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Intelligence in defence organizations is widely seen as an under-researched topic. This paper assesses this claim and, by means of a metareview, systematically analyses the body of literature that has focused on intelligence in defence organizations between 2009 and 2018. The review includes 13 key journals on intelligence studies (e.g., Intelligence and National Security), military studies (e.g., Small Wars and Insurgencies) and conflict and peace studies (e.g., Journal of Strategic Studies). The analysis provides insight on the focus areas, the timeframes and conflicts that are addressed as well as the authors involved. Based on this, the paper provides suggestions for further research into intelligence within defence organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper spotlights lessons for health security intelligence across the 'Five Eyes' countries. The COVID-19 pandemic and recent worldwide patterns related to climate change have highlighted the crucial supporting role intelligence analysis may play in comprehending, planning for, and responding to such global health threats. In addition to the human lives lost, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed serious national security concerns, notably for economic, societal, and in some cases, political stability. In response, a greater emphasis must be placed on intelligence. The paper has three goals. First, it outlines the major thematic areas where key 'Five Eyes' intelligence communities' (ICs) skills were tested in supporting the management of COVID-19: 1) the origins of SARS-CoV-2, 2) disinformation campaigns, and 3) early warning systems. The article then explores how such factors have impacted ICs' ability to provide decision-making support during COVID-19. Finally, the article discusses how 'Five Eyes' ICs may strengthen capacity in the three crucial areas. The 'Five Eyes' ICs must act swiftly but methodically to assess the security-based analytic lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic to maximize preparation for the next inevitable pandemic, whether caused by a natural disaster, climate change, or state or non-state threat actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights deficiencies in Uganda's national security civilian intelligence services' oversight systems and their implications for the democratic governance of the security sector. It argues that the intelligence sub-sector in Uganda still lags behind as far as adhering to democratic governance norms is concerned. The legislature and civil society organizations which are supposed to ensure that intelligence organizations operate within the rule of law find veritable challenges due to some legislative ambiguities. The paper recommends that the laws governing intelligence services should be amended to give more definite mandates to the legislature and other oversight bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic debate on the interplay between politics and intelligence is dominated by the U.S. experience. Our research, based on interviews with over sixty individuals in the Canadian intelligence and national security community and including political staffers, provides a new case study: that of Canada, a middle power with considerable access to intelligence through the Five Eyes partnership. We found that cases of hard politicization of intelligence analysis are virtually non-existent in Canada. The most important factor explaining this finding is Canada's structural position in the world, or how its geography shapes the broader context of interactions between intelligence and politics. Beyond this, six more specific factors at the domestic level also matter: the relative unimportance of foreign and security policy as political issues, few opportunities, a lack of political benefits, low intelligence literacy generally among policy makers, poor transparency in national security decision making, and a tradition of non-partisanship in the civil service. The paper concludes by reflecting on this assessment: while hard politicization remains a rarity in Canada, the shields that have prevented the emergence of politicization will likely be increasingly tested in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that human intelligence is the fundamental form of intelligence, and that cognitive activity is the premier component of the intelligence process. As practiced in the national security paradigm, intelligence is essentially humankind's attempt to replicate human intelligence in purposeful social groups. Further analysis suggests that the pursuit of advantage is the central focus of true intelligence. Accordingly, a new universal definition defines intelligence as the capacity for reasoned foresight that enables advantageous action. The traditional cycle is subsequently re-conceptualized as a cognition-centric Intelligence Enterprise Model (IEM) that provides a more useful framework for future intelligence enterprise development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scale of lethal violence in Mexico seen in the past decade has been a pressing concern for both Mexican and US officials, including law enforcement organizations, intelligence agencies, and policy makers. With much of the homicides being a result of the trafficking of illegal drugs, it has been suggested that the homicides in Mexico follow seasonal patterns tied to the drug trade, specifically to the cultivation of heroin. In this paper, conventional econometric time series methods are applied to test this hypothesis. Results demonstrate that not only do the drug-related homicides in Mexico display evidence of seasonality, but also that seasonality appears empirically related to the heroin trade. The paper makes the larger argument that time series and other statistical methods are an untapped resource that can complement standard