Big Data,intelligence, and analyst privacy: investigating information dissemination at an NSA-funded research lab

The Laboratory for Analytic Sciences (LAS) at North Carolina State University, funded by the National Security Agency, is a collaborative, long-term research enterprise focused on improving intelligence analysis using Big Data. In its work, LAS has recently begun dealing with the trade-off between the collection, storage, and use of large unclassified data-sets and analyst privacy. We discuss particular privacy challenges at LAS, analyze privacy principles in the life cycle of LAS unclassified data-sets, what intelligence analysts themselves think about these privacy concerns, and recommend possible best practices potentially applicable to LAS, as well as future Big Data laboratories and research centers that collaborate with intelligence communities.     

Canada's Communications Security Establishment,Signals Intelligence and counter-terrorism

Canada's Communications Security Establishment has undergone a far-reaching transformation in conjunction with the expanded role of Signals Intelligence in the global ‘war on terror’. For the first time, Canada adopted a formal statute for CSE, including an expanded remit for countering terrorism. With a shift in targeting priorities towards terrorism and threats to Canadian interests abroad, Canada's participation in SIGINT-related international partnerships takes on new significance. The collection of communication intelligence touches upon public sensibilities regarding privacy rights of Canadians. The evolution of Canadian SIGINT capabilities was therefore accompanied by the establishment, as early as 1996, of a system for intelligence accountability and review, the Office of the CSE Commissioner. Recent advances in communications technology and pressing requirements for Signals Intelligence have impelled changes in the law, while also accentuating the role played by the CSE Commissioner in scrutinizing CSE activities to ensure compliance with ministerial authorizations and the laws of Canada.     

Rethinking ‘Five Eyes’ Security Intelligence Collection Policies and Practice Post Snowden

The Edward Snowden leaks challenge policy makers and the public's understanding and perspectives on the role of security intelligence in liberal democratic states. This article explores the challenges confronting security intelligence collection by the ‘Five Eyes’ countries – particularly those most affected by the leaks. We argue that the debate now needs to move beyond simplistic notions of privacy vs. security to a more detailed understanding of the policy and ethical dilemmas confronting policy makers and intelligence agencies. To that end, we provide a schematic framework (methods, context and target) to promote a better understanding of the practical, policy and ethical problems for security intelligence collection emerging post Snowden. The framework is a first step in identifying common principles that could be used develop an ethically informed set of policy guidelines to help decision makers better navigate between citizen's two basic rights: security and privacy.     

Why states have no right to privacy,but may be entitled to secrecy: a non-consequentialist defense of state secrecy

ABSTRACT

Despite an increase in initiatives aimed at enhancing political transparency, democratic states claim the right to withhold information from citizens: classified intelligence and military programs, diplomatic discretion, closed-door political bargaining, and bureaucratic opacity are examples. Can the state’s claim to restrict access to information be justified? In the first part of the essay, I focus on the arguments that defend the state’s claim to restrict access in terms of the state’s right to privacy where the state privacy is presented as a species of group privacy. While I concede that group privacy may be defended, I argue that governments and parliaments are not the kind of groups that may exercise privacy against citizens because of the relation of accountability in which they stand to citizens. In the second part of the essay, I propose an alternative argument to the effect that the scope of openness required in democratic governance is less extensive than traditionally assumed. I focus on the concept of democratic authority and argue that we can understand the practices of classification as an exercise of a special right to secrecy that is implied in the democratic state’s right to rule in a content-independent way.     

Problems in the Intelligence-Policy Nexus: Rethinking Korea,Tet, and Afghanistan

Accusations of failure by elements of the US intelligence community (IC) have followed in the wake of nearly every war and terrorist bombing since Japan's successful strike on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This article will illustrate how some problems that exist inside the ‘intelligence-policy nexus’ are beyond the control of the IC. By investigating the dynamics and tensions that exist between producers of intelligence (the IC) and the consumers of those products (policy-makers), we review three different types of alleged failure. First, by revisiting the Chinese intervention in Korea, we show that a rarely listed case in the literature is in fact a classic example of producer-based failure generated from within the IC. However, in our study of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War (1968), we show that the alleged intelligence failure by producers should be more accurately described as a ‘failure of intelligence’ by consumers. Third, by revisiting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), we conclude that there existed neither a producer nor a consumer failure. The Carter Administration made a conscious policy choice to act surprised (when it was not).     

What's the Harm? The Ethics of Intelligence Collection

Abstract

As the professional practice of intelligence collection adapts to the changing environment and new threats of the twenty-first century, many academic experts and intelligence professionals call for a coherent ethical framework that outlines exactly when, by what means and to what ends intelligence is justified. Reports of abuse at detention centres such as Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, the ever increasing use of technological surveillance, and the increased attention on the use of torture for intelligence collection purposes have all highlighted a need to make an explicit statement about what is and what is not permissible intelligence practice. In this article an ethical framework will be established which will outline under what circumstances the use of different intelligence collection activities would be permissible. This ethical framework will first underline what it is about intelligence collection that is ‘harmful’ and, therefore, should be prohibited under normal circumstances. The ethical framework then outlines a set of ‘just intelligence principles’, based on the just war tradition, which delineate when the harm caused can be justified. As a result, this article outlines a systemic ethical framework that makes it possible to understand when intelligence collection is prohibited and when it is permissible.     

