![]() So, less ambiguously, her message is “intelligence activities can be morally justified”. One category of this is the increasingly common intelligence activity of mass surveillance, certain crucial forms of which she rejects as morally unjustified in the last chapter of the book. More precisely put: intelligence activities are morally justified.” The final sentence here, though certainly precise, could be misleading in suggesting that intelligence activities are tout court justified, but by applying her criteria of justification she rules out as morally unjustified many actual cases of such activities. As she states it, “the book’s central thesis” is that “intelligence activities are morally justified (and sometimes mandatory) only as a means to protect oneself and third parties from violations of fundamental moral rights or risks thereof in the context of foreign policy writ large. This justification, however, is contingent on the satisfaction of certain significant moral constraints. In the space of this review, it will not be possible to summarise and assess thoroughly all the issues Fabre discusses, but the message of the book is a positive one about the moral value and importance of espionage operations in general. Included, however, is counter-intelligence which she defines as “the act of protecting oneself from third parties’ espionage activities,” but it overlaps considerably with the treatment of espionage since the line between the two “is not hard and fast.” She defines espionage as “the act of seeking to acquire information about third parties which is thought to be needed for the conduct of foreign policy, and which there are reasons to believe those parties would rather keep secret.” Certain activities of intelligence agencies are excluded from this focus, such as covert operations, and military assistance by intelligence agencies as well as spying activities by domestic law enforcement agencies, such as the police. The book also displays her characteristic subtlety, and close and fair-minded attention to other positions than her own. Fabre’s book is the only philosophical book I know that tackles the range and depth of the moral problems around spying with such comprehensiveness and complex detail. It is particularly welcome because contemporary philosophers in the broadly analytic tradition have written extensively and helpfully on the moral problems posed by war and terrorism, but they and other philosophers have mostly neglected the companion area of spying. Cécile Fabre has written an important and timely book about the conceptual shape and moral challenges of institutionalised political espionage.
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