ABSTRACT
The analysis so far has attempted to highlight the major themes of what is known or alleged about the security intelligence agencies in the UK. First, that there has been inadequate political or ministerial control of the agencies so that they have been able to operate autonomously; second, that the complete lack of effective external review of security intelligence operations has led to serious abuses of civil rights. Much use has been made of the findings of major inquiries elsewhere. Given the similarities between the organisational and ideological imperatives of security intelligence agencies in the Western liberal democracies, it is reasonable to hypothesise that the problems illuminated in those inquiries in North America and Australasia would be found to have occurred also in the UK. However, this cannot simply be assumed; rather, those inquiries, together with what is known about the UK, enable us to construct an agenda for a full inquiry here.
