Davos 2015 - The Future of the Inteligence Agencies

music a very good afternoon to all of you a warm welcome to this session on the future of intelligence services I think some of you were probably present at the last session which was the future of militaries and I will say once again just as I said then that this is a historic first because well the World Economic Forum has been discussing almost all conceivable topics we have never ever had a panel on the future of intelligence services as such and there's no coincidence that this is happening right now at the beginning of 2015 we've been through remarkable and well the dramatic year in many aspects 2014 we which in the sense both so the further rise of a three metric tranches most typically illustrated by the rise of the Islamic state which is not only operating in the Middle East but also has many links to terrorism going on in other parts of the world including close to here and at the same time something we did not conceive about conceived of a year ago the full-scale conflict in Europe in Ukraine which is basically a total collapse of trust between Russia the European Union and the US so we're living in a dramatic world and the intelligence services have a complicated role in trying to help understand what's going on in this complicated world which is in many ways getting more difficult for a few years the discussion about the intelligence service and surveillance was marked by the Snowden revelations and by strong emphasis on on containing the work of intelligence services I think today maybe there is a slightly new tone to the debate given that after all the public good that is provided by intelligence and surveillance agencies also has prevented for instance terrorist attacks so it's a big question with many dimensions we are extremely fortunate to have a brilliant parent panel helping us to understand this we have general Sheldon Hagen who is Lieutenant General Grant Augen who is a head of the Norwegian intelligence service we have drone sawyers - until a few months ago ran the mi6 the British Foreign Intelligence Service and we have Jamaat Aquino who has a distinguished career in the UN now head of International Crisis Group but he was also involved in a major overhaul of a French security defense and intelligence thinking a few years ago so that's the cost and I would actually like to challenge general Graham Hagen first say a little bit about how your work looks given the complicated developments in the world that what are your main concerns and challenges when it comes to the service that you are leading and the services that your cooperating with as I think in in in order to discuss the future of intelligence and intelligence agencies it would be of interest to look back a few years I've been in the job for five years and I've seen the the tasks of intelligence changing a lot during these five years I'll make four points first of all the change of the sort of terrorist threat that we are facing five years ago terrorism was something that foreign intelligence agencies were it's something happening out there in the world that could be projected into our societies today obviously as we've seen Illustrated in recent weeks that has changed completely terrorism is now something that is among us on a daily basis homegrown people some of them going through jihad abroad then returning some only influenced by terrorist organizations out there urging action in their home countries so obviously that challenge is intelligence agencies in order to operate quite differently cooperating much more between external services and internal services in order to deal with that the second area that has developed significantly is cyber space five years ago that was not on top of the agenda now it definitely is with two aspects really one is in foreign intelligence agencies are crucial in determining the threats that face us in cyberspace because we have the global outlook and foreign intelligence eight agencies are those who are able to attribute threats that we observe to certain actors out there the third important change relates to what you pointed out has been the reappearance of interstate conflict very close to Europe and for my agency we have always followed that potential risk or threat coming out of that but I think for many intelligence agencies both in Europe and elsewhere that reappearance of interstate conflict is something that has forced us to change focus to a large extent and finally of course the fourth point the Snowden leaks which put a great focus on intelligence agencies portrayed in media in the way that intelligence agencies pose a significant threat to individuals around the globe to privacy and to the rights of individuals something that in my view has been largely overstated in my view very few if any intelligence agencies around the globe are really interested individuals except those who actually pose a major threat to societies so even if some intelligence agencies collect collect enormous amount of information there is a significant difference in my view between a mass collection of information and what is called mass surveillance I think it's very important and I think you indicated that in your opening statement that seeing the threats that now are clear and present in our part of the world there is more of an understanding that intelligence agencies have a very important job to do to balance the activities that intelligence agencies will have to do with privacy and individual rights that is something that our politicians must look into and find that right balance they will never be anything like 100 percent security there will never be 100% privacy striking that balance is the challenge of our politicians also yours as very recent head of mi6 one of the world's most know-nothing foreign intelligence services particularly thanks to a relatively famous film how do you what have been your thoughts about striking that right balance as the world moves along well the balance which balance you talking about between security and I'm not sure there's a trade-off between security and privacy it's not as if the more security you get the less privacy you have all the more