This SSR Backgrounder examines the impact of digitalization on the work of the intelligence services and underscores the importance of democratic intelligence oversight in the context of digitalization.

While digital technologies enable intelligence services to produce credible intelligence, they also present challenges such as privacy, human rights, transparency, data management, safety, and accountability. Intelligence oversight bodies lack the requisite capacity to effectively scrutinize the impact of the use of digital technologies by intelligence services in these fields.

Therefore, overseers must not only have a legal mandate but also the digital capabilities and expertise to credibly oversee a continuously evolving spectrum of the digital practices of intelligence services.

This Backgrounder outlines how good security sector governance can strengthen democratic oversight of intelligence services under the new challenges posed by digitalization.  

While digital technologies enable intelligence services to produce credible intelligence, they also challenge the capacity of intelligence oversight bodies to effectively scrutinize the impact of the use of digital technologies by intelligence services.