Thawing the Big Chill: Reform, Rhetoric and Regression in the Security Intelligence Mandate

Abstract

The phrase 'security intelligence' has no immediately identifiable or consistent content or meaning. Indeed, it is an exceptional concept or doctrine to which the usual legislative and judicial standards do not wholly apply. It is perhaps best characterised by its inherently flexible and adaptive nature. 'Security intelligence' can uncritically encompass a range of protective phenomena serving a variety of political and legal interests. This flexibility, and a traditional reluctance to subject the concept to the same critical and rigid examination as other government claims impinging upon civil liberties, has occasionally resulted in the legal support of dubious executive actions than the advancement of the rights of the individual.