Truth-seeking and the principles of discrimination, necessity, proportionality and reciprocity in national security intelligence activity

Abstract

National security intelligence is information or other data collected, analyzed and disseminated by intelligence agencies (in particular) and done so in the service of these agencies’ primary institutional purpose (Miller 2010), at least in liberal democracies. Here it is understood that this institutional purpose and these actions are to be understood normatively, that is in terms of what ought to be done, as opposed to what is in fact being done. Here, the term “normative” has a moral or ethical loading, for example what ought to be done is typically what morally ought to be done all things considered (including consideration of the empirical facts). 1 Moreover, these essentially epistemic (from the Greek word, “episteme”, meaning knowledge) or evidence-based truth-seeking activities of collection, analysis and dissemination are the main ones performed by national security agencies. That said, many of these agencies also perform kinetic tasks, for example the covert operations conducted by the United States CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), and on occasion tasks that might be referred to as quasi-epistemic, for example psychological “warfare”.