No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 January 2025
Three very different books published in close succession combine to highlight and dramatise the unresolved issues presented by the need that all governments feel to engage in security and intelligence activities within with an borders.
For most of the twentieth century, this Earth has been the arena for a titanic infrontation between democracy and tyranny, between free debate and the great, between the rule of law and the tendency of people to disappear from the feets. The votaries of democracy, freedom and the rule of law have not always been possessed of absolute virtue and have at times been forced, or have chosen, adopt some of the methods of their adversaries. One of these is the practice of ercising surveillance over persons or activities that are judged to constitute a reat to national security. These threats are normally classified in three legories: terrorism, espionage and subversion.
1 Westin, AF, Privacy and Freedom (1967), 57Google Scholar
2 Id.
3 Walker, G de Q, “Information as Power: Constitutional Implications of the Identity Numbering and ID Card Proposal” (1986) 16 Queensland Law Sociely Journal 153.Google Scholar
4 Hanks, P, McCamus, J D (eds), National Security: Surveillance and Accountability in Democratic Society (1989), 2.Google Scholar
5 Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security, Fourth Report (1977); Royal Commission Australia’s Secuirity and Intelligence Agencies, Report on the Australian Securily intelligef Organization (1985).
6 Hanlcs, McCamus, , supra n 4, 5Google Scholar
7 Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Annual Report 1989-90, (1990), 7.
8 Ostrovsky, V, Hoy, C, By Way of Deception (1990), 335Google Scholar
9 Ibid 83.
10 Ibid 252.
11 Ibid 215.
12 Gordievsky’s account of the bizarre episode in the early 1980s when the KGB became alarmed by a non-existent NATO plan for a nuclear first strike, and placed such pressure on its overseas posts to uncover evidence of it that they eventually started telling Moscow Centre what it wanted to hear, has already been widely publicised in the media. It is dealt with in detail in chapter 13 C Andrew and O Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (1990).
13 Ibid 632-635.
14 Although it has a smaller personnel establishment than the KGB, the GRU is said to have budget several tens of times larger: Suvorov, V, Inside Soviet Mililary Intelligence (1984), 4Google Scholar
15 Finn, T, “Domestic Security and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service”Google Scholar, in Hanks, McCamus, supra n 4,261,262.
16 Andrew, Gordievsky, , supra n 12,523Google Scholar
17 Ibid 374.
18 Ibid 429,486.
19 lbid 248.
20 Ibid 51, 92. See generally Schultz, R Godson, R, Dezinformatsiya: Active Measures in Soviet Strategy (1984)Google Scholar
21 Andrew, Gordievsky, , supra n 12,326Google Scholar
22 Ibid 489; Barron, J, KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents (1974), Ch 4Google Scholar
23 Andrew, Gordievsky, , supra n 12,591Google Scholar
24 Ibid 595.
25 Ibid 630-631.
26 Ibid 639.
27 Wright, P, Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (1981 ch 23Google Scholar
28 Andrew, Gordievsky, , supra n 12,611Google Scholar
29 Ibid 621.
30 Ibid 642.
31 The Australian August 26, 1991, 3. There has also been no suggestion that the GRU, which has vast operations in the West, has been in any way scaled down.
32 Campbell, A, “The New Soviet Central Intelligence Service”, Australia and World Affairs, No 11, Summer 1991, 5Google Scholar
33 E Sciolino, “CIA Casting About for New Missions”, New York Times, February 4, 1992, Al, A4.