Intelligence Agents, Autonomous Slaves and the Supreme Courtts Wrong (and Right) Concept of Personal Autonomy

Abstract

This paper traces the boundaries of consent in the relations of recruited intelligence agents and their handlers. The Supreme Court considered these relations to be contractual. However, such contract, according to the Supreme Court, is unenforceable. Agent’s autonomy largely underpins the argument for the prima facie legitimacy of Humint relations with each agent. Autonomy is also an essential element in recognizing the formulation of a recruitment contract. Sketching its boundaries in the Humint context raises the paradoxical question: how free is the free choice to give up freedom of choice? In contrast to the common deontological approaches this paper offers an account of autonomy, which incorporates the examination of dignity-compromising (dehumanizing) influence on the choice-making process of the agent. If being autonomous is an exclusive human status, then a condition in which a creature is both dehumanized in relation to trait x (autonomy), yet holds an exclusively human status in relation to trait x, must be wrong. Hence, it is argued that any hierarchical model of personal autonomy should be interpreted as if incorporating a test of a dignity-compromising influence on the desires-setting process. The case of voluntary intelligence agents, as in the case of consenting slaves, emphasizes a distinction between two points in time: before and after making the choice to become an agent. This paper’s interpretation of autonomy suggests that even the most agreeable intelligence agent is not autonomous during the second phase due to the influence of the irreversibility problem. Supreme Court’s classification of handling relations as contractual is, therefore, wrong. By denying the binding promissory power of the handling “contract”, the Supreme Court is in fact right. Due to lack of autonomous will, these relations cannot formulate a contract to start with.