privacy you have the less security you have these you know in a free society like we enjoy in the West your freedoms are guaranteed by security and if security goes down if you subject your society is subject to a series of attacks whether they're terrorist attacks or cyber attacks then people's privacy goes down as well and meanwhile if the security goes up their privacy goes up as well and so the the job of Western governments is to find the optimal levels of privacy and security so both are maximized do people in your country understand what you do or what the services are doing as a public good I think they do we had a recent survey done by the Edelman Trust Barometer of trust in various groups of business and government and NGOs and the media and they're all in there going in the wrong direction and they're all below 50% I think NGOs were just above 50% but descending quite rapidly actually the police and these security intelligence services were up around 70% which Richard Adelman described as is to die for and I think that does reflect the fact that first of all we are contributing to a very real public good in the Sims in the sense not just of national security but combating crime and contributing through our SIGINT agency to child protection and and and combating pedophilia and so on and defending national institutions and our and the companies based in the UK from cyberattacks from overseas everybody recognizes these are real threats I think actually one of the big changes of the last five years over the last ten years probably is that the intelligence services are now the frontline in national defense against the modern threats that our societies face that's put us more in the in the spotlight it means we've got to accept the greater degree of greater openness and accountability and I think that in turn will reinforce the levels of public support that we enjoy thank you very much let's come back to the issue of trust because I think it's the key issue in this but first to Joe Murray you know building on what tom sawyer's just said then based on your work on national defense security and intelligence in in france which i think in many cases are typical issues for any large modern country how do you place the new challenges to the intelligence services in that broader context well I think one of the challenges is that the distinction between the domestic issues and the international issues is eroding you have Nationals who are connected to international network like the terrorists who did the attacks in in Paris and of course the laws that apply to Nationals are not the legal framework that applies to international operations and so that raises both legal and operational challenges the legal challenge is what what legal framework will be able to protect the liberties the freedom of the citizens and the operational challenge is a question of cooperation so that because the threat is mobile and so you can't deal with your territory and ignore the territory the neighbor and that cooperation requires trust so you need trust between the intelligence organization and the population it protects you need also trust between the various intelligence organization and so this is quite quite a new world for let me build on that's a very interesting point because just also for everyone in the audience and everybody else on the planet are probably citizens of one or maybe two states and which means they're foreigner in 192 or more other states and since the rules protecting nationals is different from foreigners and since intelligence services deal with foreigners which means your for your nationalists my nationals you foreigner and your foreigners my national what what kind of challenges does this international cooperation lead to in that in that aspect well I think there's a Norwegian you need to have too much to worry about from from our services and also actually in our system in the UK and I think in the European Union is that you don't discriminate on the grounds of nationality no not every country has that arrangement United States is different and has different protections for u.s. nationals than for non nationals but for our intelligence collection is focused on those who threaten our society and those who can provide intelligence central to national security it's not based on nationality now the points on cooperation are really important and jean marie gainer has mentioned cooperation between services within one state and and certainly the old stovepipe systems where you're humans agency or SIGINT agency in your domestic security service operated in different different stovepipes that that is a thing of the past now the these services have to operate very closely together and jean marie mention the horrific attacks in in paris two weeks ago and they had connections from in france overseas and the way of monitoring those activities it requires all forms of intelligence and obviously within a clear legal framework and also requires intensive cooperation between services in different countries no obviously between European services or with our American partners that's relatively straightforward it is more complicated in other societies which don't have the same values or the same degree of respect for human rights that we have but nonetheless a degree of cooperation is needed and needs to be carefully regulated but your point about I know the Snowden revelations have raised concerns about collection so a friend on friends style collection but now that's a very small proportion of any modern intelligence agencies work it's all about the the massive threats we've got not just the of terrorism and cyber but also the threats posed by by chaos or States acting erratically or illegally in in in different parts of the world of course turn that question on its head by saying that it probably is quite a need to be able to follow what your own Nationals are doing in faraway places the government of which may be collaborative but not up to the standard so this is a challenge the other way around yes absolutely I mean the the I think we see it in the same way in Norway our focus is on those who can pose a threat to our society whether those being