| Summary/Abstract |
A key task for intelligence oversight in democracies is to ensure that the intelligence services operate and carry out their mandated duties within the constraints of national and international law. As the control of the activities and methods of intelligence services necessarily involves a group of overseers who gain access to classified information about state secrets, democratic oversight inherently entails a security dimension. To date, the degree to which democratic oversight might affect state security has not been investigated in depth by Security or Intelligence Studies, although the issue has occasionally come up. After the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., somewhat risk-averse services, due to extensive oversight, were mentioned as possible explanation for the intelligence failures leading to the catastrophic events.
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