International Intelligence Cooperation Research Articles

The Social Ties that Bind: Unraveling the Role of Trust in International Intelligence Cooperation

International cooperation between intelligence services poses a dilemma. It is an important tool in countering today’s complex transnational threats, but at the same time, cooperation is a risky business. Intelligence services can never be sure that a partner will reciprocate in kind. Scholars and practitioners often identify trust as one of the foremost conditions to overcome this dilemma. Yet the notion of trust is seldomly conceptualized in these rational-calculative explanations. Contrary to the common view that intelligence services are exceptional in their opportunism and rivalry, social relations and trustworthiness perceptions provide a more dominant explanation for the level of cooperation between intelligence partners than is often assumed by scholars and practitioners. Known reputations, recognized professional standards, and shared traits socially bind intelligence professionals to their community of practice, enabling them to bridge divides like nationality and even conflicting interests. Intelligence services resemble many other organizations in the public and private domains, requiring a de-exceptionalization of their international cooperation.

Das Recht der Nachrichtendienste: Missstände, Entwicklungen und Perspektiven eines Rechtsgebiets in der Findungsphase

The law governing the German intelligence services lacks a consistent concept, is non-transparent, fragmented and in urgent need of reform. In May 2020, the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court held that the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst - BND) is bound by the fundamental rights of the Basic Law when conducting telecommunications surveillance of foreigners in other countries (so-called Foreign-Foreign Strategic Surveillance), and that the statutory bases in their current design violate the fundamental right to the privacy of telecommunication and freedom of the press. The judgment put an end to the long-running discussion about whether intelligence operations abroad are suitable for statutory regulation at all. Moreover, the Constitutional Court’s decision provided the impetus for one of the most significant reforms in recent German security law. By April 2021, the amendment of the BND Act was finally on the books. It will enter into force in January 2022. It codifies important new rules about the practice, authorization and oversight of foreign data collection by the BND as well as legal requirements for Germany’s participation in international intelligence cooperation. The reform’s provisions implement the constitutional requirements, as stated in the judgement, almost literally. Nonethele⁠ss, the reform created a number of new problems and left major deficits in German intelligence law unresolved. It is far from creating a clear and consistent legal framework for the activities of the three federal intelligence services, in particular their surveillance practices. The article outlines the major shortcomings, developments and perspectives in this field of security law.

Explaining the depth and breadth of international intelligence cooperation: towards a comprehensive understanding

ABSTRACT Despite neorealism's predominance in the academic debate, it is too narrow a basis for the comprehensive understanding of present-day international intelligence cooperation. This approach is perfectly capable of explaining what is currently not happening in international intelligence cooperation and why this is the case. However, it is inadequate to understand what does happen in international intelligence cooperation. To explain international intelligence cooperation, especially in long-standing multilateral arrangements such as the EU and NATO, additional approaches are needed. This article advocates stepping beyond a state-centric approach of international intelligence cooperation, viewing it as a process and using a sociological perspective.

Criminalization as anxious and ineffective response to foreign fighters phenomenon in the Western Balkans

Despite not being a new phenomenon, nor an Islamic specificum, only recently when the West has increasingly become a potential target of returning foreign fighters from the Syrian theater has the international community reacted. The UN Security Council called on Member-states to, inter alia, immediately amend their national legislation to criminalize travelling abroad for terrorist purposes. However, as I identify in this article, contrary to majority of the Western countries, the Western Balkan countries opted to amend their legislation to criminalize travelling abroad to join conflict irrespective of its connection with terrorism, going well beyond the intended aim of the Security Council's resolutions. I argue that this broader criminal law approach is difficult to justify from either preventive or reactive perspectives. It is, in fact, an anxious and ineffective response to foreign fighters phenomenon. It is anxious because existing data shows that countries from the region have suffered fewer extremist attacks than the West. Notwithstanding, they still decided to introduce far more aggressive legislative changes, even though it only amplified securitizing moves performed by fighters' recruiters. I further demonstrate that the implementation of this new legislation has been ineffective particularly due to: (1) the challenge of securing court-strong evidence, especially those gathered through international intelligence cooperation; (2) its application mainly as an alternative when other terrorism-related offences cannot be proved; and (3) biased law application in countries that have returning fighters from both Middle East and Ukraine.

الآثار الاقتصادية لسياسات مکافحة الإرهاب . ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF ANTI-TERRORISM POLICY

الآثار الاقتصادية لسياسات مکافحة الإرهاب . ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF ANTI-TERRORISM POLICY

Anglo-Soviet Intelligence Cooperation, 1941–45: Normative Insights from the Dyadic Democratic Peace Literature

This article leverages normative insights from the dyadic democratic peace literature to assess whether the configuration of regime types within an intelligence alliance can shape the depth of cooperation between its members. The Anglo-Soviet intelligence alliance (1941–45) is considered as an initial plausibility probe of this argument. Evidence is found to support the premise that cooperation between the intelligence services of a democracy and an autocracy is constrained by the absence of the democratic norms of bounded uncertainty and contingent consent. The article concludes with recommendations on how future scholarship can further explore the relationship between regime type and the depth of international intelligence cooperation.

