The New Protective State: Government, Intelligence and Terrorism by Peter Hennessy, ISBN 9781847062536

Publisher Description:
Top experts discuss the gathering of intelligence by the Secret Services - a topic of vital current concern and importance.The gathering of intelligence by the Secret Services is now an issue of major importance in the modern world. It was on this basis that Bush and Blair decided to go to war, ensuring that arguments both for and against will go on beyond our own generation.What are the ethical responsibilities of the Secret Services? In order to gather intelligence anything is permissible except torture in this country - deception, blackmail, eavesdropping. But do the means justify the end? In the process individual privacy is sacrificed, as are human rights and we have extra judicial rendition.In our society the police decide what to do with intelligence but they are now also dealing with terrorism. But above all how have the actions of the US government in recent years affected the general perception of the gathering and use of intelligence by the Secret Services? All these matters raise profound questions for the nature and future of democracy. We live in a culture of fear but what has this done for what Popper called The Open Society?These are matters with which all intelligent people should be concerned and matters which are described and analysed brilliantly in this book.