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This book adopts a critical lens to look at the workings of Western intelligence and intelligence oversight over time and space.Largely confined to the sub-field of intelligence studies, scholarly engagements with intelligence oversight have typically downplayed the violence carried out by secretive agencies. These studies have often served to justify weak oversight structures and promoted only marginal adaptations of policy frameworks in the wake of intelligence scandals. The essays gathered in this volume challenge the prevailing doxa in the academic field, adopting a critical lens to look at the workings of intelligence oversight in Europe and North America. Through chapters spanning across multiple disciplines – political sociology, history, and law – the book aims to recast intelligence oversight as acting in symbiosis with the legitimisation of the state's secret violence and the enactment of impunity, showing how intelligence actors practically navigate the legal and political constraints created by oversight frameworks and practices, for instance by developing transnational networks of interdependence. The book also explores inventive legal steps and human rights mechanisms aimed at bridging some of the most serious gaps in existing frameworks, drawing inspiration from recent policy developments in the international struggle against torture.This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, sociology, security studies, and international relations.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Intelligence and security communities have access to an overwhelming amount of information. More data is better in an information-hungry world, but too much data paralyzes individual and institutional abilities to process and use information effectively. Robert Mandel calls this phenomenon'global data shock.'He investigates how information overload affects strategic ambiguity, deception, and surprise, as well as the larger consequences for international security. This book provides not only an accessible framework for understanding global data shock and its consequences, but also a strategy to prepare for and respond to information overload. Global Data Shock explores how information overload facilitates deception, eroding international trust and cooperation in the post-Cold War era. A sweeping array of case studies illustrates the role of data shock in shaping global events from the 1990 Iraqi attack on Kuwait to Brexit. When strategists try to use an overabundance of data to their advantage, Mandel reveals, it often results in unanticipated and undesirable consequences. Too much information can lead to foreign intelligence failures, security policy incoherence, mass public frustrations, curtailment of democratic freedoms, and even international political anarchy. Global Data Shock addresses the pressing need for improved management of information and its strategic deployment.

Often described as ‘two solitudes', law enforcement and national security intelligence agencies engage in intensive collaboration to address both international and domestic threats. This situation has blurred the lines between interior and exterior security; common crime and crime against the state; civil liberties, privacy, and intrusive surveillance activities; strategic national security intelligence and operational military intelligence requirements. National and local law enforcement agencies now conduct intelligence operations against international terrorist groups while national security intelligence organizations infiltrate organized crime and intercept citizens'communications on a daily basis. Other important trends are reshaping the state's surveillance and intelligence apparatus in modern societies, including the use of cyberspace for information collection, the expansion of surveillance technology penetrating citizens'everyday life, and the rise of the private sector as a primary surveillance facilitator or third party in national security intelligence collection and dissemination. This book will be of interest to those seeking to understand the intelligence environment in modern times, providing a broad understanding of current and emerging issues related to intelligence activities and offers a unique way of thinking about contemporary challenges in this field.

This book explores how potential bio-threats and risks may evolve post 9/11 given the rapid changes in biotechnology and synthetic biology. It also explores what role intelligence communities can play in understanding threats and risks. It argues that although bio-threats and risks are largely low probability and high impact in nature, intelligence in ‘Five Eyes'countries remain insufficiently prepared to understand them. This book identifies key areas where intelligence reforms need to take place including a more strategic and systematic collaboration between national security/law enforcement intelligence and the scientific community. It is aimed at intelligence analysts, those in the scientific community working on health security threats, policy makers and researchers working on biosecurity and bioterrorism threats and risks.

This handbook provides a detailed analysis of threats and risk in the international system and of how governments and their intelligence services must adapt and function in order to manage the evolving security environment. This environment, now and for the foreseeable future, is characterised by complexity. The development of disruptive digital technologies; the vulnerability of critical national infrastructure; asymmetric threats such as terrorism; the privatisation of national intelligence capabilities: all have far reaching implications for security and risk management. The leading academics and practitioners who have contributed to this handbook have all done so with the objective of cutting through the complexity, and providing insight on the most pressing security, intelligence, and risk factors today. They explore the changing nature of conflict and crises; interaction of the global with the local; the impact of technological; the proliferation of hostile ideologies and the challenge this poses to traditional models of intelligence; and the impact of all these factors on governance and ethical frameworks. The handbook is an invaluable resource for students and professionals concerned with contemporary security and how national intelligence must adapt to remain effective.