Research
Oversight and intelligence networks:
Who guards the guardians?
GUARDINT builds empirical and conceptual tools to shed light on the limitations and potential of oversight mechanisms. It theorizes intelligence oversight through an International Political Sociology (IPS) approach to understand the concrete practices and the formal and informal roles of oversight. Using the IPS approach, the project examines intelligence oversight in a threefold way: as a democratic mechanism, as socio-technical networks, and as an emerging transnational practice. Second, it compares the efficiency and legitimacy of oversight bodies in different European countries. Third, it examines the possibilities and challenges for oversight bodies to operate at a transnational scale. By doing so, the project will generate tools and platforms to promote transnational collaboration. Overall, GUARDINT seeks to revitalise our democratic imaginary and to reinforce transnational connections by proposing creative solutions for effective democratic control of transnational intelligence cooperation within and beyond the EU.
Deliverables
Intelligence oversight index & surveillance Oversight database
Socio-Genesis of intelligence oversight & oversight gaps
Sciences Po and University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 will contribute to GUARDINT with an analysis of the gaps between transnational practices of intelligence services and the capacity of (largely national) oversight bodies to have a proper democratic control. To that end, the GUARDINT team will combine a sociological, legal, historical and anthropological approach to the study of transnational networks in order to investigate the possibility for oversight bodies. In turn, this approach will allow identifying areas of secrecy in the relations between the actors, or cases of ‘abuse of secrecy’ under the argument of third party rule (a strategy, in intelligence sharing, to obtain immunity regarding gross violations of human rights). To date, studies on intelligence oversight have either lacked a theoretical foundation or these foundations have been locked within disciplinary boundaries. Against this backdrop, we will examine the trajectories and sociological processes whereby different oversight professionals enact the respect of limits regarding intelligence, as well as, through an approach based on a socio-genesis, how scandals and controversies have translated—or not—into stronger oversight.
Oversight as a democratic practice & visualisations of transnational oversight networks
King’s College London (KCL) will contribute to GUARDINT by examining oversight as a democratic practice and the relationship between surveillance, oversight and changing understandings of democracy. In doing so, they will undertake an analysis of various disputes (particularly legal disputes) which have emerged around mass surveillance by intelligence agencies, and the ways in which governments and intelligence actors have been forced to answer to their critics. Starting with ‘tests’ of the practices of intelligence agencies; public challenges and contestations which necessitate a response by the actors denounced- KCL will map and analyse the grammars of critique and contestation of oversight and intelligence actors (and other actors involved in the broader landscape of holding intelligence agencies to account), as well as examine the transversal connections and solidarities between these actors. Secondly, they will use digital methods to develop a visualisation platform of transnational relations and transformations of oversight in Europe. The result will not be only a territorial map aggregating national data, but a visualisation of transnational professional networks of actors involved in holding intelligence agencies accountable.
Publications
Guardint publications
- Vieth, Kilian and Thorsten Wetzling. (2021) Caught in the Act? An analysis of Germany’s new SIGINT reform
- Kniep, Ronja (2021). Herren der Information. Die transnationale Autonomie digitaler Überwachung. Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft.
- Vieth, Kilian. (2021) A new digital hub for intelligence law and oversight. about:intel.
- Wetzling, Thorsten (2021). Stellungnahme zum Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Änderung des BND-Gesetzes zur Umsetzung der Vorgaben des Bundesverfassungsgerichts und des Bundesverwaltungsgerichts.
- Wetzling, Thorsten and Daniel Moßbrucker (2020). BND-Reform, die Zweite. Vorschläge zur Neustrukturierung der Nachrichtendienstkontrolle.
- Wetzling, Thorsten and Njord Wegge (2020). Countering Hybrid Threats Through Signals Intelligence and Big Data Analysis? In T. Røseth & J. Weaver (Eds.), Intelligence Relations in the 21st Century. Springer Professional.
- Vieth, Kilian and Thorsten Wetzling (2019). Data-driven Intelligence Oversight: Recommendations for a System Update. Policy Paper.
- Wetzling, Thorsten and Charlotte Dietrich (2021). Report on the need for a Guidance note on Article 11 of the modernised Convention 108. Council of Europe - Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law.
- Vieth, Kilian and Charlotte Dietrich. (2020) New hacking powers for German intelligence agencies. about:intel.
- Dietrich, Charlotte and Thorsten Wetzling. (2020) Wanted: Better safeguards for intelligence in an interconnected world. about:intel.
