The Politics of Covert Activity

2020 ◽  
pp. 219-262
Author(s):  
Mary Manjikian
Keyword(s):  
Covert Activity

scholarly journals Normatywne ujęcie czynności operacyjno-rozpoznawczych w aspekcie dowodu nielegalnego

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 333-350
Author(s):  
Norbert Nowicki
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Covert Activity ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Illegal Evidence ◽  
Operational Methods ◽  
Practical Dimension

Zagadnienia omawiane w niniejszym artykule dotyczą statusu normatywnego czynności operacyjno-rozpoznawczych w kontekście ustawy o Policji oraz kodeksu postępowania karnego. Podjęto próbę wskazania warunków, które rzutują na legalny charakter inwigilacji, a co za tym idzie – na skuteczne wykorzystanie materiału operacyjnego w procesie karnym. W tym celu scharakteryzowano niejawną aktywność Policji, wyszczególniając dopuszczalne metody operacyjne oraz definiując czynności operacyjno-rozpoznawcze w świetle literatury przedmiotu. Aby w pełni zobrazować problematykę poruszoną w artykule, przeanalizowano relację prawną między dowodem nielegalnym, o którym mowa w art. 168a kpk, a dowodem z czynności operacyjno-rozpoznawczych, na przykładzie zarządzonej kontroli operacyjnej. Praktyczny wymiar tych rozważań omówiono z punktu widzenia postępowania dowodowego, z uwzględnieniem ról i obowiązków procesowych prokuratora oraz sądu. Normative approach to operational and reconnaissance activities in terms of illegal evidence The issues discussed in this article refer to the normative status of operational and investigative activities in the context of the Police Act and the Code of Criminal Procedure. Namely, an attempt was made to demonstrate the conditions that affect the legal nature of surveillance, and thus the effective use of operational material in a criminal trial. For this purpose, the covert activity of the Police has been characterized by listing acceptable operational methods and defining operational and reconnaissance activities in the light of the literature on the subject. Therefore, in order to fully illustrate the issues discussed, an analysis was conducted of the legal relationship between the illegal evidence referred to in Art. 168a of the Code of Criminal Procedure and the evidence from operational and reconnaissance activities, on the example of an ordered operational control. The practical dimension of these considerations is discussed from the point of view of evidence proceedings, taking into account the procedural roles and responsibilities of the prosecutor and the court.

A review of mentation in REM and NREM sleep: “Covert” REM sleep as a possible reconciliation of two opposing models

2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 851-866 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tore A. Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movement ◽  
Rem Sleep ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Nrem Sleep ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Recall Rate ◽  
A Value ◽  
Generator Model ◽  
Global Estimates ◽  
Covert Activity

Numerous studies have replicated the finding of mentation in both rapid eye movement (REM) and nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. However, two different theoretical models have been proposed to account for this finding: (1) a one-generator model, in which mentation is generated by a single set of processes regardless of physiological differences between REM and NREM sleep; and (2) a two-generator model, in which qualitatively different generators produce cognitive activity in the two states. First, research is reviewed demonstrating conclusively that mentation can occur in NREM sleep; global estimates show an average mentation recall rate of about 50% from NREM sleep – a value that has increased substantially over the years. Second, nine different types of research on REM and NREM cognitive activity are examined for evidence supporting or refuting the two models. The evidence largely, but not completely, favors the two-generator model. Finally, in a preliminary attempt to reconcile the two models, an alternative model is proposed that assumes the existence of covert REM sleep processes during NREM sleep. Such covert activity may be responsible for much of the dreamlike cognitive activity occurring in NREM sleep.

Facing Off and Saving Face: Covert Intervention and Escalation Management in the Korean War

2015 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin Carson
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Conflict Behavior ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Conflict Escalation ◽  
Air War ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Covert Activity ◽  
External Intervention

AbstractStates pursue their cooperative and competitive goals using both public and private policy tools. Yet there is a profound mismatch between the depth, variety, and importance of covert activity and what scholars of International Relations (IR) know about it. This article addresses this gap by analyzing how adversaries struggle for influence within the covert sphere, why they often retreat to it, and when they abandon it. It focuses on secrecy among adversaries intervening in local conflicts and develops a theory about secrecy's utility as a device for creating sustainable limits in war. Drawing on insights about secrecy and face-work from the sociologist Erving Goffman, I show that major powers individually and collectively conceal evidence of foreign involvement when the danger of unintended conflict escalation is acute. Doing so creates a kind of “backstage” in which adversaries can exceed limits on war without stimulating hard-to-resist pressure to escalate further. An important payoff of the theory is making sense of puzzling cases of forbearance: even though adversaries often know about their opponent's covert activity, they often abstain from publicizing it. Such “tacit collusion” arises when both sides seek to manage escalation risks even as they compete for power and refuse to capitulate. The article evaluates the theory via several nested cases of external intervention in the Korean War. Drawing on newly available materials documenting the covert air war between secretly deployed Soviet pilots and Western forces, the cases show how adversaries can successfully limit war by concealing activity from outside audiences. Beyond highlighting the promise in studying the covert realm in world politics, the article has important implications for scholarship on coercive bargaining, reputation, state uses of secrecy, and how regime type influences conflict behavior.

scholarly journals The Pinprick Approach: Whitehall’s Top-Secret Anti-Communist Committee and the Evolution of British Covert Action Strategy

