: Intelligence Studies
Intelligence Studies
Ethics are the principals and standards by which an organization operates, whereas values are widespread beliefs that explicitly or implicitly guide members of an organization. Therefore, organizational values function as guides to what is seen as useful and vital in the organization. Legal issues, on the other hand, are the lawful rules that guide the operation of an institution.[1]
For the smooth functioning of an organization, there should be an adherence to a rule, such as policy, standard, or the law. Adherence to regulations defines the goals organizations intend to achieve in their efforts to ensure they are aware of and take steps to comply with relevant laws, policies, and regulations. Because of the growing system of restrictions and the need for operational transparency, organizations need to follow unified and synchronized legal issues, ethics and values. This will ensure that all necessary institutional requirements can be met without disproportionate redundancy of effort and resource operation.
In intelligence organizations, there are regulatory and legal requirements that are mandated in the U.S constitution under an executive order that the institution must operate under. In my organization, elements such as attorney general’s approval, collection of information, and the procedures of collecting the information as well as a specific way of conducting intelligent activities, among others are adhered to and very crucial in the successful running of the organization without contradicting the U.S law of intelligence.
Attorney General Approval
It is a legal requirement that any intelligence organization must work under the office of the attorney general, and thereby the institution is obliged to abide.[2] It is the Attorney General who is given the power to consent to the use of intelligence impetus, within the United States, as well as against a person from outside the United States. For every approach for which a permit would be [3]mandated if carried out for investigative purposes will only be conducted after the Attorney General has in each case ascertained that there is likely cause to presume that the technique is focused against a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. Besides, the electronic surveillance, as specified in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, shall be carried out in compliance with that Legislation.
Information Collection
As an agency within the U.S Intelligence Community, my organization operates and will continue to do so under the authorization to collect, retain or disseminate information concerning United States persons only in accordance with procedures established and approved by the Attorney General.[4] The gathering of the security information, its retention, and dissemination, therefore, follow the legal process which permits information such as one which is publicly available or collected with the consent of the person concerned. This process also includes the collection of information that constitutes foreign intelligence or counterintelligence, not limited to information regarding corporations or other commercial organizations.
Collection Techniques
Just as stipulates in the constitutional order that all institutions inside the Intelligence Community should use least invasive collection methods possible in the United States or directed toward persons from outside the United States, it remains an ordeal and operational measure that must be considered in any line of information collection. Organizations are not mandated to use such techniques as electronic surveillance, nonconsensual physical surveillance, postal surveillance, physical intelligence gathering or monitoring devices unless they conform to the procedures established and approved by the Attorney General.[5] Such procedures shall safeguard statutory and other constitutional rights, and regulate the use of such information for lawful purposes of government. Nevertheless, to remain within the regulatory standards of the intelligent service, the organization would operate to identify, prioritize and validate intelligence requirements, translate requirements into measurements, prepare collection plans, issue requests for collecting data, development, and distribution, and evaluate the volume of information collected on an ongoing basis.
Law Enforcement Authorities’ Aid
Intelligence Community entities are allowed to comply with relevant law enforcement authorities to protect personnel, documents, properties, and resources of any organization within the intelligence community.[6] Hence, the organization must take part in law enforcement operations to uncover or stop illegal intelligence activities by foreign entities or international terrorist or illicit drug activities, except where prohibited by law. Moreover, it has to provide specialized equipment, technical skills, or expert staff guidance for use by any agency or department, or to assist local law enforcement agencies when life is endangered. The providing organization’s general counsel thus has to authorize the provision of assistance by specialist staff in each case, and has to make all other aid and collaboration to law enforcement agencies not exempted by relevant law.
Intelligence Activities
Effective and consistent intelligence on the capacities, objectives, and actions of foreign forces, organizations, or individuals and their agents is essential for informed decision-making in the domestic security and international relations fields.[7] The acquisition of such intelligence is a priority goal. It must be undertaken in a robust, creative, and sensible way that would be coherent with both the Constitution and existing law and which respects the values on which the United States was founded.
The regulatory and law require HUMINT activities, spies, to steal secrets with integrity. This implies that the qualities of an HUMINT must be inherent in the nature of the clandestine services, thus creating an atmosphere replete of ethics and sensitivity. Besides, fields operate employees of the intelligence body should be protected from the corrosive moral environment.