intelligence analysis to support defensible judgments based on the scientific method of inquiry. However, a fuller integration of statistics and traditional analysis would require sufficient support structures be developed to encourage and promote such analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many intelligence services around the world maintain mechanisms intended to help minimize the risk of erroneous intelligence assessments. One of the best-known mechanisms is the ‘devil’s advocate’ whose goal is to present - sometimes artificially - an intelligence assessment that contradicts the prevailing view. The goal of this practice is to try to encourage doubts, both among intelligence assessors and among decision-makers. This paper will describe the importance and function of the 'devil’s advocate' mechanism in intelligence. Using Israel as a test case, the paper will seek to draw conclusions regarding the desirable format of operations of this mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of an assault on the critical infrastructure of the United States is often referred to as a ‘Cyber Pearl Harbor’. This implies that such an attack would come as a surprise. By 2016, however, few could claim to be surprised by such an event. This paper explains how the Clinton administration addressed cybersecurity in the 1990s as computers became an everyday item. With the benefits of this era, however, came potentially devastating implications for national security as the Clinton administration was required to confront a form of politically motivated violence unlike any that had been seen before Cyberterrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent events have brought a renewed attention to the system of security vetting which exists in the United Kingdom. This paper outlines the operation of that system against the legal background, demonstrating some of the difficulties with the system as it now exists and which would need to be considered in the event that the system was reformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does one design and sustain interdisciplinary, cross-sector collaboration to improve intelligence results for twenty-first century security threats? This paper will analyse five past and present initiatives designed to create interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral collaboration within different agencies of the US Intelligence Community (IC). We will discuss key features of each effort, their successes and challenges, identify common themes and, propose which collaborative model might be most advantageous for a particular type of project based on project constraints. In so doing, we provide direction for IC leaders seeking to improve academia–industry–intelligence partnerships for future planning on intelligence-funded collaborations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reexamines President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1953 competitive review of Cold War strategy known as Project Solarium. It argues intelligence played a key role in this exercise and in the design of NSC 162/2, Eisenhower's ‘New Look’. Intelligence professionals were involved in all aspects of Project Solarium. Intelligence products provided a common baseline of analysis while stimulating debate. The process – a transparent system of structured deliberation among experts – encouraged a thorough consideration of intelligence and productive dissent. These findings underscore the need for a broader reexamination of the role of intelligence in the design of national security strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper seeks to contribute to a number of debates that have attracted scholarly attention over the last few years. Firstly, by examining the experiences of the Swiss foreign intelligence service, the paper takes issue with what one scholar has dubbed ‘intelligence history snobbery’; a process that has privileged the study of the major powers and overlooked the contribution made to the secret world by the intelligence agencies of small states. Secondly, the paper explores the extent to which a state's engagement in the secret world is affected by its preconceived ideas over its place and standing in the international community. It asks whether the behaviour of a neutral foreign intelligence service is likely to differ from that of any other ‘small’ state, and whether neutrals can be both honest brokers in international affairs, and earnest players in the field of secret intelligence. The final section of the paper looks at the impact of the end of the Cold War and the emerging ‘global war on terror’ on the shape of the Swiss intelligence community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a theory of analytical innovation in intelligence systems using the craft of the 'net assessment' methodology in the US as a case study. Employing congruence method and process-tracing and drawing on multi-archival sources, the article demonstrates that at the roots of analytical innovation are three variables: the setting of a requirement, the conduct of methodological experiments and the synthesis of analytical knowledge. The study also reveals that the nature of analytical intelligence innovation is dyadic, consisting of an organizational and an ideational component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Counter-terrorism is a product of government, identifying as its target a kind of violence defined as terrorism. This article explores a particular moment in its development, as an intersection of international, national and bureaucratic responses to the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972. Australian understandings of the development of counter-terrorism have been dominated by a number of themes – principally by the Hilton Bombing of 1978 and the subsequent acceleration of security restructuring during the Fraser years, by the