Domestic and Foreign Intelligence of the UK and US - Research Paper Example

Domestic and Foreign Intelligence of the United Kingdom and United States Compare and Contrast The Intelligence breakdowns often lead to a say for inauguration of reforms in the United States. The Intelligence Community gives the remedies for perceived procedural, functional, or real systematic, regulatory or structural impediments. It is debatable as the events of 9/11 were a basis for strategic or tactical failure; it was referred to as ‘prima facie’ failure of intelligence both domestic and foreign in the United States. A possible medication that was suggested in a reply to 9/11 is the organization of domestic intelligence agency which was a further endeavor of the British Domestic and Foreign Intelligence called as MI5. Most analysts say that as the British are more experience as far as terrorism is concerned as they have had more experience with democratic governmental form, they may be of huge value to United States influence and institution in the United States of America. A recent visit of British Home Secretary David Blunkett to United States to meet Tom Ridge, United States Homeland Security Secretary, to create an Anti-Terrorism Group of Working, as a aftermath to control the antiterrorism United Kingdom experience (Congress , 2003). There are lessons that should be learnt from United Kingdom’s experience with ht domestic intelligence, United Kingdom and United States bear vivid differences between British and U.S legal, governmental, political, and cultural norms. Politically, the basic difference between United States and British democratic governance is the point that British does not have nay written constitution which highlights the individual rights as does the United States constitution does. Furthermore, the system practiced in United Kingdom emphasizes more in national power of politics in one Parliament, but in the United States the power is carried out via federalism. Differences such this have significant costs for individual freedom and rights are weighed with the state’s responsibilities to give security for the entire population (Congress , 2003). On the organizational level, British has a separate entity of domestic intelligence which is called MI5 which is a result of many law regulation firms. However, the United States has chosen to bring together both domestic intelligence and federal law enforcement in accordance of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - a firm of Justice Department. The advancement in organizational structure is the consequence of a complicated interaction between exclusive understandings with arenas of terrorism, societal cultural differences and cultures of intelligence organizational norms, law enforcement, legal orders, and several other factors. The amalgamation may enhance the coordination of the functions of integrity, but can also weaken the development and focus of specialization in skill required to prosper in every area (terrorismlawseminar, 2012). There are many lucid similarities in the function both United Kingdom and United States domestic and foreign intelligence work in both the countries but there are vast differences between jurisdiction and oversight between United States of America and British approach to foreign and domestic intelligence which must be considered in the discussion of U.S and British society model. First of all, a clear and precise difference prevails in the democratic system of both the countries. United Kingdom works on unitary parliamentary democracy, against the congressional/ presidential federalism strong tradition of United States of America. The spirit of difference dwells in powers of executive branch, within which British system pertains in presidency of United States and the Cabinet. The Prime Minister of United kingdom is the head of major party in House of Commons and different forms of the Cabinet. As an outcome of Parliament and Cabinet, the executive of United Kingdom has lesser difficulties in the development of policy and accomplishment than the United States president (Central Intelligence Agency, 2012). The basic fundamental difference ; perhaps an even more fundamental difference between United Kingdom and United States is the premise that the U.K has written, formal constitution which comprises of many rights for the individuals while Untied States does not. Many standards, Acts of Parliament have increased over the decade so that the democratic forms of government are more highly used both in the United Kingdom and United States. The final result will be that Supreme Court in America has final statement to make over US. Laws of constituency, comprising of governmental involvement in lives of United States citizen in name of domestic and security intelligence; the Parliament is the total power in the United Kingdom (Burch, 2007). The domestic intelligence of each country is an aftermath of the sole experience with cultural highlighting of government of both the countries with terrorism in gaining freedom in the daily lives of all individuals. Each of the countries have a differing and unique balance between security and civil/freedom liberty, this balance shifts from perceived or real threats posed to the security of the nation. The exceptional experiences with the terrorism of IRA during the years 1960s and 1970s included the sponsorship of the state as the United Kingdom “Agencies” have focused on strong portion of efforts related to domestic and foreign to focus on both international and IRA groups of terrorists. Furthermore, the way the United Kingdom has institutionalized to overcome foreign intelligence activity and terrorism such as espionage has been different than of what United States perceives as it has come up to a very difference amount of balance among the security goals and opposing civil liberties. The tradition of keeping separate domestic intelligence, law enforcement, and the foreign intelligence services came into existence in the