foreigners or they are being Norwegian nationals the new dimension of it over the the last few years as I mentioned is the fact that our own nationals are doing things that I didn't do in the past and which requires also us to follow that activity when it takes place outside our borders inside our borders obviously it's the internal security services to do that the other thing that comes out of that is obviously the larger need for a thorough coordination between the internal service and what we're doing Stanley the you you mentioned general the the advent of cyber I mean after all the Cold War and the 25 years ago and the world wide web was invented 24 years and five years ago there was no connection between the two fact but it means that the end the whole the last quarter of a century has really changed the way we connect and communicate in ways which nobody really thought about before is it helpful to their services represented here that people live their lives online but I think that the challenge there is the the haystack has become interesting yeah and that's that's a great difficulty and I in a great help we used to focus I think I mean all organization used to focus on the needle you you you want to do surveillance on that on one particular individual because he might be he or she might be a threat now you all data are interesting because if you have good computers you will detect the anomaly that will then point you to a potential a potential risk and that's the problem of mass collection of data versus mass surveillance that was mentioned by by the by the general and an intelligence organization today spend the growing amount of its money on the on technology on acquiring very powerful computers to be able to manipulate ax that that can be collected many of those data are data that not at all secret there are data that may be collected from telecommunications companies metadata in the who called whom etc but they're also data that are just available and actually the intelligence organizations are not the only ones collecting those data I mean all the major companies involved in the internet and Google is being the most famous do just do just that the challenge there is how do you make sure that that massive collection of data respects the law and having oversight in those areas which are very complicated from a technological standpoint is not the same as asking a judge in a traditional system I want to put surveillance on mr. X and you produce a file and the judge looks at it and says well yeah that's fine if you serve to a commission an algorithm to say we would want to do that kind of surveillance that's a much trickier activity to to control and I think this is the difficult that difficulty is what makes the public nervous and I think I understand that nervousness myself I'm nervous because I think there can be it can be abused though it can be misunderstood and so I think there and to answer your question we have a I think the security apparatus has an enormous help but we need to wrap to ramp up the quality of the oversight to make sure that that extraordinary multiplier that technology provides does not destroy the trust between the organization that use the technology in the general public in general just to follow up on summary there during the the time of the this the Snowden leaks we often got the the the question why do you have to do this mass collection of metadata for example why don't you just concentrate on the terrorists and of course the ply is very very well to those terrorists that you actually know from before but the problem now is the terrorists you don't know about and the threats you don't know about and in order to find those threat in my view threats in my view it is very difficult to avoid collecting data more broadly so how can we do that and maintain the trust of these societies and in my view there are three very important things there first of all it is intelligence activity including foreign intelligence in the intelligence activity has to be regulated by national law there has to be a legal framework for what we do that is very well understood and in all parts of society the second one is we need authorization mechanisms for the various efforts and in various matters that we have to use to do this this also has to have be legitimized in the societies that we live in and the third element is oversight mechanisms in Norway we have a very thorough oversight mechanisms which I appreciate very much I find that very useful to what we're doing it helps my people doing their job correctly and it gives legitimacy in the Norwegian society both at a political level but also among the population so if we are going to do these things that some extent intrude into or is that least perceived intruding into private lives we need to build that trust with those types of mechanisms thank you those three points so obviously our lives would be much easier if all these terrorists and so on use the single system of bad guys calm and then we could just go but sadly they don't and it would be slightly bizarre if all the advances in technology and the use of Bob data analysis which are improving our our the performance of business improving the healthcare delivery and so on somehow national security weren't allowed to use it and that would be a very odd thing to do to say that the most fundamental element of government's responsibility can't use modern advanced technology so I very much agree that we need to be able to move forward in this areas but with the right right level of regulation the second thing I'd say and you you ask our Stefan about whether it moving onto a virtual knife makes life easier well up to a point because the way in which the technology companies have reacted in the wake of the Snowden leaks means that the level of cooperation between technology companies and and intelligence agencies has gone down and that's that's that's added to the threat in some ways that we face because the intelligence collection is not as effective as it was before and the advances in technology mean that you could create complete go areas on the on the internet which just impossible for there to be any supervision or