ABSTRACT
‘Over the past 5 years, UK law enforcement and intelligence agencies have foiled as many as 25 Islamist-linked plots. That would mean without their vigilance and hard work, we could have seen one attack every 2 months’ (Javid, 2018). ‘The al-Qaeda superspy: how Aimen Dean went from making bombs for Osama bin Laden to working for MI6’; ‘UK human rights panel to investigate police use of child spies’; ‘Britain “must be ready to launch cyberattack”’; ‘MI5 told Ulster force to prioritise sources’; ‘Russian charged with spying tried to infiltrate circles in US, officials allege’; ‘How the GRU spy agency targets the west, from cyberspace to Salisbury’; ‘Isis sympathiser “told undercover officers of suicide plot to kill PM”’; ‘Hamas used fake dating apps to spy on troops, Israel alleges’ (Campbell, 2018; Cobain & Bowcott, 2018; Gayle, 2018; Haynes, 2018; Holmes, 2018; Roth, 2018; Swaine & Beckett, 2018; Quinn, 2018). As the statement by Home Secretary Sajid Javid and this selection of newspaper stories, all taken from a short period in mid-2018, suggest, there is no escape from ethics for the world of secret intelligence. Ethics provides a guide to the standards of behaviour we should adopt and expect of others, determines what actions are acceptable or unacceptable, and how we respond to developments at multiple levels; “what is a cause of pride or shame, or anger or gratitude, or what can be forgiven and what cannot” (Blackburn, 2001, p. 1). But intelligence also represents a distinctive ethical realm which requires careful consideration in thinking about standards of behaviour and acceptability. Ethics is clearly an important dimension of intelligence practice, but how should we approach the teaching of it? What do we teach when we teach intelligence ethics? This chapter sets out to suggest some answers to these questions.