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rory Cormac
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Covert Action ◽  
Action Committee ◽  
Action Strategy ◽  
Intelligence Operations ◽  
Covert Activity ◽  
First Time ◽  
Formative Years

This article examines Great Britain’s approach to covert action during the formative years of British Cold War intelligence operations, 1950–1951. Rather than shy away from such activity in the wake of the failure in Albania in the late 1940s, the British increased the number of operations they pursued. This was the start of a coherent strategy regarding covert activity that can be conceptualized as the “pinprick” approach. The strategy was overseen by a highly secretive Whitehall body, the Official Committee on Communism, which in effect became the government’s covert action committee. This article uses the commission’s recently declassified papers for the first time to assess the merits of this approach.

scholarly journals Standards for ensuring the legality of implementing unspount activities in criminal process through the prism of legal positions of the European court of human rights

2021 ◽  
pp. 111-123
Author(s):  
A. Tumanyants ◽  
I. Krytska
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Order Conditions ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
National Legislation ◽  
Judicial Control ◽  
European Court ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Covert Activity

The analysis of the legal positions of the ECHR in the aspect of the subject of the article under consideration made it possible to conditionally single out the following standards for ensuring the legality of the implementation of covert activity in criminal proceedings:- predictability. Its essence lies in the fact that the grounds, procedural order, conditions, timing, the circle of persons and crimes in relation to which it is allowed to carry out covert activities should be as detailed, clear and accurate as possible in the criminal procedural legislation. Moreover, any person had the opportunity to familiarize himself with the relevant regulatory prescriptions and foresee the actions that can be carried out in relation to him;- warranty against abuse. The content of this standard can be disclosed by more detailed highlighting of clarifying provisions ("substandards"). These include: control of interference in human rights and freedoms; the certainty of the circle of persons in relation to whom it is possible to carry out secret activities; limited corpus delicti, for the purpose of investigation or prevention of which covert activity is allowed;; the existence in national legislation of procedures that facilitate the law of the implementation of covert activity in criminal proceedings; the temporary nature of the implementation of secret activities in the criminal process;- verifiability. The essence of this standard can be disclosed through the establishment of judicial control over the decision of the issue regarding the possible destruction of information obtained in the course of conducting covert activities, which is not relevant to criminal proceedings, as well as the requirement for the mandatory opening of decisions that were the basis for conducting covert investigative actions;- exclusivity. The main content of this standard is that covert activity in criminal proceedings can be carried out only in cases where the disclosure or prevention of a crime in another way is impossible or is too complicated;- proportionality of the intervention and its expediency. The essence of this standard is that the implementation of certain covert coercive actions that are associated with the restriction of human rights and freedoms must be proportionate to the goals for which such actions are directed. Moreover, these goals and the applied coercion must be necessary in a democratic society;- inadmissibility of tacit interference in the communication of some subjects. First of all, this requirement concerns the need to legislatively guarantee non-interference in communication between a lawyer and his client, a priest and an accused, etc., which means a ban on targeted control over the communication of certain subjects, as well as the obligation to destroy information obtained in the course of an accidental, situational interfering with their communication.

scholarly journals Optimizing for generalization in the decoding of internally generated activity in the hippocampus

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthijs A.A. van der Meer ◽  
Alyssa A. Carey ◽  
Youki Tanaka
Keyword(s):  
Neural Activity ◽  
Cross Validation ◽  
Ground Truth ◽  
Place Cells ◽  
Memory Recall ◽  
Spike Density ◽  
Variable Space ◽  
Covert Activity ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Optimal Decoding

AbstractThe decoding of a sensory or motor variable from neural activity benefits from a known ground truth against which decoding performance can be compared. In contrast, the decoding of covert, cognitive neural activity, such as occurs in memory recall or planning, typically cannot be compared to a known ground truth. As a result, it is unclear how decoders of such internally generated activity should be configured in practice. We suggest that if the true code for covert activity is unknown, decoders should be optimized for generalization performance using cross-validation. Using ensemble recording data from hippocampal place cells, we show that this cross-validation approach results in different decoding error, different optimal decoding parameters, and different distributions of error across the decoded variable space. In addition, we show that a minor modification to the commonly used Bayesian decoding procedure, which enables the use of spike density functions, results in substantially lower decoding errors. These results have implications for the interpretation of covert neural activity, and suggest easy-to-implement changes to commonly used procedures across domains, with applications to hippocampal place cells in particular.

Intelligence and Belief Acquisition

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-60
Author(s):  
Martha Whitesmith
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Bias ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Intelligence Analysis ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Theoretical Context ◽  
Essential Nature ◽  
Covert Activity

Chapter one examines whether belief acquisition in intelligence a unique epistemological act. It examines the nature of intelligence analysis as an act of belief acquisition, providing a theoretical context grounded in epistemology, the philosophical study of the nature of belief and knowledge, and examining the sources of information on which intelligence analysis is based, and the mechanisms by which knowledge is gained. The chapter argues that: 1) the essential nature of intelligence is epistemological: that it is necessarily defined by the attempt to acquire justified beliefs and knowledge; 2) intelligence is necessarily a covert activity; 3) intelligence does not require unique methods of gaining knowledge and does not derive from unique sources, and; 4) the covert characteristic of intelligence means that belief acquisition in intelligence is likely to differ in the degree of epistemic complexity it faces, and that this may produce a difference in the degree to which intelligence analysis is vulnerable to cognitive bias.

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