Of intelligence oversight and the challenge of surveillance corporatism

This article examines the experience of oversight during the last fifty years in order to inform current debates in both the older and newer democracies. First, there is a discussion of certain key concepts: intelligence governance including control, authorisation and oversight; second, the difficulties facing oversight, specifically, how these can be alleviated by a structure involving both parliamentary and specialist bodies and, third, the challenges presented by the structures of surveillance corporatism and its reliance on bulk collection. It is concluded that this new intelligence architecture requires a form of decentred regulation of and by state and corporate actors.