collapse of the Cold War focus of the security and intelligence agencies at the end of the 1980s and then by the ‘war on terror’ following 9/11 and the Bali bombing. Counter-terrorist planning was however an emerging business of government in the 1970s, in Australia as in its alliance partner the United States. While the Hope Royal Commission into intelligence agencies (1974–7) has dominated attention in later accounts of the development of counter-terrorism, a 1972 Interdepartmental Committee on Terrorism and Violence in Australia anticipated many of its concerns. In this developing concern with terrorism, the role and interest of the domestic intelligence agency (ASIO) at this time was limited. This paper contextualizes the Munich massacre as one of the factors shaping a rethinking of security and policing strategies in the early 1970s, a moment in the emergence of a modern government of terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the fact that the issue of whether Canada should develop a greater foreign intelligence capability has been broached numerous times, in various guises, over more than a century, those who have followed the development of the country's intelligence architecture will know it has never had a foreign intelligence service like its close allies. They will also be aware that on each occasion on which the issue has been raised, the Canadian government has declined to proceed. If history is any guide, there is a strong likelihood that the idea of Canada developing a more robust capability will again engage politicians, former intelligence officials, academics, the media, and think tanks in the not too distant future. The view adopted in this paper is that the public discourse has become sterile, and that if it is to advance, aspects of the counterfactual case – why has a foreign Humint capability not been developed? – may prove more fruitful. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Statutory oversight mechanisms for South Sudan's intelligence service are weak and ineffective. The weakness of these mechanisms is directly related to the sense of security that the regime experiences. Internal threats facing the regime after South Sudan's independence have resulted in an increase in the autonomy and influence of the National Security Service to counter opposition. Democratic principles, such as independent legislative oversight and respect for human rights have become subordinate to the political survival of the regime and its leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1946 veteran British intelligence officer Kenneth Strong undertook the Directorship of a new intelligence organization, the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB). The JIB absorbed the responsibilities of several wartime intelligence organs, and was responsible for economic, topographic, and aspects of scientific intelligence on an inter-service basis. Its responsibilities grew over the following 18 years; most notably, it absorbed atomic intelligence in 1957. When the Defence Intelligence Staff was created in 1964, absorbing the JIB and the individual Service agencies, JIB was at its heart and Kenneth Strong its first Director. The organization conducted key work in the early Cold War, was at the centre of an international network of Joint Intelligence Bureaux, and was an important stepping stone in the movement to centralize military and military-relevant intelligence in Britain – but the historiography pays it surprisingly little attention. This paper introduces the JIB and various aspects of its work, and demonstrates that its low profile in the historiography is unjustified. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the slums of Haiti, where pistol and machete wielding gangs dominated the populace through murder, intimidation, extortion, and terror, a UN peacekeeping mission managed to established law, order, and government control. The United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH) succeeded by 'taking on' the gangs in a series of military and police 'search and arrest' operations in 2006-07. The achievement was made possible by thorough 'intelligence preparation of the environment'. This paper tells the story of the 'intelligence-led' military-police-civil operations and how they transformed the Haitian slum of Cite Soleil from a foreboding place inaccessible to police for years to one in which the UN workers could safely walk its streets. The functions, structures, problems and challenges of the mission's intelligence capability are described, especially the work of the Joint Mission Analysis Centre (JMAC). Human intelligence proved to be key, while technologies helped considerably. Within the United Nations, intelligence remains a controversial and sensitive matter but the Haiti mission provides a valuable model of how to gather and use actionable intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the autumn of last year the National Intelligence Council issued a National Intelligence Estimate that states (in a portion of the NIE that has been published) with 'high confidence' that Iran years ago suspended its development of nuclear weapons. This paper questions the wisdom of a consensus intelligence document bound to be published in one form or another, and the soundness of the analysis in it, which pivots on speculation about Iranian decision making and on an ambiguity in the very meaning of 'suspending' a nuclear-weapons program while continuing to produce highly enriched uranium. These questions lead in turn to questions concerning the ambitious reorganization three years ago of the US intelligence system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role played by the National Security Council Intelligence Committee (NSCIC) and its working group in responding to senior policymaker criticism of IC analytic products. Established in December 1971 and abolished four