In the second part of the article, we focus our attention on the aspects that can prompt the need for exercising democratic oversight over intelligence services. Throughout time, we citizens have been encouraged by politicians and those in the realm of public administration, especially in the field of national defense and security, to place trust in intelligence services and the state’s enforcement institutions, which may seem promising. However, the frequency with which news about various deviations by intelligence services, in general, and intelligence officers, in particular, have surfaced in the public domain, has led us citizens to regard calls for blind trust with caution.
Building on the notion that it’s naturally more difficult to trust something or someone you don’t know, we can extrapolate this assumption to the citizens’ trust in intelligence services, in general, and intelligence officers, in particular. I will present the following arguments:
• In the case of public institutions, other than those falling under the category of institutions operating under secrecy, they are led by individuals elected directly or indirectly by citizens, and personnel are identifiable. The activities undertaken are presented transparently. However, in the case of intelligence services, apart from the predictability offered by governing laws and public statements by the political leaders of intelligence agencies, we don’t know whether the operational leadership of these institutions and their personnel effectively carry out their tasks and duties in good faith, thereby serving the public interest.
• As discussed in the first part of the article, intelligence officers collect data about citizens and organizations (NGOs, private companies, public institutions) to achieve their set objectives. Can we have complete confidence that an intelligence officer with access to databases and specific information-gathering techniques always knows the boundaries and, especially, won’t use all this information for personal gain or for others?
One response could be that intelligence officers know the limits of information collection and utilization because these activities are legislated, supported by internal rules and regulations, and verified by internal control and protection bodies within intelligence agencies. However, what if, due to the dynamics and increased volume of activities within intelligence agencies, some intelligence officers act abusively and use the information for unjust or illegal purposes, and internal control and protection bodies don’t always discover these deviations?
Assuming the above scenario were to unfold, can we believe that we are in a situation more serious than if it were to happen within a public institution, other than those related to national defense and intelligence? The argument supporting the above statement persists in the secretive nature of intelligence activities and the diverse and complex methods intelligence agency personnel have at their disposal to obtain data—information that can have a potent impact on those it’s used against. We citizens cannot know if such abuses are committed; we can only hope they are not.
In a democracy, state institutions are organized in accordance with the prevailing laws and aim to provide public services for the satisfaction of the common interest, while adhering to requirements for decision-making transparency. This is unequivocally why intelligence service activities cannot possess the same conditions of transparency. In their wisdom, those who drafted the constitutions of democratic states proposed methods to carry out oversight, constitutional control, and legality monitoring of enforcement institutions.
Citizens’ trust in intelligence services and their personnel, I believe, can be directly proportional to their trust in oversight and control bodies over intelligence service activities.
But we will discuss all these matters in the third part of the article.