Sharing Secrets: A Game Theoretic Analysis of International Intelligence Cooperation

During the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the governments of the United States and United Kingdom jointly made public a range of previously secret intelligence to bolster claims that Saddam ...

Rebalancing Rights and National Security: Reforming UK Intelligence Oversight a Decade after 9/11

The UK government has accepted the case for strengthening the oversight of the security and intelligence agencies in its 2011 Green Paper on Justice and Security and in the draft Justice and Security Bill 2012. While welcome these proposals are, however, seriously deficient in neglecting the potential contribution of oversight to the protection of human rights. This article argues that democratic oversight should play a significant role in strengthening the protection of human rights by way of audit of policies and review of operations of the agencies, with regard to international intelligence cooperation and where the storage and use of personal data by the services is concerned.

Book Review: International Relations: International Intelligence Cooperation and Accountability

Book Review: International Relations: International Intelligence Cooperation and Accountability

Quantifying intelligence cooperation: The United States International Intelligence Behavior (USIIB) dataset

This report describes the creation of the United States International Intelligence Behavior dataset (USIIB). The USIIB represents the first collection of event data specifically intended for exploring in a quantifiable manner the international intelligence cooperation behaviors of the United States. A total of 293,615 events are recorded in the USIIB, covering the years 2000–09. The report first provides a detailed description of the steps involved in building such a dataset, including the development of search terms, the use of a machine coding program (TABARI – Text Analysis by Augmenting Replacement Instructions) to extract data from wire news releases, and the extension of an existing coding scheme (CAMEO) to include intelligence behaviors. Following a discussion of issues related to the reliability and validity of event datasets in general and the USIIB in particular, the report then includes suggestions and examples for how the data in the current USIIB dataset may be used in order to add to our understandings of patterns and anomalies in international intelligence cooperation behavior. As a specific example, it offers results from an empirical test exploring variation in intelligence cooperation behaviors among democracies and non-democracies, asking specifically whether the United States has been more likely in the early 21st century to cooperate on intelligence matters with democratic states, and finding this not to have been the case. Finally, it aims to provide a guide for others who would like to extend this dataset to explore intelligence cooperation activity of other countries or regions.

How to Organize Crime1

In criminal organizations, diffusing information widely throughout the organization might lead to greater internal efficiency (in particular, since these organizations are self-sustaining, through enhancing trust). However, this may come at the cost of leaving the organization more vulnerable to external threats such as law enforcement. We consider the implications of this trade-off and characterize the optimal information structure, rationalizing both “hierarchical” structures and organization in cells. Then, we focus on the role of the external authority, characterize optimal detection strategies, and discuss the implications of different forms of enforcement on the internal structure of the organization and policy. Finally, we discuss a number of applications and extensions. In this paper, we study the interplay between trust within an illegal organization and its vulnerability to the authorities. Illegal organizations function more effectively when the people who constitute them trust each other. We argue that information sharing is an important factor in building internal trust and cohesion but that can leave the organization vulnerable. Understanding how this trade-off affects an organization’s information structure and productivity can allow us to assess detection policies designed to destabilize such organizations. Since 9/11, the U.S. Congress has passed a $400 billion annual budget for the war on terror; new domestic institutions have been created or enhanced (among many others, the Counterterrorism section at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal division); international intelligence cooperation has been strengthened; and new protocols and controversial legal tools such as the Patriot Act have been developed. However, these new agencies and institutions face the same basic questions that have challenged the prosecutors fighting organized crime in Italy, South America, and Eastern Asia, as well as authorities fighting terrorism all over the world now and in the past. How can we learn about the internal structure of criminal organizations? How should we go about investigating a criminal organization in order to break its internal cohesion? How does a criminal organization react to investigation policies? We highlight the fact that simply understanding the information links within an organization gives us insight into addressing these questions. The anecdotal evidence suggests that there is a wide heterogeneity across the information structures of different criminal organizations. The most credited theory about the Mafia, developed in the early 1990’s, has identified the so-called Cupola as the highest level of the organization—supposedly consisting of agents who hold large amounts of information about the organization itself and carry out the enforcement needed for the organization to function. 2 These crucial agents are shielded from the authorities since they are typically not directly involved in criminal activities. This theory suggests a centralized information and enforcement structure. 1. Previous drafts have circulated under the titles “Power and Organizational Structure under an External Threat”

Defeating transnational insurgencies: The best offense is a good fence

Transnational insurgencies’ unique challenges are not amenable to the offensive strategies that the Bush Doctrine emphasizes against terrorism. History strongly suggests that embracing a containment strategy, combining border defenses with aggressive propaganda and international intelligence cooperation, would be more successful in Iraq and beyond.

International intelligence cooperation: an inside perspective1

International Intelligence cooperation is something of an oxymoron. Intelligence services and intelligence collection are at heart manifestations of individual state power and of national self‐inte...

The Difficulties and Dilemmas of International Intelligence Cooperation

Stéphane Lefebvre is a former Strategic Analyst at the Canadian Department of National Defence and a former Marcel Cadieux Policy Planning Fellow at the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. The views expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of any governmental or nongovernmental organizations with which he is or has been affiliated. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Colloque Renseignement et Sécurité internationale, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada, on 20 March 2003.