earlier stages of United Kingdom. This custom involved as an outcome of preference to safeguard against the organization of “police state” and many throughout competitive relations between internationally an domestic oriented law enforcement and intelligence in the early 20th Century. Regardless of an analogous United States predisposition to safeguard the making of secret police and historical encounters with the entities of intelligence, both foreign and domestic agencies are different (Burch, 2007). Al-Qaeda launched a massive strike on September 11, 2001 by making use of airlines as a tool for mass destruction in the United States. In terms of service, it has created significantly low cost to have billions of dollars in the damage. The emotional consequence was so overwhelming and provoked a huge reply and restructure of the government of United States to battle this shocking threat. This reorganization was a very close assessment of FBI (Federal bureau of Investigation). An inquiry of Congress followed the 9//11 and also came up with many shortcomings of FBI. The decentralized structure of the FBI and insufficient IT urged the Bureau incapable to associate the knowledge given by the components. The FBI did not have much intelligence from the cases all across the nation to create an overall reorganization of the presence of Al-Qaeda in United States of America. Also, the FBI field offices did not take into account counterterrorism as their top most priority because they had little or no information about Al-Qaeda. Moreover, FBI was not at all good in informing the policy makers of terrorist activity extent in United States of America even though FBI made several investigations, the pieces never fit in the bigger picture (Burch, 2007). The findings also showed a gap in the domestic intelligence arena, and as a consequence, have led to many huge governmental proposals and FBI initiatives. An additional organizational substitute is to make the agency of domestic intelligence to rely completely on the domestic collection and intelligence. Advocates of domestic intelligence agency have come up with this substitute as one of the best option to say for the domestic intelligence gap more efficiently. In an effort to combat this gap, several further issues were highlighted. Firstly, there are varying points of view as the notion that domestic intelligence tool should be tied and remain with FBI in contrast to setting up a completely different new entity. Secondly, the establishment of one more bureaucracy increases the concerns about efficiency of the sharing of information. Thirdly, enhanced hubs on the domestic intelligence lead to the raised concerns about oversight and the civil liberties. If we explore the structures of domestic intelligence of Australia, United Kingdom, and India in the above mentioned three issues, it will help us definitely in influencing the capability of all of these structures and also present accomplishments of the United States of America (Burch, 2007). The supporters of a distinct domestic intelligence firm highlight many benefits. First benefit is a traditional one which is making of a firm that would stress on the obligation Government bears in safeguarding against any sudden attack. Domestic Intelligence Agency is made to first focus on the terrorism both domestically and foreign and then focus on building on emerging and classifying threat which is held domestically. Generating a firm severely highlighted on the mission of domestic threat and reducing the gap of bureaucratic alterations and high organizational changes made since the September 11, 2001 attack (Helms, 2003). Secondly, intrinsic opposition existed between resource intelligence, focus and enforcement of law in the country. People who promote domestic intelligence firms say that the function of FBI is always a second person’s role when enforcing the practices of law so that predominance of the leadership of FBI is enacted by the law enforcement agencies. Now uniting these two objectives make the domestic agency to function in carrying directions all around the world so that there are no inefficiencies under one roof. Last, but not the least, it is far much easy to hire, execute the work of undercover and take the benefit that Muslim base gives in the Unites States. The growth of baseline of domestic intelligence to classify attacks of terrorism in arenas of efforts of planning, cells, and many underground networks of support will be able to frankly advocate the efforts of investigation. For supporters, a transformed edge by the firm of domestic intelligence devoted to growing the resources of intelligence in United States of America which should bolster the efforts of prevention (Mello, 2000) There are remarkable discrepancies between the United Kingdom and United States. In Britain, the system of parliament the authority of executive is subdivided between head of government and head of state too. The Prime Minister is the head of Government is dependent on advocating of parliament or legislative branch. The support is shown by casting a vote; vote could be of both a confidence or of no confidence. The difference between the legislative and executive governmental branches is very much obvious in United States of America. Many other distinctions are those of culture and language between the two countries. Some of the basic differences amount to the small geography of United Kingdom as compared to the vast areas covered by the United States. Further, U.K has less security and broader control than America. Taking into consideration both the differences and similarities between the two countries, there must be given some value in realizing the efficiency of MI5 of United Kingdom. The capability and application of the practices of United Kingdom MI5 certain criteria is set up on which the yardsticks of better enhancement are set. These include the task being feasible, i.e. it can be achieved using the resources and forces. Secondly the task should be suitable considering