The New Zealand Cricket board on Sunday unilaterally decided to pull out of the Pakistan tour series citing serious security threats just minutes before the toss.
This threat report was shared by an international intelligence agency called “Five Eyes,” (FVEY), whose origin can be traced long back to World War II.
The New Zealand board promptly opted out of the series and held a meeting with the Pakistani counterparts to discuss the situation, however, the Blackcaps only stated “security threats” as the sole reason and restricted further information.
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Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chief Executive Officer Wasim Khan confirmed the report after saying that the Blackcaps received a "direct and imminent" threat to its team, conveyed by the Five Eyes.
What is Five Eyes?
The Five Eyes is a consortium of 5 nations, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which works in collecting and disseminating sensitive and security theory’s from all around the world. These countries are parties to the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence.
The earliest trace of the Five Eyes goes back to 1941, right in the middle of the second world war, secret meetings between British and US code-breakers at the British code-breaking were held. The formal Five Eyes alliance can be traced back to the Atlantic Charter, which was issued in August 1941 to lay out the Allied goals for the post-war world. On 5 March 1946, the secret treaty was formalized as the UKUSA Agreement, which forms the basis for all signal intelligence cooperation between the NSA and GCHQ to this day.
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The Five Eyes has two types of information collection methods: the PRISM program and the Upstream collection system. The PRISM program gathers user information from technology firms such as Google, Apple and Microsoft, while the Upstream system gathers information directly from the communications of civilians via fibre cables and infrastructure as data flows past.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the surveillance capabilities of the Five Eyes were greatly increased as part of the global War on Terror.
After New Zealand, England Cricket Board (ECB) followed in the footsteps and decided to cancel its tour of Pakistan as well, citing the same concerns. The move is proving to be extremely costly both reputation and monetary wise, and there’s little that the Pakistan board can do.
