From the 9th to the 12th of September, the academics of the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE) – European Chapter held their annual conference in Malta, which follows the Copenhagen conference (for more details, click here). Excellently organized by our colleagues at the University of Malta—special thanks to Mr. Joe Cannataci and Ms. Aitana Radu—it was a very impressive, interactive, and fruitful event.
The Intelligence College in Europe (ICE) participated actively in all the sessions and also organized, on the 12th of September, a special ICE Spotlight event (see photos) with the Director and five academic members or associates of the ICE Academic Network.
It was an excellent occasion to present the College, its outreach activities, and its publication efforts, and to foster interactions with the IAFIE members. Thanks to Professors Irena Chiru, Cristina Ivan, Iztok Prezelj, Artur Gruszczak, and Ruben Arcos, who presented the results of their research!
Most of their results will be accessible soon in scientific articles to be published in the next Special Edition on the European Intelligence Culture of the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence (IJICI).
ICE is happy to announce that the next IAFIE Annual Conference has been announced by one of its most active academic network members, Dr. Ruben Arcos from Rey Juan Carlos University; it will take place in Madrid-Aranjuez. It will probably be an occasion to go one step further in the fruitful exchanges between the academics of IAFIE and ICE.
The Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), together with the National Intelligence Centre (CNI), have designed the summer course “INTELLIGENCE SERVICES AND SOCIETY. SECRECY IN THE RULE OF LAW”, in which high-level specialists and representatives of the Intelligence Services themselves will participate.
The UCM summer courses are an international reference for academics and the public in general, as a forum for intellectual exchange. They aim to be a space of transversal thinking that responds to the challenges that society faces, within the maximum academic rigor and internationalization.
The course will take place on July 15th and 16th, 2024, in a face-to-face format, in the city of San Lorenzo de El Escorial (56 km from city centre Madrid). Although it is a national level event, a roundtable dedicated to the vision from Europe will be included during the session on Day 15th July 16 hrs. This session will be conducted in English and will be available online to the ICE members and partners.
Participants of the round table:
AUSTRIA: Sascha BOSEZKY, Director Austrian Strategic Intelligence Agency
GERMANY: Carsten MAAS, Deputy Director General Department 7, Federal Intelligence Service; Coordination of Federal Intelligence Services.
As part of the activities planned by the Spanish presidency of ICE in 2024, the CNI of Spain & its Academy organized the second “Academic Network Conference” between June 4th and 5th 2024 at the University of Salamanca.
This event, organized with the support of the University of Salamanca, took place in the historic Archbishop Fonseca College.
It mainly aimed at contributing to the consolidation of an operational academic network within the Intelligence College in Europe and to the presentation of research projects conducted in the Intelligence field in every member country, as well as at promoting collaboration among universities.
The research project of the Professor of the University of Cadiz, Antonio Diaz, was presented with the aim of testing European youth’s opinion on their Intelligence and Security Services. This is the first research project to be carried out collectively by ICE, with the active participation of universities of its academic network.
Six research papers were also presented by the representatives of Norway, Germany, Sweden, Slovenia, Romania and Denmark, and three working groups on Technology, Changing International Theatres and Intelligence Culture shared their conclusions with all participants.
This involves, inter alia, creating the optimum conditions to boost brainstorming between us. It is, therefore, essential to rely on a solid network, where common projects are undertaken and experiences and ideas are shared.
Universities must be the main driving force of these activities, both training activities, as well as activities to be closer to society.
On 15-18 April 2024 the intel-community of Hungary hosted the ICE - Executive Education Course (EEC) on OSINT: “Emerging Technologies and New Prospects”.
The main organisers of the event were the Information Office of Hungary and the Ludovika University of Public Service. More than 30 participants came from 16 ICE member-countries.
The organisers drew in the best leading experts of the Hungarian intelligence services, academia, and related business life.