years later, the NSCIC has received scant attention from intelligence historians despite representing in some ways the most ambitious initiative ever attempted to involve consumers in determining what intelligence was produced and evaluating its quality and usefulness. The NSCIC's problematic history highlights the challenges still confronting the IC and the study of it may suggest ways to make future intelligence products more useful to consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This piece provides a detailed case study of the evolution of counter-terrorism within a specific domestic security agency of a liberal-democratic state in the context of the Cold War. It does so by examining the creation of a counter-terrorism unit within Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service and how it responded to international terrorism. This occurred in between major terrorist attacks in Canada in 1970 and 1985 and included a growing focus on counter-terrorism even as counter-subversion remained a top priority within a still dominant Cold War domestic security framework. Ultimately, the article, based on thousands of pages of previously secret documents, argues that the Security Service could conceive of in a broader strategic sense the threat of terrorism but found it more challenging, for a variety of reasons, including the dominance of the Cold War and the difficulties around infiltrating ethnic communities, to collect intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the most significant effects of 9/11 on the U.S.'s national security structures has been the increasing overlap between the capabilities and operations of the CIA and Special Operations Forces (SOF), a phenomenon known as convergence. This article uses evidence from interviews with current and former congressional staffers to explore the question of how well congressional oversight has kept pace with convergence, focusing on the difficulties that it poses for oversight and exploring the cases of military covert and cyber operations which have seen some expansion of oversight, albeit limited and in the latter case, somewhat problematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017, the results of a major independent intelligence review have sparked transformational changes in Australia's National Intelligence Community (NIC). Much of this change is still underway, but less thought has been given to how reform changes to both national security and home affairs intelligence capabilities might affect existing oversight and accountability mechanisms. This article will assess how traditional oversight and accountability mechanisms of the NIC may be affected by these transformational changes and whether current mechanisms are likely to remain fit for purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides philosophical analyses of some of the key notions involved in national security intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination. In Section 1, and relying on the intelligence studies literature, the notion of intelligence is characterized by means of an outline its main features or, at least, those features typically ascribed to it. In Section 2, an analysis of the notion, or rather inter-related set of notions, of knowledge (broadly understood) that lies at the heart of intelligence activity is provided. In Section 3, the focus shifts to the activity, or rather inter-related activities, of intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination and, in particular, the notion of joint epistemic action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to provide an assessment of the evolution and contribution since 2001 of the European Union infrastructure and transport protection policies to the European fight against terrorism. Using the avowed goals of the Protect strand of the 2005 EU Counter-terrorism Strategy as a yardstick, the intention here is to evaluate the extent to which reality matches the aspirations present in the European political discourse and in particular the overall aim of ‘strengthen[ing] the defences of key targets, by reducing their vulnerability to attacks, and also by reducing the resulting impact of an attack’. In this way, special attention is paid to the outcomes from a number of initiatives in the field such as the European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection (EPCIP), the Critical Infrastructure Warning Information Network (CIWIN), the Action Plan for the Enhancement of the Security of Explosives, the directives and regulations on aviation and maritime security and others. Continuing the pattern set out by the other contributions in this issue, the objective is to assess the degree to which initiatives have led to practical results, the political and institutional factors that have facilitated the process of policy development and implementation, the obstacles that have stood in the way of the practical realization of the initial objectives and, finally, lessons learnt. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