Promoting Data Protection Standards through Contracts: The Case of the Data Security Council of India

Data protection has emerged as a major corporate and government concern worldwide. The focus is on secure handling of data so as to ensure privacy of customer data and security of corporate data. Privacy and security laws in countries are not harmonized; compliance regulations are different too. As the global hub of outsourcing, India is faced with a challenge of demonstrating compliance with varying compliance regulations in countries. The Data Security Council of India (DSCI) considers the Best Practices Approach as a practical and realistic way to enhance adherence to data security and privacy standards, and to enable a service provider to demonstrate compliance. Getting these standards recognized through contracts can promote data protection. An industry association can act as a third party self‐regulatory organization to promote these standards and enforce them among its members through certification or privacy seals, thereby helping implement data protection in international data flows.     

'As Rays of Light to the Human Soul'? Moral Agents and Intelligence Gathering

Calls to evaluate ethically the practices of intelligence collection have been prompted by debate over the decision to go to war in Iraq and by consideration of how best to respond to terrorist threats. Recently, they have been bolstered by allegations of prisoner abuse that some have linked to intelligence organisations. Such demands for judgement are articulated with equal measures of urgency and apprehension: there is a perceived need to make clear statements about what constitutes morally prohibited and permissible conduct with regard to intelligence gathering, and yet the tools with which one might perform such a task are not readily apparent. This article begins with three basic assumptions. First, intelligence collection does not exist in an amoral realm of necessity, but, rather, is a human endeavour involving choice and deliberation and, therefore, is vulnerable to ethical scrutiny. Second, there is no consensus on the moral guidelines to be invoked to engage in such scrutiny. There are many distinct ethical perspectives from which intelligence collection might be evaluated - and from which one might provide disparate judgements of the same action. Finally, the practices involved in intelligence gathering are equally multifarious and it would be unhelpful to attempt to cover them with a blanket justification or condemnation (from any perspective). Following on from these assumptions, this article sets out a simple typology of 'realist', 'consequentialist' and 'deontological' ethical approaches to intelligence collection and explores how different practices might be variously evaluated from each. The aim is to provide an initial step towards thinking about ethics and intelligence collection.     

Intelligence Learning and Adaptation: Lessons from Counterinsurgency Wars

Critics of US intelligence focus extensively on the alleged inability and unwillingness of intelligence agencies to learn and adapt. Analysis of eight counterinsurgency wars suggests instead that external factors largely influence the intelligence-related performance of whole governments, including organizational structures, unity of effort and command, adequacy of resources, and leadership quality. Assessment of the performance of US intelligence since 9/11 indicates that the same variables influence the performance of US intelligence, suggesting that the US intelligence reform debate focuses too narrowly and on the wrong factors.     

Professionalizing clandestine military intelligence in Northern Ireland: creating the Special Reconnaissance Unit

This article explains the origins of the British Army’s covert counter-insurgency intelligence efforts in Northern Ireland, and shows how the army professionalized its approach to clandestine intelligence collection there. It traces the pre-1969 precedents for covert collection. It also shows that the early ad hoc efforts proved insufficient and problematic; some collection operations were exposed and compromised. Thus, the army decided to ‘professionalize’ the clandestine collection of intelligence, and created a special body–the Special Reconnaissance Unit–to handle the task. This laid the foundations for later intelligence successes and for current army intelligence doctrine.     

Hungnam and the Japanese atomic bomb: Recent historiography of a postwar Myth

Since 1946, journalists in the US have alleged that Japanese scientists successfully built and tested an atomic bomb hear the city of Hungnam, Korea, during the closing days of World War II. Based upon reports from US military intelligence investigations conducted after the war, as well as from Japanese corporate histories and memoirs, the present essay attempts to dispel the myth of Japans atomic bomb by providing a detailed examination of the events that occurred in Hungnam in the final days of the war. Reasons for the endurance of the myth in the historiography of modern Japan are also considered.     

Counterterror intelligence operations and terror attacks

We present a formal model of an intelligence agency that must divide its resources between the collection and analysis of information pertaining to terror plots. The model highlights the negative consequences of queues which form when collection exceeds analytic capacity. We incorporate the response of a terrorist organization to the operating characteristics of the intelligence system it faces, and solve for equilibrium strategies for the intelligence system and terrorist organization. Our results demonstrate the importance of properly balancing resources between collection and analysis, and stand in contrast to the observed state of overcollection in US intelligence agencies.     

Why Liberals Can Favour Compulsory Attendance

It has been argued that compulsory voting conflicts with a number of liberal commitments, such as free thought, free speech and privacy. This article aims to show that compulsory voting, which is actually a misnomer for compulsory attendance, can in fact be defended on a liberal basis. If understood correctly, compulsory attendance laws and liberalism fit quite easily together.     

