Principled Spying

Intelligence agencies provide critical information to national security and foreign policy decision makers, but spying also poses inherent dilemmas for liberty, privacy, human rights, and diplomacy. Principled Spying explores how to strike a balance between necessary intelligence activities and protecting democratic values by developing a new framework of ethics. David Omand and Mark Phythian structure this book as an engaging debate between a former national security practitioner and an intelligence scholar. Rather than simply presenting their positions, throughout the book they pose key questions to each other and to the reader and offer contrasting perspectives to stimulate further discussion. They demonstrate the value for both practitioners and the public of weighing the dilemmas of secret intelligence through ethics. The chapters in the book cover key areas including human intelligence, surveillance, acting on intelligence, and oversight and accountability. The authors disagree on some key questions, but in the course of their debate they demonstrate that it is possible to find a balance between liberty and security. This book is accessible reading for concerned citizens, but it also delivers the sophisticated insights of a high-ranking former practitioner and a distinguished scholar.

Collecting and analyzing intelligence are essential to national security and an effective foreign policy. The public also looks to its security agencies for protection from terrorism, from serious criminality, and to be safe in using cyberspace. But intelligence activities pose inherent dilemmas for democratic societies. How far should the government be allowed to go in collecting and using intelligence before it jeopardizes the freedoms that citizens hold dear? This is one of the great unresolved issues of public policy, and it sits at the heart of broader debates concerning the relationship between the citizen and the state. In Safe and Sound, national security practitioner David Omand and intelligence scholar Mark Phythian offer an ethical framework for examining these issues and structure the book as an engaging debate. Rather than simply presenting their positions, throughout the book they pose key questions to each other and to the reader and offer contrasting perspectives to stimulate further discussion. They probe key areas of secret intelligence including human intelligence, surveillance, ethics of covert and clandestine actions, and oversight and accountability. The authors disagree on some key questions, but in the course of their debate they demonstrate that it is possible to strike a balance between liberty and security.

CÃ(c)cile Fabre draws back the curtain on the ethics of espionage and counterintelligence. In a book rich with historical examples she argues that spying is only justified to protect against ongoing violations of fundamental rights. Blackmail, bribery, mass surveillance, cyberespionage, treason, and other nefarious activities are considered.

The Psychology of Spies and Spying tells the story of the people involved in spying: the human sources (agents) who betray their country or organisation and the professional intelligence officers who manage the collection and reporting process

In To Catch a Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence, former Chief of CIA counterintelligence James M. Olson offers a wake-up call for the American public, showing how the US is losing the intelligence war and how our country can do a better job of protecting its national security and trade secrets.

Survival, the IISS’s bimonthly journal, challenges conventional wisdom and brings fresh, often controversial, perspectives on strategic issues of the moment. In this issue: Adam Roberts explores pandemics and politics through the ages, arguing that trust in leadership is essential in the struggle against infectious diseases Rebecca Barber and Sarah Teitt contend that ASEAN should take a more activist approach to the Rohingya crisis to salvage its credibility Greg Austin assesses the strategic implications of China’s weak cyber defences Øystein Tunsjø casts doubt on the prospect of the Arctic becoming a theatre of great-power conflict And eight more thought-provoking pieces, as well as our regular book reviews and Noteworthy column.

Exploring how intelligence professionals view accountability in the context of twenty-first century politics How can democratic governments hold intelligence and security agencies accountable when what they do is largely secret? Using the UK as a case study, this book addresses this question by providing the first systematic exploration of how accountability is understood inside the secret world. It is based on new interviews with current and former UK intelligence practitioners, as well as extensive research into the performance and scrutiny of the UK intelligence machinery. The result is the first detailed analysis of how intelligence professionals view their role, what they feel keeps them honest, and how far external overseers impact on their work Moving beyond the conventional focus on oversight, the book examines how accountability works in the day to day lives of these organizations, and considers the impact of technological and social changes, such as artificial intelligence and social media. The UK is a useful case study as it is an important actor in global intelligence, gathering material that helps inform global decisions on such issues as nuclear proliferation, terrorism, transnational crime, and breaches of international humanitarian law. On the flip side, the UK was a major contributor to the intelligence failures leading to the Iraq war in 2003, and its agencies were complicit in the widely discredited U.S. practices of torture and “rendition” of terrorism suspects. UK agencies have come under greater scrutiny since those actions, but it is clear that problems remain. The book concludes with a series of suggestions for improvement, including the creation of intelligence ethics committees, allowing the public more input into intelligence decisions. The issues explored in this book have important implications for researchers, intelligence professionals, overseers, and the public when it comes to understanding and scrutinizing intelligence practice.

The first full account of Nazi spies in 1930s America and how they were exposed. In the mid-1930s just as the United States was embarking on a policy of neutrality, Nazi Germany launched a program of espionage against the unwary nation. The Nazi Spy Ring in America tells the story of Hitler’s attempts to interfere in American affairs by spreading anti-Semitic propaganda, stealing military technology, and mapping US defenses. This fast-paced history provides essential insight into the role of espionage in shaping American perceptions of Germany in the years leading up to US entry into World War II. Fascinating and thoroughly researched, The Nazi Spy Ring in America sheds light on a now-forgotten but significant episode in the history of international relations and the development of the FBI. Using recently declassified documents, prize-winning historian Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones narrates this little-known chapter in US history. He shows how Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the Abwehr, was able to steal top secret US technology such as a prototype codebreaking machine and data about the latest fighter planes. At the center of the story is Leon Turrou, the FBI agent who helped bring down the Nazi spy ring in a case that quickly transformed into a national sensation. The arrest and prosecution of four members of the ring was a high-profile case with all the trappings of fiction: fast cars, louche liaisons, a murder plot, a Manhattan socialite, and a ringleader codenamed Agent Sex. Part of the story of breaking the Nazi spy ring is also the rise and fall of Turrou, whose talent was matched only by his penchant for publicity, which eventually caused him to run afoul of J. Edgar Hoover's strict codes of conduct.