Rethinking ‘Five Eyes’ Security Intelligence Collection Policies and Practice Post Snowden

Abstract

The Edward Snowden leaks challenge policy makers and the public's understanding and perspectives on the role of security intelligence in liberal democratic states. This article explores the challenges confronting security intelligence collection by the 'Five Eyes' countries -particularly those most affected by the leaks. We argue that the debate now needs to move beyond simplistic notions of privacy vs. security to a more detailed understanding of the policy and ethical dilemmas confronting policy makers and intelligence agencies. To that end, we provide a schematic framework (methods, context and target) to promote a better understanding of the practical, policy and ethical problems for security intelligence collection emerging post Snowden. The framework is a first step in identifying common principles that could be used develop an ethically informed set of policy guidelines to help decision makers better navigate between citizen's two basic rights: security and privacy.The tension between the legitimate collection of information for national security and the rights to privacy of the individual in liberal democratic states has increased markedly since 9/11. 1 From 9/11 onwards, in Australia and other liberal democratic countries, the threat from terrorism resulted in a number of significant changes to the laws and practices of policing and national security intelligence agencies. 2 Major reforms in the US resulted in the creation of new agencies (e.g. the Office of Director of National Intelligence, Department of Homeland Security) whereas in other liberal democracies such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand less dramatic bureaucratic reform initiatives were implemented to better coordinate the q 2015 Taylor & Francis

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“…The responsible use of social media intelligence and its relationship to individual privacy in democratic states is an important, open question for policy makers [ 19 , 65 , 66 ]. To this end, we acknowledge that our methods could be unethically employed to identify political opposition or dissidents.…”

“…Consequently, we join Walsh et al in their advocation of patient, nuanced political dialog with respect to developing open source intelligence policy in Western democracies [ 19 ]. This policy debate centers around both social media users’ reasonable expectation of privacy and the ethical implications of mining their online content.…”

“…These protocols include a strong push for de-identification—our methods make no attempt to bind online and offline identities, and agencies using these methods to inform messaging efforts could do so with de-identified data. While we acknowledge that the use of bulk de-identified meta-data has been the subject of concern [ 19 ], this issue is routinely encountered by IRBs in academia as well.…”

“…The complexity of these issues requires a substantive theoretical framework under which to characterize these various ethnical concerns. Walsh et al (2016), who provide a framework with which to balance the importance of civil liberties with national security in an intelligence context [ 19 ]. Their framework is based on the collection method, context, and target.…”

“…Finally, we discuss an ethical framework for the implementation of methods similar to IVCC. We highlight the framework presented in [ 19 ] of: methods, context, and target, and we draw distinctions in context between diplomatic and intelligence applications of social media mining.…”