Improving Intelligence Studies as an Academic Discipline

As the field of intelligence studies develops as an academic complement to the practice of national security intelligence, it is providing a base of knowledge for intelligence practitioners to interpret their past, understand their present, and forecast their future. It also provides the basis for broader understanding of intelligence as a function of government for other government and security officials, academicians, and the general public. In recent years there has been significant growth in the numbers and kinds of intelligence-related educational and training opportunities, with the knowledge taught in these courses and programs derived from the body of intelligence studies scholarship. The question posed here is: to what extent is this body of knowledge sufficient as a basis for the development of intelligence studies as an academic discipline?     

Missing the Wake-up Call: Why Intelligence Failures Rarely Inspire Improved Performance

After major intelligence failures it is often asked why intelligence and security officials failed to heed the many ‘wake-up calls’ that had been provided by earlier failures and surprises. This article addresses this question by examining intelligence failures as ‘focusing events’, which is a concept used in the literature on government policy making to explain how disasters and crises can stimulate policy change and help organizations and decision-makers learn. It argues that in order for an intelligence failure such as a major terrorist attack to inspire improved intelligence performance – to be a true wake-up call – that failure must not only act as a focusing event to bring more attention to the threat, but it must also lead to increased intelligence collection and greater receptivity toward intelligence on the part of decision-makers.     

What's wrong with the Intelligence Cycle

In the modern era, almost all intelligence professionals will study the Intelligence Cycle as a kind of gospel of how intelligence functions. Yet it is not a particularly good model, since the cyclical pattern does not describe what really happens. Policy officials rarely give collection guidance. Collection and analysis, which are supposed to work in tandem, in fact work more properly in parallel. Finally, the idea that decision makers wait for the delivery of intelligence before making policy decisions is equally incorrect. In the modern era, policy officials seem to want intelligence to support policy rather than to inform it. The Intelligence Cycle also fails to consider either counter-intelligence or covert action. Taken as a whole, the cycle concept is a flawed model, but nevertheless continues to be taught in the US and around the world.     

Astropolitics and the “Exopolitics” of Unacknowledged Activities in Outer Space

The role of unacknowledged classified programs remains an enigma for fully understanding activities in space and the study of astropolitics. Classified programs by law are not publicly announced, and remain inaccessible to all except those with valid security clearances to be briefed about them. In the United States, waived Unacknowledged Special Access Programs are the most highly classified programs conducted by the military and intelligence community. The same classification protocols are also required of private contractors working with U.S. military departments and intelligence agencies on classified programs. As space continues to grow in its national security significance, the number of these unacknowledged programs pertaining to space is likely to grow significantly from its current number. This requires adopting the necessary conceptual tools and methodological flexibility for investigating unacknowledged activities in space. This also extends to evidence concerning unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrial life. This article suggests that “exopolitics” is a unique multidisciplinary approach to extraterrestrial life that offers a helpful set of conceptual tools for studying unacknowledged space activities, and complements the field of astropolitics.     

Intelligence for the Twenty-First Century

The transformation of intelligence architectures, particularly in the West, is no less profound than that of the weapons, platforms, warfighting systems and governments they are designed to support and inform. Moreover, the cumulative weight of the changes in prospect will redefine the way in which intelligence is used and conceived. The old demarcation lines between strategic and operational intelligence and between operations and intelligence, once starkly differentiated will blur. Decision-makers will have better access to intelligence as a result of advances in ‘pull’ technology which have made possible intelligence on demand while open source intelligence will enrich and add value to national intelligence databases.

Although information will become more plentiful and less of a privileged source in the global information environment of the twenty-first century, paradoxically the demand for timely, high quality strategic and operational intelligence will intensify rather than diminish. What will distinguish the successful practitioners of twenty-first century intelligence is the ability to fuse and integrate all elements of the process to provide seamless support for policy-makers and operational commanders. However, despite impressive advances in integration, technical collection and communications no intelligence system, no matter how efficacious, will ever be able to completely dispel the fog of war.     

Missing revolution: the American intelligence failure in Iraq, 1958

Why were American officials caught by surprise with the military coup and later revolution in Iraq on 14 July 1958? Drawing on American intelligence and diplomatic records as well as multilingual sources, this article argues that the US intelligence failure is the product of two factors: the collection of information from too few and too similar human sources of intelligence in Iraq’s ruling regime, and the unreceptivity of US officials to assessing new information and their unwillingness to update assessments of local Iraqi developments. It revisits America’s intelligence failure in Iraq and suggests important lessons for the study of intelligence.     

Plots,murders, and money: oversight bodies evaluating the effectiveness of surveillance technology

Intelligence agencies routinely use surveillance technology to perform surveillance on digital data. This practice raises many questions that feed a societal debate, including whether the surveillance technology is effective in achieving the given security goal, whether it is cost-efficient, and whether it is proportionate. Oversight bodies are important actors in this debate, overseeing budgets, legal and privacy matters, and the performance of intelligence agencies. This paper examines how oversight bodies evaluate the questions above, using documents produced by American and British oversight mechanisms.