Abstract
There is a debate to be had on whether or not intelligence can be carried out ethically and what this would look like. What activities should be involved, who should be targeted, what the balance between the harm to the individual versus protecting the wider political community should be and what obligations – if any – do intelligence actors have to those outside the state are all key ethical questions that need to be addressed. This chapter focuses on these issues, concluding that trust between the people, the government and its institutions is vital if the state wishes to continue. In particular, it addresses some of the key concerns that intelligence activity might give rise to as well as some of main ways of discussing whether or not we should or could find them justified. These tools represent the first step in establishing a clear set of ethical intelligence activities.
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Bellaby, R. (2017). The Ethics of Intelligence. In: Dover, R., Dylan, H., Goodman, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Security, Risk and Intelligence. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53675-4_22
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