct: Editorial flash

The intelligence report jointly released on Wednesday by the Five Eyes agencies appears strikingly ridiculous.

Even more paradoxical is its title: Safeguarding Our Secrets. Five highly developed countries, jointly engaged in global intelligence collection, claim their mission is protecting secrets while much of their documented activity revolves around obtaining the secrets of others.

Their accusations against China — such as attempting to recruit and cultivate long-term relationships with individuals holding security clearances or military positions in exchange for classified information — are not only unsubstantiated, but also mirror the very practices long attributed to themselves. Chinese media have repeatedly reported on NSA operations targeting institutions such as Northwestern Polytechnical University, involving phishing campaigns and the exploitation of vulnerabilities against telecommunications operators, universities and critical infrastructure networks, with technical evidence made publicly available for scrutiny.

The Five Eyes alliance — an intelligence-sharing partnership comprising the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — has a long and well-documented history of surveillance activities extending far beyond its stated security concerns.

In 2021, reports emerged that the US National Security Agency (NSA), with the assistance of Denmark's military intelligence service, had earlier spied on senior European politicians, including former German chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as officials in France, Sweden and Norway. The revelations, based on a classified internal investigation into Danish-US intelligence cooperation, triggered outrage across Europe and prompted demands from Berlin and Paris for explanations from both Washington and Copenhagen.

While even close allies have not been exempt from the surveillance activities of the Five Eyes alliance and its partners, those not considered allies have faced far more extensive scrutiny. While the Edward Snowden disclosures revealed the NSA's surveillance activities targeting as many as 35 countries in 2013, reports emerged as recently as 2023 that the communications of the UN secretary-general and other senior United Nations officials had been subject to surveillance and interference by the US government.

In light of these facts, it is difficult to imagine a more self-humiliating act than the publication of such a report.

It is precisely for this reason that the Chinese Embassy in the United Kingdom strongly condemned the report, pointing out that the Five Eyes alliance is the world's largest intelligence-sharing network, whose members have conducted espionage and information-gathering activities around the globe with little restraint. The embassy has made it clear that the Five Eyes, not others, pose the real threat to peace-loving nations.

Perhaps the Five Eyes countries would do well to heed the embassy's persuasion. It is time to put an end to this poorly staged performance of writing the script, directing the show and then accusing others of the very conduct in which they themselves have long engaged. Otherwise, they risk nothing but further embarrassment of their own making.