International Intelligence Cooperation and Accountability

This volume is the first systematic examination of international intelligence cooperation and the challenges this poses for the accountability of national security agencies.The book aims to examine the role played by a range of legal and political accountability mechanisms in overseeing and reviewing these activities. Since the end of the Cold War, the threats that intelligence services are tasked with confronting have become increasingly transnational in nature ' organised crime, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. The growth of these threats has impelled intelligence services to cooperate with contemporaries in other states to meet these challenges. While cooperation between certain Western states in certain areas of intelligence operations (such as signals intelligence) is longstanding, since 9/11 there has been an exponential increase in both their scope and scale.These widening and intensified cooperation activities represent a growing challenge to accountability. As has been widely documented, certain manifestations of intelligence cooperation have led to high-profile controversies, such as the revelations about the extraordinary rendition, interrogation and secret detention of suspected terrorists. However, international cooperation has largely evaded the scrutiny of national oversight and review structures, which were designed for a different era, and in response to a very different set of abuses. Indeed, it has become increasingly evident that these bodies are ill-equipped to hold intelligence services and their political masters to account for their cooperation activities. While both the threats to national security and the responses to these threats have become increasingly "globalised," accountability mechanisms have remained territorially-bounded. The growing cooperation between national intelligence and security agencies has not been matched by international collaboration between national oversight and review bodies. Ultimately, the combination of the weaknesses of these bodies on the one hand, and the levels of secrecy, sensitivity and multi-territoriality inherent to international cooperation activities on the other, has led to an increasing accountability deficit.This edited volume explores not only the challenges to accountability presented by international intelligence cooperation but also possible solutions for strengthening accountability for activities that are likely to remain fundamental to the work of intelligence services. The book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, security studies, international law, global governance and IR in general.