The lecturers selected the topics of their contributions from a wide range of OSINT-related issues, such as artificial intelligence, big data, media monitoring, alien media influence, cybersecurity and hacking, civilian cyber defence, cybercrime and OSINT investigations, home office and virtual agents, psychology and network analysis.
As a sign of ICE outreach goals, one of the leading presentations introduced the Zagreb-OSINT Centre of Excellence.
According to the final conclusions of the participants, the ICE-EEC in Budapest 2024 gave an excellent overview of OSINT capabilities, connected thought-provokingly OSINT with neighbouring disciplines, shared both national security best practices and knowledge of academia and the private sector. At the same time participants learned in a relaxed environment, and simply enjoyed the traditional Hungarian hospitality in the lovely city of Budapest.
Ifri, in partnership with the Intelligence College in Europe, recently held the fifth conference in Ifri's intelligence series. This event aimed to analyze the threat landscape through the eyes of senior officials from various European countries and to contribute to a common Strategic European Intelligence culture.
On June 3rd, Ifri hosted a distinguished panel to analyze the state of the Russian threat in the realms of military power, cyberspace, and throughout the hybrid spectrum. The event, chaired by Thomas Gomart, IFRI’s Director, featured as Keynote Speakers K. Rosin, the Director General of the Foreign Intelligence Service, and A. Kiviselg, the Commander of the Estonian Military Intelligence Centre.
The Intelligence College in Europe thanks the Estonian Embassy in Paris, IFRI, all participants and attendees for making this event a success.
ICE is glad to report that on the 13th of December, the European part of the Intelligence cycle was inaugurated at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI) English French Institute of International Relations by a conference of Ambassador Elisabetta Belloni, Italian National Coordinator.
The conference was titled "What threat analysis from an Italian perspective" moderated by IFRI’s Director, Mr. Thomas Gomart.”
On the 13th of May, the ICE Academic network has conducted its first ever outreach action in order to promote the work of four of its academics, who have just issued the “Routledge Handbook of Disinformation and National Security”.
The event, which has taken place within the Brussels headquarters of IRSEM (Institut de recherche stratégique de l'École militaire) Europe, the European branch of the French MoD Think Tank, has taken place in two moments:
A high level roundtable on the theme “Disinformation and FIMI”, where one representative of NATO Public Diplomacy Division, of the French Service VIGINUM and of a Member State service have discussed on the topic before interacting under Chatham rules with a large, but selected audience of EU actors on Disinformation, FIMI and Security,
a Spotlight event, with the three ICE co-editors of the Routledge Handbook on Disinformation and National Security, Dr Ruben Arcos, Dr Irena Chiru & Dr Cristina Ivan, interacting mainly with European think-tankers.
These side-by-side events were open only under invitations and were targeting only known experts of the domain. This exclusive audience has been particularly active & reactive during the roundtable, which had to be extended from the planned one hour and a half to nearly two hours. The interest of the exchanges was such that a certain number of the first attendees have decided to stay to have the chance to interact with the scientific contributors of the first Routledge comprehensive scientific publication on the Disinformation topic.
This very first ICE Academic network action has allowed ICE to highlight and promote in Brussels the joint research effort of some of its Academics and to contribute to a common strategic culture in the Intelligence & Security domain.
This event, conducted just before the Second ICE Academic Conference, which will take place soon in Spain, will pave the way for another ICE academic event, end of this year, to mark the special edition of the International Journal for Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence (IJICI) on the Common European Strategic Intelligence culture.
The Intelligence College in Europe, which is celebrating this year its fifth anniversary, is proud, on top of its core training mission (making itself a sort of “Intel Erasmus”) and its security awareness actions, to be able to promote the joint efforts of the ICE Academics.
Held at the Paris premises of the National School of Magistracy on November 2nd and 3rd, 2023, the seminar of the National Penitentiary Intelligence Service, under the activities of the Intelligence College in Europe, gathered over 150 guests. This included 30 representatives from European penitentiary intelligence services, representatives from all services of the French intelligence community, central offices fighting against organized crime, and the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (PNAT).