David Gioe, Joseph Hatfield, and Mark Stout make a strong case for expanding the use of telework in the IC for intelligence analysts ('Can United States intelligence community analysts telework?' Intelligence and National Security, 25 May 2020). We have reached similar conclusions at the Laboratory for Analytic Sciences (LAS) and believe that our experience both supports and expands upon the authors' arguments. In our view, intelligence analysts and other IC work roles can perform certain functions of their work productively outside of secure facilities, provided that they have gained prior training and experience in applying IC classification rules within the context of their everyday work. A final consideration, not to be overlooked, is the importance of enabling IC staff to work collaboratively as teams from home on meaningful tasks whose outcomes can be transferred to classified settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the evolution of the discipline of Intelligence Studies by evaluating how academics have woven scholarship with activism targeting prevailing cultures of state secrecy. Christopher Andrew has been in the vanguard of these efforts, and it is argued here that he pursued these goals for three reasons. First, the old cultures of secrecy hampered historical scholarship. Second, these cultures represented an obstruction to public understanding of the mission of intelligence agencies. Third, obsessive secrecy inhibited the ability of the intelligence agencies to benefit from a very real engagement with the past. Andrew has been instrumental in melding the causes of democratic accountability with that of academic freedom, successfully arguing for reforming cultures of secrecy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the role and benefit added by the use of horizon scanning in intelligence analysis in the UK. It asserts that horizon scanning as a technique, while not entirely akin to the tradecraft of intelligence analysis, has much to contribute to its success. Specifically, is asserts that a horizon scanning function in the JIO and the Cabinet Office should be made permanent, as bureaucratic tumult in the wake of the 2010 SDSR have left the capability un-staffed, though still established. Within the UK intelligence community, such an organization may have positive roles to play in the processes of challenge, the setting of collection priorities, and overall long-term UK intelligence assessment at the national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses British perceptions of a Muslim menace to imperial security between 1840-1951. These ideas had a long life. They rarely stood in the first rank of imperial concerns, but sometimes in the second. Over this period, British ideas of an Islamic menace focused first on the political self-consciousness of all Muslims than on subterranean bodies which tried to bind masses and elites for political ends, and moved to nationalist movements with a narrow popular base, and finally to those with a mass base. Between 1915 and 1924, fear of a pan-Islamic menace significantly affected British strategic and imperial policy. These ideas involved the interaction of observation, intelligence, perception, learning, fear, ignorance and uncertainty. Their study illuminates the evolution both of British intelligence and of its ideas about the political self-consciousness of its subjects, and the threat that posed to its rule, particularly about the nature and power of colonial nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partisan behaviour and abuses by intelligence and security agencies have often been attributed to the fact that agencies have become 'out of control' or 'rogue elephants'. But a detailed empirical study of the politicization of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) over ten years shows that the agency was not 'out of control' but very much under the control of its minister. The partisan use of security information arose from directives issued through the 'democratic' control exercised by a government. On the basis of this study, prevention of abuses by tighter governmental control is unlikely to work. A combination of government control, autonomy of the agency and independent scrutiny by an inspector-general is more likely to succeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in assessing the development of the Northern Ireland crisis from the mid-1960s until the imposition of direct rule in 1972. It argues that the JIC's very limited engagement with Northern Ireland prior to 1969 contributed significantly to Whitehall's failure to grasp the drift of affairs from the autumn of 1968 onwards. This was due to the JIC's preoccupation with Cold War issues, compounded by reluctance to interfere in the security affairs of the Northern Ireland government. When Northern Ireland became a stock item of JIC business in 1970, the JIC secretariat became heavily involved in efforts to improve the intelligence system in Northern Ireland. The article also raises the question of the JIC's role in establishing the parameters for intelligence and security operations concerning Northern Ireland, including the controversial 'Five Techniques' of interrogation, the introduction of internment in 1971, and covert activities in the Republic of Ireland. The article draws mainly on JIC, Prime Minister's Office and Foreign Office records in the National Archives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The popular origins of the modern US intelligence bureaucracy have largely escaped the scrutiny of historians. This article examines the critical public discourse over American intelligence and the clear domestic support for a new type of national intelligence system following World War II. The organization of American intelligence was thoroughly examined in newspapers, polling data, popular magazines, public speeches and lectures, petitions to government officials, and for the first time -- the medium of radio. This frank discussion, fostered to a large degree by William Donovan, undoubtedly influenced the tenor surrounding the establishment of the modern intelligence bureaucracy, but also resulted in an unwelcome public relations quandary for intelligence officials. This distinctly American postwar dialogue illustrates the great challenge of conducting intelligence in an open democratic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategic intelligence in national security enjoys an elevated status. Despite past failures and current challenges, its role in analysing the strategic environment is considered crucial for practising strategy. In the business world, competitive intelligence (CI) has evolved for a similar purpose: understanding the competitive environment, as a foundation