monitoring of what's happening on those on those systems now we learnt long ago you can't have no-go areas for the police in our communities where they can't go in and they can't reinforce the enforce the rule of law because then you just give an open door to the people who want to cause damage and want to commit crimes and so on it's the same on the internet if you create a completely closed sector of the internet which is completely impenetrable and possible to monitor you're creating it you may feel a bit better that if you use it no one can access your bank account or no one can can see what you're saying to to your friends and family but you're also creating a perfect environment for evildoers or whatever types they may be to go about their trade this latter point is extremely relevant here since I'm sure in the audience there are many people from the ite or telecom or service provider industry how would you ideally like to see the relationship between the service you just led and them be well I don't have a monopoly on on wisdom on this I and the technology killed without you the technology companies have got I've got serious interests that need to be respected they're contributing hugely to the advances in modern society I think there needs to be a serious exchange a serious dialogue between the technology companies and governments the attack we had in the UK about two years ago where a soldier was killed by by a couple of young thugs inspired by Islam well their exchanges on Facebook that could have that could have revealed the air intentions could have attracted surveillance towards those individuals and prevented that that atrocity from being being committed now I think the technology companies do want to contribute to put wider public goods but they've been sort of seriously put off by some of the populist reactions to the the the leaks that came out from stony you need to find a new balance in here so there needs to be a proper dialogue it needs to can all the elements that she'll was was pointing to on the intelligence side and on the technology company's side they need to be able to provide commitments on privacy but that doesn't mean that they should be completely isolated from the the agencies that are preserving our society's security very interesting when John Podesta reported to President Obama recently I think it was about 18 months ago on the use of Bob data in government Podesta highlighted the intelligence agencies as having the most advanced and sophisticated systems of protecting privacy in areas of use of Bob data far far advanced from those that commercial companies operate and that's that's not bad for John Podesta to have said that in a report to President Obama in the wake of the of the Snowden leaks so I just put that on the table as a sort of standards that we have you know we in the security community care about privacy I do sometimes have a concern that those in the privacy advocates they just take security for granted and don't realize it has to be worked for I don't totally agree there because I I do think that there's a big question on how you ensure security whether you do it through a very centralized system of oversight well of course there is no go area there is no no-go area or whether you in a world where if you weaken the systems to protect communication the bad guys will also use them and whether the future for security is not in having strong encryption that cannot where there's no back there is no possibility of breaking that so yes it is a no-go area but it fragments the cyberspace and protects every actor and that will also make life difficult for the fault for the bad guys it's a it's a different model but I'm a little nervous that the notion that we need system that we can access they will be accessed also by the bad guys that's very important when you think of cyber war Fair where you can sue cyberattacks you can kill a lot of people if you disrupt what a distribution system like to learn are all the vital infrastructures is the best way to protect those systems to have a capacity of the state to go everywhere and so have the back doors or is it by making sure that there is a kind of gradual strengthening of encryption that will make it very difficult for anybody to exploit the weaknesses of this I know you have a view on this but I'll open it up for for the audience for a second first question is here we have a microphone Mohammed Jafar from Kuwait my question is for you sir John how effective is the intelligence community been propagating the message to the public that they are there for the protection and for the promotion of security for the longest time people didn't know about the agencies there was Snowden affect suddenly and what you've written about in the financial times what you're repeating now about encryption that we're allowing the hood to walk the streets with a mask but we're not allowing the police and law enforcement to go into these streets I think that's a very powerful message but has it been spread enough in the social media we will collect a few questions thank you very much very interesting and I just think one issue that came out clearly in some of the lessons we need to learn from the post 9/11 period is perhaps lack of oversight and perhaps abuse by intelligence communities and and have we learned from these lessons and for wine and the second question is there is a difference between intelligence for the state for the sake of national security and then intelligence for the sake of of criminal prosecutions which is a vital part of our response because ultimately these tariffs are committing terrible crimes and they need to be brought to justice but is there blurring of lines between intelligence for national security and intelligence for for law enforcement and is that a good or a bad thing thank you good one last question here um let me put you on a spot John I think we can all agree with what you said that there needs to be a discussion about the supervision and oversight of intelligence agencies but what specifically would you propose okay well if I could have first the first and third questions I think on the on the first question I think the era when