Intelligence as Democratic Statecraft

Democracy needs to be defended, and intelligence is the first line of defence. However, the liberal-democratic norm of limited state intervention in the lives of citizens means that security and accountability are in tension insofar as their first principles are diametrically opposed: whereas openness and transparency are hallmarks of democratic governance, operational secrecy—in relation to other states, to democratic society, and to other parts of government—is the essence of intelligence tradecraft. Intelligence accountability reconciles democracy and security through transparent standards, guidelines, legal frameworks, executive directives, and international law. Evolving executive, legislative, judicial, and bureaucratic mechanisms for intelligence oversight and review have become a distinct feature of democratic regimes. Over recent decades legislative and judicial components have been added to complement administrative and executive accountability. Using a most-similar systems design to compare intelligence accountability in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, this book expands compliance as the sine qua non of intelligence to gauge effectiveness, efficiency, and innovation across the intelligence community. In the context of changing technology and threat vectors that have significantly affected, altered, and expanded the role, powers, and capabilities of intelligence, this book compares the institutions, composition, practices, characteristics, and cultures of intelligence accountability systems across the world’s oldest and most powerful intelligence alliance. In an asymmetric struggle against unprincipled adversaries, accountability has to reassure a sceptical public that the intelligence and security community plays by the same rules that democracies are committed to defend.