The approach to comparing the organizational models of penitentiary intelligence services in Europe led to the organization of the first seminar for European penitentiary intelligence services and was based on a comparative study of these models. The findings were further explored during various presentations, particularly regarding the institutional positioning of penitentiary intelligence services and their methods of information gathering and analysis.
This seminar provided an opportunity to address the current challenges in penitentiary intelligence regarding organization, doctrines, and practices. Six major themes were central to the discussions:
Management of radicalized populations;
The specifics of closed environments for implementing intelligence practices;
Interservice cooperation between open and closed environments;
Interactions between penitentiary intelligence and judicial authorities;
European cooperation;
The contributions of penitentiary intelligence services to understanding contemporary threats.
Exploring other models of penitentiary intelligence organization allowed the French National Penitentiary Intelligence Service (SNRP) to reflect on its own operations and share its expertise with European partners. The SNRP stands out as a unique model in Europe, both for its historical precedence and its resources and objectives. Following a series of events that compromised the security of its facilities in the early 2000s, such as the triple helicopter escape from the central prison of Moulins in July 2000, the mutiny at Clairvaux in February 2003, and the spectacular escape of the prisoner Ferrara after an armed commando attacked the Fresnes prison center in March 2003, the penitentiary administration was compelled to rethink its organization of security and intelligence. However, it was after the wave of attacks in 2015 that the creation of a genuine intelligence service within the Ministry of Justice and the Penitentiary Administration Directorate was initiated in 2017.
This institutional positioning highlights the uniqueness of a hybrid service that belongs both to the intelligence community and the penitentiary administration. The meeting of these two cultures, which mutually enrich each other, allows the SNRP to provide the penitentiary administration with new analytical capabilities regarding security phenomena occurring in detention. In turn, the integration of the SNRP into the intelligence community enhances public intelligence policy with new capabilities for collecting and analyzing national security issues contributed by the penitentiary administration. Thus, the SNRP contributes to the security of penitentiary establishments and, within the intelligence community, to anti-terrorism efforts, combating violent extremism, and policies against organized crime.
Two main models of penitentiary intelligence organization
At the end of the seminar and the study conducted, two institutional models of penitentiary intelligence organization were distinguished:
The vast majority of European services only have penitentiary information collected by their associated penitentiary administration. In these cases, creating an Intelligence Service more so reflects the need for administrations to develop new analytical capabilities for security phenomena occurring in facilities, rather than the development of services with more secretive, even clandestine intelligence capabilities. In these institutional setups, it is the domestic intelligence services that conduct the most intrusive intelligence operations within the facilities;
The comparison also highlighted a second model in which penitentiary intelligence services possess all the typical capabilities of an intelligence service: human sources, technical sources, cyber, and partnerships. In this model, exemplified by the French and British cases, penitentiary intelligence contributes equally to the policies carried out by intelligence communities, particularly in terms of counter-terrorism and combating organized crime. In this setup, the penitentiary intelligence service is fully integrated into the national intelligence community. It became evident during the seminar that most services relying primarily on penitentiary information are leaning towards this second model.
Penitentiary intelligence will remain a subject of study and exchange in Europe. An update of the initially shared questionnaire will be sent to members of the Intelligence College in Europe to deepen the understanding of various national experiences. A public strategic analysis note will contribute to academic studies on intelligence and increase the visibility of penitentiary intelligence to a broader audience.
Do you want to know the work of an intelligence officer on strategic issues?
In this case, we invite you to watch this interview of the Intelligence and Security Senior Adviser of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), Gerhard Conrad. A former BND officer and high level hostage negotiator in the Middle East, he led the EU Intelligence Centre (UE INTCEN) from 2016 to 2020, before retiring and moving towards various advising and teaching positions. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the King's College London. Additionally, he authored an interesting book in German titled: “Keine Lizenz zum Töten” (No Licence to Kill), at the Econ Publish House in 2022.