the accomplishment of mission if tasks are laid out in a successful manner. Thirdly it should be acceptable so that results are supportable on a political platform (Leary, 1984). Military Intelligence 5 (MI5) is the Security Service which is practiced in Britain. It is the information agency acting domestically. MI5 is in charge of replying to a wide variety of security threats posed that comprises of counterintelligence, terrorism, institutionalized crimes, and tools of mass destruction. The Military intelligence or MI5 works under Home Ministry of United Kingdom, which is by means has no equivalence to United States. This Service of Security is a tier0one intelligence firms. The MI6 or the Secret Intelligence Service rather deals with GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) and foreign intelligence, and is also reliable for making efforts to break the code and to face communications cuts (Monje, 2008). The MI5 is build to maintain domestic observation operations with regard to a large number of targets, but it never takes into consideration the arrest powers working independently. The idea for the organizational relationship is to make MI5 to collaborate working together with the many of the 56 police agencies all across the United Kingdom. These police forces in particular emphasize on Metropolitan as well as Provincial Special Agencies. In spite of terrorist attacks taking place in London in 2005 the MI5 was still able to reach its zenith. Given the small size of MI5, the range of the number of cities it caters speak about huge degrees of communication, fidelity, and precision as well as permits intelligence scrutiny, law enforcement agents, and the assessment bodies. The previous director of MI5 Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller said that MI5 views approximate one thousand and six hundred advocators of terrorism and two hundred radical groups in the United Kingdom (Theoharis, 2006). The history of UK is bombarded with fighting the terrorists, mostly in its long endeavor against the forces of IRA. As a consequence, MI5 has traditional ways of carrying out the domestic and foreign intelligence actions to conclude the recruitment, electronic observation, and filtration of groups of terrorists. The agency also has a long lasting relationship with the law enforcement agencies. September 11, 2001 not only brutally affected America but also Britain was negatively affected. The whole insight of United Kingdom changed and the focus diverted of MI5. The terrorism cause by Islamic States is by far now the most pressing threat. The suctions of MI5 Intelligence Agency are just a fraction of a big governmental strategy for counterterrorism known as ‘Contest’. The outreaching aim of the strategy is to mitigate terrorism risk via the pursuing of the four approaches of strategic management or the operation lines known as prepare, pursue, prevent, and protect. The gathering of intelligence information and upsetting the activities of terrorist groups are also recognized as two most important mechanisms under these pursuit activities. Thus MI5 deals with unique service to bolster these two operation lines (Hunter, 2004). The strength of MI5 lies in its capability to function under a system of executive structure which is well-defined and uses assessments by independent intelligence agencies under one umbrella to function with well stated laws. This organization has a strong legacy and history attached to it of carrying out domestic intelligence operations and internal security matters. Furthermore, United Kingdom also has highly-utilized tools to share the intelligence among its people. Efficient intelligent sharing is still a pressing issue. MI5 do not share its well collected intelligence in any circumstances. In spite of the structure of MI5, there have been times when it did not share any of its intelligence. The United Kingdom structure oversees the elements of legislature in intelligence procedures. Making use of the benchmarks United Kingdom can provide strong assessment and executive coordination procedure. Also, it should operate under well-polished national laws. But, then again information sharing is an issue. What so ever the purpose, both Intelligence agencies of United Kingdom and United States play a vital role in countering terrorism by use of their domestic and foreign intelligence agencies all across the globe (Theoharis, 2006). Bibliography Congress , R. (2003, May 19). Domestic intelligence in the united kingdom: Applicability of the mi-5 model to the united states. Retrieved from http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL31920.pdf terrorismlawseminar. (2012, February 21). The separation of domestic and foreign intelligence agencies feb21 . Retrieved from http://terrorismlawseminar.wordpress.com Central Intelligence Agency. (2012). Faqs. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/faqs/index.html Burch, J. (2007). A domestic intelligence agency for the united states? a comparative analysis of domestic intelligence agencies and their implications for homeland security. Homeland Security Affairs, III(2), Retrieved from http://www.hsaj.org/?fullarticle=3.2.2 Hunter, T. B. (2004, December). The challenges of intelligence sharing. Retrieved from http://www.operationalstudies.com/terrorism/TerrorismIntelligencePaper2.pdf Leary, W. M. (1984). The Central Intelligence Agency, history and documents. University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press. Theoharis, A. G., & Immerman, R. H. (2006). The Central Intelligence Agency: Security under scrutiny. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. Helms, R., & Hood, W. (2003). A look over my shoulder: A life in the Central Intelligence Agency. New York: Random House. Mello, T. B. (2000). The Central Intelligence Agency. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers. Monje, S. C. (2008). The Central Intelligence Agency: A documentary history. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. Read More