for strategy. The current article focuses on the Israeli business world, where CI's influence on corporate strategy is limited, reflecting the broader state of CI's immature academic and professional foundations. The article provides historical, organizational, conceptual, and cultural explanatory hypotheses for this minor impact of CI in Israel, a country where national intelligence is a highly influential institution. It thus broadens the scope of traditional intelligence studies and can contribute to CI scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the discipline of strategic intelligence at the governmental level and the competitive intelligence discipline constitute accepted methods of supporting decision in order to avert mistakes and prevent strategic surprise. So far, research has focused on national intelligence and intelligence in business separately however, it is possible to use experience accumulated in the business field to improve intelligence practice in national security and vice versa. The central innovation of this article is that mutual learning can be utilized in the context of a model that makes a distinction between a 'concentrated surprise' and a 'diffused surprise' to provide a breakthrough in the intelligence field for better prediction of the development of surprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Congress may engage in intelligence oversight by authorizing third-party requesters as 'fire alarms' to promote transparency under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). FOIA authorizes requesters to sue federal agencies to ensure their cooperation with requests for agency records. This article considers judicial review and the national security scholar's role as fire alarm oversight by examining the litigation for the Pfeiffer Bay of Pigs CIA operation history, draft volume V. The article illustrates a compliance gap that requesters and courts can close by canvassing the advantages that scholars, especially historians, enjoy in enabling judicial oversight that promotes executive agency transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research note introduces the December 1981 report of the Security Commission. This report was never released with the main conclusions forming the basis of a statement by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, published in May 1982. But the 1981 report is significant for a number of reasons. It was the first major review of government security since the Radcliffe Report of 1961, resulting in a number of recommendations that changed government vetting for the rest of the 1980s. The report also recommended the avowal of Britain's foreign intelligence agency – a recommendation that proved especially controversial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a true experiment conforming to the criteria of a randomized controlled trial (RCT), we found that intelligence analysts assign significantly more credibility to secret intelligence than to identical open-source intelligence. However, this was true only when the intelligence estimate constituted a 'complex' problem characterized by a high degree of uncertainty and not when the estimate constituted a 'simple' problem characterized by a low degree of uncertainty. Moreover, we found that intelligence analysts are significantly more confident in their own assessments when they process secret intelligence and more uncertain when they process identical open-source intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Myanmar's Chief of Intelligence from 1983 until 2004, General Khin Nyunt presided over the development of a large and powerful security apparatus that underpinned military rule and played a major role in the country's international relations. So influential did the key military intelligence organisation become, however, that it was seen as a threat by other parts of the armed forces, including the ruling State Peace and Development Council. In 2004, Khin Nyunt was arrested and his intelligence empire largely dismantled. The purge seriously weakened the regime's capabilities, but was considered necessary to maintain its position as the supreme arbiter of power in Myanmar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National security decision-making is informed by intelligence assessments, which in turn depend on sound information evaluation. We critically examine information evaluation methods, arguing that they mask rather than effectively guide subjectivity in intelligence assessment. Drawing on the guidance metaphor, we propose that rigid 'all-purpose' information evaluation methods be replaced by flexible 'context-sensitive' guidelines aimed at improving the soundness, precision, accuracy and clarity of irreducibly subjective judgments. Specific guidelines, supported by empirical evidence, include use of numeric probability estimates to quantify the judged likelihood of information accuracy, promoting collector-analyst collaboration and periodic revaluation of information as new information is acquired. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores an information interpretation explanation of strategic surprises using a non-traditional national security threat: a popular uprising. To explain why this type of assessments fail, I emphasize the role of information relevance when evaluating intelligence about civilian unrest. I posit that the dynamic nature of relevance is crucial for signals of popular dissent becoming dominant indicators that are incorporated into security assessments. A case study and observational data analysis of the Palestinian uprising (Intifada, 1987) demonstrate how information relevance contributed to the Israeli intelligence failure and how it affects the potential for strategic surprises facing a civilian threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sheds light on the complexity and sensitivity of crowd-based intelligence in security governance. The 'crowd' as special manifestation of 'the public' is both challenging and enabling new forms of intelligence practices. As a spontaneous eruption of collective activity, the crowd is a notion of great versatility. Sometimes considered mad/dangerous, sometimes wise/useful, the crowd's drivers are a context-dependent collage of (affective) group engagement, projection from the outside and the workings of digital technologies. The article traces how the existence of crowds in its variations is connected to how they are approached by security agents and their intelligence practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines inter-allied efforts to collect, categorize and analyse material gathered from the thousands of German prisoners of war (POWs) in their hands during the Second World War. The different information gathered from enemy captives was valuable to British, Canadian and American intelligence services, helping them to evaluate morale of 'Hitler's soldiers', to improve the security of their camp networks and to understand National Socialism ideology. Often viewed as a primarily British-American operation, POW intelligence also involved Canadian authorities. This article argues that Canada, far from being a secondary actor, had a central role within this transatlantic network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how effectively Britain secured its diplomatic communications against hostile decryption during the early Cold War. It shows that between 1945 and 1970 the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office introduced and operated four advanced cipher machines, Typex, Rockex, Noreen and Alvis, which produced very strong ciphers. However, Britain did suffer physical compromises of Rockex through Soviet espionage and an attack on the British embassy in Beijing. Rockex was also vulnerable to technical surveillance of its acoustic and Tempest emissions, and the Soviets exploited this to read the encrypted communications of the British embassy in Moscow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-9/11 era has seen a proliferation of special, or one-off parliamentary inquiries into intelligence. This article examines the question of what quality such inquiries can achieve, exploring the scandal surrounding the case of the German far-right terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU). The article introduces a theoretical framework, with remit, rigor and reception as the key pillars of analysis. While special inquiries are often seen as a way of overcoming imperfections of the traditional accountability system, they can also create a placebo effect - an illusion of accountability which allows intelligence services to go uncontrolled under a blanket of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many national security threats now originate on the Dark Web. As a result of the anonymity of these networks, researchers and policymakers often use supply-side data (i.e. the number of sites) as a threat metric. However, the utility of these data depends upon the underlying distribution of users. Users could be distributed uniformly, normally or in a power law across Dark Web content. The utility of supply-side counts varies predictably based upon the underlying distribution of users. Yet, the likelihood of each distribution type varies inversely with its utility: uniform distributions are most useful for intelligence purposes but least likely and power law distributions are least useful but occur most commonly. Complementing supply-side counts with demand-side measures can improve Dark Web threat analysis, thereby helping to combat terrorism, criminality and cyberattacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks to answer the question of why the James Bond novels and films should matter to scholars of intelligence and national security. We argue that Bond is important because, rightly or wrongly, and not without inaccuracy, it has filled a public knowledge vacuum about intelligence agencies and security threats. On another level, this article explores the unexpected yet important interactions between Bond and the actual world of intelligence. We contend that the orthodoxy dictating that Bond and spying are diametric opposites—one is the stuff of fantasy, the other is reality—is problematic, for the worlds of Bond and real intelligence collide, overlap and intermesh in fascinating and significant ways. In short, Bond is important for scholars because he is an international cultural icon that continues to operate at the borders of fiction and reality, framing and constructing not only public perceptions but also to some degree intelligence practices. Core narratives of intelligence among not only the public but also policymakers and intelligence officers are imagined, sustained, deepened, produced and reproduced through and by Bond. We conclude that Bond and intelligence should be thought of as co-constitutive; the series shapes representations and perceptions of intelligence, but it also performs a productive role, influencing the behaviours of intelligence agencies themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2010, quinquennial UK National Security Strategies - and the Strategic Defence and Security Reviews that follow - have been based on a public National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA). The purpose of the NSRA is to identify and prioritize UK security risks for the coming five-yearly cycle based on their likelihood and impact. This article recognizes that trading off severity against likelihood is a valuable strategic heuristic. Yet it concludes that until the NSRA can address nine key limitations, it will remain a flawed exercise. Such findings carry implications for UK policy, and for other states operating NSRA-style risk matrices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]