a publicly funded institution could just operate completely behind closed doors that's behind us and I think those agencies that continue to work in that way were caught out by the Snowden revelations the Snowden leaks because they didn't have a body of public understanding about the positives that they were working to I've certainly tried during my year my five years as chief of mi6 to open us up a little bit to do it in public through public speeches through appearances open appearances in front of our parliamentary committee and also to involve more people from the media and from Parliament and business bring them inside our famous headquarters on the Thames and to to explain a bit more about what we do and I think you have to in a modern society you have to earn the trust you have to keep on building the trust you can't just assume that trust so we do have to adapt to this very much so in terms of the specific oversights and controls in the in my time as chief we saw a strengthening of the law which enhanced the role of the parliamentary committee so that they get right into operational detail and you know it's it's quite bracing when you're up before Malcolm Rifkind and his committee to respond on on how certain operations were managed and whether they were effective enough we've had a strengthening of the two judges that provide ongoing oversight one of intelligence operations and the other interception operations and they are expanding their role into areas like bulk data as well and it's like having an ongoing judge led inquiry into the work of the intelligence agencies now I don't say we've got a perfect is not perfect for all time but the combination of clear ministerial authorizations what we do judicial oversight of the legality of what we do parliamentary oversight of the appropriateness and accountability for what we do I think these are pretty strong measures in place to ensure that what we're doing is indeed in the public interest as I said I think the high levels of trust that we get from the UK much higher than the most of the other sectors of society actually reflects that blurring of lines is it happening it is the good or bad thing and I would add is it possible to avoid then why should we Learning Alliance blurring of lines between the you know national surveillance and foreign intelligence intelligence and evidence collection I think he was all that okay the question was on intelligence and evidence collection yeah well in terms of gathering evidence in in Norway that is solely the role of the internal services and the police so we don't have any any role in that at all our two major tasks here is to give warning in the cases that we can give warning or threats to the society to to to to the country but also in general to collect the information that will help our our politicians make better decisions realizing that that information does not only come from open sources it also comes from information that is not generally accessible I in in our country I don't see a blurred lines here I think it's clearly distinguished by law there's specific law regulating the police and the police security service activities and there is a specific law regulating the work of the foreign foreign intelligence agency and in general none of the information that we collect abroad can be used in proceedings nationally on the blurring of lines I think it's it would be a very dangerous thing because the whole idea of a judiciary process is that the accused has access to all the elements of the accusation and an intelligence organization cannot divulge all the all its sources in and so it's really to two different logics and on the oversight I think we're still badly lagging in democratic countries in terms of having effective oversight for signal intelligence because interceptions is one thing but big data management of mass of information that requires a whole new level of sophistication technological sophistication to to supervise that and I see the voice that needs to understand it yes to sue and that is not there let's take two more quick questions one is here technologies which are being manufactured the new programs are you know being introduced by United States or by British or Norway are the countries who can really be brought into the world for the security point of the view I'd like to know the panel thank you what's the concept on yeah yes right we had the question here countries in Europe ranks increasingly diverse are your agencies reflecting that diversity in order to be able to tap into all the resources of human intelligence that you can get or you need to get thank you and then the ladies is that going the lady back in the back here first fascinating panel thank you so much one thing that we haven't heard about is the role of human intelligence heist that is changing particularly as part of the the terrorist that is it it's very homegrown and I think the last one will be here actually it was Padma of my question aren't we trying to rely too much on data and cyber intelligence and putting completely aside human intelligence on the ground and aren't we at threat an organization that would intentionally not be on any form of social whatever cyberspace places and be completely in the dark until the moment they're gonna hit John will you still need James Bond or can you the film about the computer won't be as fun so James Bond is a great is a great set of movies but actually the reality is is not individuals out there operating on their own but very very close teamwork but I rather agree with this this sense that and there has been a big focus recently partly because of Snowden on signals intelligence but you can't task signals intelligence in the same way you can't ask a human agent and so human intelligence provides you with a quality and a feel for what is happening inside another organization or a hostile somebody who's hostile towards you that signals intelligence doesn't provide the same degrees but it's a combination of the two and increasingly the two are are working together and any policymaker will want to know what is the policy analysis what is the signals intelligence saying and what is the human intelligence