CIAO DATE: 04/05

Democratic and Parliamentary Accountability of Intelligence Services after September 11th.

Abstract

In the past thirty years throughout Europe, the Americas and more sporadically elsewhere the issue of how to institute some democratic control over security intelligence agencies has steadily permeated the political agenda. There have been two main reasons for this change. In what might be described as the 'old' democracies (North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand) the main impetus for change was scandal involving abuses of power and rights by the agencies. Typically, these gave rise to legislative or judicial enquiries that resulted in new legal and oversight structures for the agencies, some of these achieved by statutes, others by executive orders. The best known examples of these are the U.S. congressional enquiries during 1975-76 (chaired by Senator Church and Representative Pike), Justice McDonald's enquiry into the RCMP Security Service in Canada (1977-81) and Justice Hope's into the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (1976-77, 1984-85).

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