Oversight and intelligence networks: Who guards the guardians?

GUARDINT aims to address and redress the gap between increasingly transnational surveillance practices and national oversight mechanisms. Due to the expansion of intelligence networks and digital data collection and sharing, the traditional ways to understand and to practice the control of intelligence services have become dated and inefficient. Yet, robust intelligence oversight is crucial for the legitimacy of and public confidence in modern security. GUARDINT builds empirical and conceptual tools to shed light on the limitations and potential of oversight mechanisms. It theorises 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.

The project will build impact through the threefold strategy of communication, collaboration and capacity building with five categories of beneficiaries: European oversight professionals, intelligence professionals, NGOs reviewing oversight practices, telecommunication companies, students and ordinary citizens. We will communicate through a variety of media, adapted to each category of beneficiaries (from doctoral workshops, academic articles, online resources to the toolkit for oversight professionals and NGOs). The digital visualisation and the composite intelligence index are aimed at a broader range of civil society actors, the press, international organisations and the general public. Given that focus of the project relies on research and building up collaboration through transnational networks, we aim to participate in these networks, drawing upon their expertise and sharing the results of our research.