‘Grey Intelligence’: The Private and Informal Future

Abstract

At first glance this is an awkward chapter. I will be entering a foglike world of intelligence, espionage and (private) spooks. Intelligence (and espionage) — according to some the second profession after prostitution, and often in conjunction with it — largely falls outside of the realm of police research (and criminology). But again, referring to the political function of policing in Chapters 1 and 2, national security and intelligence have always been, and will always be, closely connected with policing. This world of spooks by nature is underresearched, but what also is neglected is the fact that spooks always intelligence always has, and has even more today, a private equivalent of CIA, MI5 and AIVD. Factual intelligence, as is discussed for factual policing in the first two chapters, is somewhat more complex and diversified than quid pro quo obligatory discussions (let alone scientific work) on what this is all about. This chapter is on the privatisation of what is supposedly a state monopoly, which is a fiction. I need the chapter for two reasons. First, I wish to break away once again from normal science and to break away from commonsense ideas about policing and security. Outside the state apparatus there are private actors performing the same intelligence functions as the state. Second, for my ‘ironies, myths and paradoxes’ perspective, I need this chapter to draw attention here (and in following chapters) to the drawbacks of interweaving. Also, in this domain of secrecy.