Forthcoming guardint Publications
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Kniep, R., Ewert, L., Reyes B. L., Tréguer, F., Mc Cluskey, E. and Aradau, C. Towards democratic intelligence oversight: Limits, practices, struggles. Review of International Studies.
- Kniep, R., Naima Roller, S., Vieth-Ditlman, K. and Wetzling, T. How democracies oversee intelligence: Identifying variances in intelligence oversight through an intelligence oversight index
- Richter, F., Wetzling, T., Kniep, R. and Naima Roller, S. Civic intelligence oversight: An empirical analysis of practitioners’ perspectives in France, Germany and the UK.
Publications by Guardint team members
- Aradau, Claudia and Tobias Blanke (2018). Governing others: Anomaly and the algorithmic subject of security. European Journal of International Security, 3(1), 1-21.
- Aradau, Claudia (2017). Assembling (non) knowledge: Security, law, and surveillance in a digital world. International Political Sociology, 11(4), 327-342.
- Aradau, Claudia and Tobias Blanke (2015). The (Big) Data-security assemblage: Knowledge and critique. Big Data & Society, 2 (2), 1-12.
- Bigo, Didier and Laurent Bonelli (2019). Digital data and the transnational intelligence space. In D. Bigo, E. F. Isin, & E. S. Ruppert (Eds.), Data politics: Worlds, subjects, rights (p. 23). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
- Bigo, Didier (2019). Beyond national security, the emergence of a digital reason of state(s) led by transnational guilds of sensitive information: The case of the Five Eyes Plus network. In B. Wagner, M. Kettemann, & K. Vieth, Research Handbook on Human Rights and Digital Technology (pp. 33–52). Edward Elgar Publishing.
- Guild, Elspeth and Thorsten Wetzling (2021) Germany’s BND Act and recent CJEU case law. about:intel.
- Mc Cluskey, Emma and Didier Bigo (2020). Freedom, Technology and Surveillance Paradoxes: Introduction to the Special Issue, International Journal of Migration and Border Studies.
- Mc Cluskey, Emma (2020) Everyday Paradoxes on the EU-Morocco Border: From Dreams to Rights Claims, International Journal of Migration and Border Studies.
- Kniep, Ronja. (2019) Another layer of opacity: How Spies use AI and why we should talk about it. about:intel.
- Kniep, Ronja. (2021) Wer überwacht die digitale Überwachung? Die Kontrolle der Geheimdienste als Gradmesser der Demokratie. WZB-Mitteilungen, (171), S. 15-17.
- Tréguer, Félix (2019). Seeing Like Big Tech: Security assemblages, technology, and the future of state bureaucracy. In D. Bigo, E. Isin, & E. Ruppert (Eds.), Data Politics: Worlds, Subjects, Rights. Routledge.
- Tréguer, Félix (2019). L’utopie déchue: Une contre-histoire d’Internet, XVè-XXIè siècle. Fayard.
- Tréguer, Félix (2018). US Technology Companies and State Surveillance in the Post-Snowden Context: Between Cooperation and Resistance (UTIC Deliverable No. 5). CERI.
- Tréguer, Félix (2017). Intelligence Reform and the Snowden Paradox: The Case of France. Media and Communication, 5(1), 17–28.
- Wetzling, Thorsten (2016). Aufklärung ohne Aufsicht? Über die Leistungsfähigkeit der Nachrichtendienstkontrolle in Deutschland. Schriften zur Demokratie Band 43. Berlin: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.
- Wetzling, Thorsten (2019). Germany’s recent intelligence reform revisited: A wolf in sheep’s clothing? In B. Wagner, M. Kettemann, & K. Vieth, Research Handbook on Human Rights and Digital Technology (pp. 223–245). Edward Elgar Publishing.
- Wetzling, Thorsten (2017). Germany’s intelligence reform: More surveillance, modest restraints and inefficient controls. Policy Brief Stiftung Neue Verantwortung.
- Wetzling, Thorsten (2016). The key to intelligence reform in Germany: Strengthening the G 10-Commission‘s role to authorise strategic surveillance. Policy Brief Stiftung Neue Verantwortung.
- Wetzling, Thorsten and Kilian Vieth (2018). Upping the Ante on Bulk Surveillance: An International Compendium of Good Legal Safeguards and Oversight Innovations. Schriften Zur Demokratie 50. Berlin: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.
- Wetzling, T, Sarkesian, L. and Dietrich, C. Solving the Transatlantic Data Dilemma: Surveillance Reforms to Break the International Gridlock. New America. Washington, D.C.