saying before they come to a decision and then sorry and just to make the point that the diversity point I'm not sure quite what diversity you're referring to but any successful organization these days has to be diverse in every regard has them the whole range of skills you have to have professionalization within your organization on technology on Finance and how you manage your talent you need to draw from the full spectrum of society there was a time certainly when I first joined the intelligence service back at the end of the 1970s women were a rarity except as in support roles now women play an absolutely central role on the front line and likewise people of different ethnic minorities and backgrounds it's only its diverse teams provoke provide a much stronger come then the monochrome teams do humans in this context obviously not only operators out there but also the people to interpret all the data I guess the more the more information you have the more is necessary to have a human brain to actually understand what matters absolutely and and I would draw the attention to the fact my energy my agency is a multi source intelligence agency we do signals intelligence we do other types of technical intelligence like Network intelligence imagery intelligence open source intelligence is extremely important in this so there is a there is a multitude of different ways that we collect information and as you point out on top of this it is the analytic process that puts all this together and it's able both to put together a picture of the facts but also to make predictions on what will happen in the future those are the very important roles of an intelligence agency so there is more than just signals intelligence and human intelligence but I fully agree with we John that that that human intelligence is still going to be extremely important and there are things that you cannot replace by technical means that needs to be done by humans in the future especially if you want to disrupt thank you we're coming towards an end I'll give you the floor I just want to say that you know they cook the product products that the service is produced of course can be specific on the defined target but also a very important analysis of larger trends some of that information might be very useful beyond the borders of the state that produce it maybe also for the global public good the World Economic Forum is here to improve the state of the world as we say and is there any is there any way for instance you go back to your UN background is there a way that to build on the collective intelligence that is being created by advanced intelligence services for more sort of long-term global good I think there is because we are focused I think in this debate largely on tactical intelligence where you need to combine the humans and decision to know whether there's going to be an attack in Paris Oslo any any other capital London any other capital that's one thing but then there is the understanding of the world the prevention and there there is now a continuum between the kind of work that intelligence organization can do with their computing power the kind of work that private companies like Google can do with their own computing power and the need of the general public which does need to make the use of those public of those data to be able to anticipate to see that there is a situation deteriorating in that particular place and that since prevention is such so much better than cure how you can address that and there I think we need to see how intelligence organization can work more cooperatively with the United Nations not just to provide tactical intelligence to peacekeepers so that they don't get killed by in a terrorist attack but strategic intelligence so that the United Nations the world and globally can be more you know preventive move than any reactive mode and that's that's in a way the most fundamental issue very nice question is this an area where we can foresee some kind of public-private cooperation I wouldn't go as far as you Marie actually I think if you want to have effective intelligence and security agencies they're going to have to you have to accept that they're going to have to operate largely in secret accountably but largely in secret and and learn I'm very fond of United Nations and you and I worked together in New York Sean Murray in previous roles but the United Nations is not a place where you can put in sensitive information and I have reliability is gonna stay secret so you have to build a degree a degree of a large degree of trust here and you know people's lives are at stake we've talked about human intelligence penetrations the individuals who do this work are phenomenally brave and committed individuals who are very exposed and if a piece of information which only they could have access to becomes public then they get exposed and they get to subject not just to arrest but quite quite often of torturing and death so we are a huge responsibility of these people who are contributing to the defense of our societies and we have to accept that one cost of this is that a lot of the information is going to have to remain secret I mean I don't I I think the futurologists have not been very successful in the last 15 years predicting what the next threats are going to be I think we as intelligence agencies we can try and contribute to best understanding of trends and and and areas of instability and threats and so on but above all we have to have the capability kept fresh and live and and deployable quickly in order to react effectively to where new threats so much thank you everything World Economic Forum we do not predict that we do strategic foresight it was really good to have this panel as time was short it was the first but not the last thank you to all three of you for for speaking openly about this and thank you

Channel: World Economic Forum

Views: 7,901

Rating: 4.8431373 out of 5

Keywords: world economic forum, WEF, Davos, Davos2015

Id: 6vC4XY8BSMk

Length: 42min 58sec (2578 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 24 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/Synux]

"No go area" is what they're calling encryption.