It is noteworthy that some intelligent secret personnel beams lawbreakers and protects their disclosure by inhibiting regular workers’ open and public actions. The ethics that govern surveillance corrupt many people’s honesty, civility, and openness, and the perpetual pressures of the clandestine service attempt the most honest man or woman’s moral ballast. Therefore the organization must ensure that its HUMINT activities spies have received the training and absorbed the values that can help them withstand these pressures.
There are important implications to the belief that officers have to establish a peculiar style of intellectual processing to confront their job duties. It seems to de-legitimize broad intelligence directives, which include DCI John Deutch’s 1995 regulations on the undesirable character of staffing.[8] Whether or not a case officer can explain the infiltration of an agent with a shady history must rely on his / her own ethical paradigm, instead of a reaching order from above. Systematic, politically driven, and fully integrated regulations from the top threaten to subvert any attempt to establish a unique ethical thinking process in each operative. This implies that departments have little confidence in the training of their own secret service officers.
Another implication is the likelihood that HUMINT operators who are taught by their superiors to think independently and implicitly are less likely to become betrayers.[9] When their initial training is complete, there is a need to re-educate the operatives before they are sent out into the field. New recruit training is very good, but the institution needs a mid-career program.
In order to conduct HUMINT activities in the field, there are codes of values and ethics that serve as the overarching moral code in guiding the operation’s personnel as they do HUMINT activities. These include;
Human Experimentation
Since no agency within the Intelligence Community shall sponsor, contract, or perform the human subject study, the operations’ personnel must adhere to these ethical behaviors while conducting HUMINT activities unless they comply with guidelines provided by the Health and Human Services Department.[10] Those guidelines shall document the informed consent of the subject as required.
Prohibition on Assassination
It is mandated that no person employed by or acting on behalf of the intelligent agency shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination; hence the HUMINT activities officers must ensure they adhere to such ethical considerations.
Undisclosed Participation
While conducting HUMINT operations within another organization, the operation’s personnel representing an intelligence agency within the Intelligence Community are prohibited from entering or otherwise engaging in any institution in the United States on behalf of any agency within the Intelligence Community without revealing his intelligence allegiance to relevant authorities of the organization, unless in compliance with the procedures defined by either the head of the organization concerned or approved by the Attorney General.[11] These involvements shall only be allowed where it is necessary for the achievement of lawful purposes as determined by the head or designate of the department. No such engagement may be undertaken with the aim of influencing the conduct of the organization or its members, only in cases where the involvement is conducted on behalf of the Federal government during a lawful investigation or when the organization concerned consists primarily of individuals who are not nationals of the United States and are reasonably assumed to be operating on behalf of a foreign national.[12]
In conclusion, it is significant to undertake intelligence activities primarily with regard to observing regulatory and legal requirements in which any intelligence institution is bound to operate.
Bibliography
“Understanding Ethics within Sociocultural Intelligence.” Sociocultural Intelligence : A New Discipline in Intelligence Studies (n.d.). doi:10.5040/9781501301148.ch-005.
Dover, Robert, Michael S. Goodman, and Claudia Hillebrand. Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies. London: Routledge, 2013.
Evans, Daniel. International Affairs and Intelligence Studies Primer. Morrisville: Lulu.com, 2011.
Glees, Anthony. “Intelligence Studies, Universities and Security.” Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 2018, 19-48. doi:10.4324/9781315109978-2.
III, Carl J., David H. McElreath, and Melissa Graves. Introduction to Intelligence Studies. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2012.
Phillips, Michael. “Intelligence Tests.” African American Studies Center, 2009. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.45730.
[1] Daniel Evans, International Affairs and Intelligence Studies Primer (Morrisville: Lulu.com, 2011), 26
[2] Anthony Glees, “Intelligence Studies, Universities and Security,” Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 2018, 65, doi:10.4324/9781315109978-2.
[3] Robert Dover, Michael S. Goodman, and Claudia Hillebrand, Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies (London: Routledge, 2013), 87
[4] Dover, Goodman, and Hillebrand, intelligence Studies, 89
[5] Carl J. III, David H. McElreath, and Melissa Graves, Introduction to Intelligence Studies (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2012), 67.
[6] III, McElreath, and Graves, Intelligence Studies, 73
[7] Ibn, 88
[8] Michael Phillips, “Intelligence Tests,” African American Studies Center, 2009, 43
[9] Phillips, “Intelligence Test,” 52
[10] “ibn,” 21
[11] “Understanding Ethics within Sociocultural Intelligence,” Sociocultural Intelligence : A New Discipline in Intelligence Studies (n.d.), 16
[12] “Sociocultural Intelligence,” 18
