In the last few months there has been a lot of talk about secret services or the “intelligence community” . Snowden’s leaks have put that topic on the agenda with great force, something that the secret services really did not like. And while many people agree that something is wrong there still are very different ways to deal with the problem at hand .

The first approach is what we’ll call the “realist position”. The “realist” sees the problems with overbearing intelligence activity and wants reforms. These – typically older male – types believe in the idea of intelligence services and see what is going on right now as a problem with the implementation. So they tend to ask for better, stronger (, faster) oversight, for “democratic control” or some similar remix of good sounding words. With the weight of the complexities of the world on their shoulders they explain how “we” need the intelligence community to defend against terror, evil movie plot threats and probably aliens or Nazis living underneath the north pole.

The second approach is what is usually characterized as the “radical position” . The “radicals” say that the intelligence community itself is the problem. That they do not work for democracies because they circumvent all control: Because how can you control something that you cannot see, that keeps secrets from you?

I am a radical by that definition. I believe the intelligence community to be an autoimmune disease of our democracies: Something that was intended to defend us but that has turned against us. And I believe there really is no small and convenient cure.

Now there is one very convincing and powerful argument that the intelligence supporters have on their side: In the past intelligence services have done great things. The allied services cracked the code of the encryption of the Nazi communication making it possible to defeat Nazi Germany. Which I am more thankful for than I can express in writing. And you can probably bring up a ton of examples from the cold war era illustrating how awesome the intelligence community is. Hell, I do enjoy James Bond movies as much as the next person.

But – there is always a but – maybe we do no longer live in the cold war era, maybe we don’t want to see other countries as enemies? Maybe we are past the macho-bullshit of trying to prove that the invented construct called “my country” is so much better than “that other country”? And if not, maybe we should be? The intelligence community belongs into a time of war – hot or cold. Are we in a war? Do we really believe the spin-doctor line of the “war on terror”? Sorry but I don’t.

In the brilliant book “God Emperor of Dune” Frank Herbert wrote

Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained.

In our democracies we try to restrain tendencies toward tyranny by implementing control: Whenever power is being given to an entity or a group there should be another power making sure that misuse of power gets punished. The idea of control is key to our democracy being able to fulfill some of the promises we tied to it: Because what use is a system that forces people to delegate their power to other entities when these entities can do what they want?

The MO of intelligence services is to work in the shadows: Whether you watch Homeland or James Bond or whatever novelization of intelligence activity you want to pick the service holds information back. Usually for “the greater good”, to protect their plans or something similar. Because if some other intelligence service gets that information the plan might be screwed or you create a crisis. That’s just how these services operate. If you tell them “you may only keep secret what is absolutely necessary” they will keep everything secret what is secret now. Because it’s all so bloody fucking important for their plots and schemes and bullshit.

Now we shouldn’t ignore that these services are – in addition to their whole getting secret information from other countries or companies within these countries – very useful to governments. They provide inofficial channels to exchange and disseminate secret information to other countries, even countries you might not officially talk to. Intelligence services are convenient, no doubt.

But our political system, our political philosophy is not based on what is convenient for the government. We claim to care about human rights, about participation and freedoms. Those things don’t come for free. You pay for each and every one of them. Some make things less efficient. Some make things impossible. Some make things inconvenient. And they are all worth it. We gladly pay the price because the reward is worth it.

And now we have to pay the price of not having secret services. There really is no other way. We have seen what the intelligence community has done when it came to surveillance. In Germany the intelligence services have stood idly by when neo-nazis went on a killing spree. Actually they supported the whole neo-nazi scene in the name of getting information. People just wanting better controlled secret services must invest quite some time to ignore all the stories about what these institutions actually do all day. We see no country that has their intelligence services in check. And when things go south some secret services head honcho comes in, spreads some fear, uncertainty and doubt and leaves the room again. No more.

Now we are coming up on the last-ditch effort of the “we need intelligence services” crowd: “But we cannot get rid of our service because all the other countries have them and we need protection!”

Well played. It looks almost as if it makes sense. But what we want is a defense against the operation of secret services against the people. And why should we give that important task to our secret services who have in the past always teamed up with almost any other secret service to get more information? How does that make sense? The intelligence community is an incestous system of changing relationships and exchanges without control and oversight. How are the pieces of that system a reasonable choice to protect us against said system? When we want protection against a mob, we don’t try to get one of the people from the mob as protection. We get the police of some external force that has no ties to that mob.

The intelligence community is the problem. They do what they do because that is what they do. But we don’t live in cold war times anymore (as much as conservative media tries to create some cold cyberwar narrative). We globalize. We work together globally, create connections, friendships, companies. Because the problems coming our way cannot be solved locally or nationally, only globally. And how are we supposed to create trust on a global level when everyone has a figurative gun (their intelligence apparatus) in their pants?

Doesn’t sound reasonable to me.

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