The Five Eyes Alliance

Who is spying on who has been big news lately and quite rightly America is taking the flak for it but with the revelations that America have been hacking into the personal phonecalls of World Leaders dominating the news agenda, a fantastic nugget seems to have slipped through relatively unnoticed which should have received a bit more coverage. 
The news that the United States, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada operate something called 'The Five Eyes Alliance' which is as conspiratorial as it sounds.
There are certain sorts of spying you're not lawfully allowed to do on your own citizens but this is easily circumnavigated by getting someone else to do it for you so having American spy agencies voting on Brits and Britain's spying agency snooping on Americans gets around the pesky laws that stop a Government from spying on their own citizens.
The information from each of the 'Five Eyes' is pooled and the Australian Government pull out the information regarding their citizens phone calls, emails, Facebook entries, Internet browsing history and the Canadians take information on Canadians, the Brits on British citizens and so on until each Government have all the information they require on their own citizens, only they never spied on them to get it, someone else did which lawfully is okay. 
Of course the defence has been that this is all required to keep us safe which beggars the question, does listening in to phonecalls of Angela Merkel mean she is a suspected terrorist, that someone overstepped their already loose bounds or that the whole 'doing it for your safety' is a load of guff?
Whatever it is, the fact that the Americans are taking it in the neck while the Canadians, Brits, Australians and New Zealanders keep their head down about what they have been up to is being drowned out by other revelations is working out so far.