Articles

Here is a list of my peer reviewed articles.

Restoring Public Trust and Confidence in New Zealand’s Intelligence and Security Agencies is a parliamentary commissioner for security the missing key?

In Policy Quarterly
Damien Rogers and Shaun Mawdsley

Abstract
New Zealand’s two intelligence and security agencies play crucial roles in preserving our democracy and protecting the public from various harms associated with political violence. Scandals involving intelligence professionals likely diminish public trust and confidence in these agencies, which appears to be very low among some marginalised communities and minority groups. While official secrecy is required for sound strategic and operational reasons, it hampers meaningful articulation of the value proposition underpinning these agencies and their work. Reassuring the public is vital for the intelligence and security agencies, given their highly intrusive powers. Rather than more reviews of, increased transparency by, or stronger accountability over the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau, we suggest that a parliamentary commissioner for security is needed to help foster a level of public awareness and build the understanding required for trust and confidence to be restored in these agencies.

Reconfiguring the Relationship Between Intelligence Professionals and the Public: A First Step Towards Democratising New Zealand’s National Security?

In National Security Journal
Damien Rogers & Shaun Mawdsley

The secrecy surrounding intelligence work has meant the relationship between New Zealand intelligence professionals and the public they serve has always been somewhat problematic. Over the past decade, leaks, scandals and a deadly act of terrorism have certainly not improved the public’s trust and confidence in the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau. While the Government has undertaken several measures to strengthen the credibility of those agencies, including initiating public inquiries and bolstering governance arrangements, its current approach is rather limited, has reached those limits and could now be counterproductive. In light of the recommendations made by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Mosques on 15 March 2019 to increase public involvement in New Zealand’s counterterrorism effort, we argue that it is time for this problematic relationship between intelligence professionals and the public to be rethought and reconfigured. To that end, we identify several concrete actions that parliamentarians and university leaders could consider taking to actively support intelligence professionals as they foster a society of informed citizens and create new opportunities to bring national security matters into the heart of democracy’s deliberative processes.

Intelligence and Security Act 2017: A Preliminary Critique

In New Zealand Law Review

Damien Rogers

This article offers a critique of the Intelligence and Security Act 2017. It demonstrates that three underlying contextual factors — formal reviews, domestic scandals and international terrorism — each informed the pertinent law reform process in differing ways. The article also identifies several features of this new Act which deliberately strengthen New Zealand’s surveillance capability before focusing on an array of deceptive, highly intrusive and covert surveillance practices that this Act makes lawful. The article finds that this new law transforms the intelligence community into the “eyes and ears” of an apparatus of control focused less on protecting New Zealanders from harms emanating abroad and more on managing the country’s population at home. Given New Zealand’s limited ability to make sense of its prevailing security environment from a whole-of-society perspective, the Intelligence and Security Act 2017 warrants closer scrutiny from experts in security and law as well as members of the general public.

Extraditing Kim Dotcom: a case for reforming New Zealand’s intelligence community?

In Kōtuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online

Damien Rogers

Recent disclosures of information concerning the internal workings of New Zealand intelligence agencies offer fertile ground for scholarship reassessing New Zealand’s security arrangements. Building upon only a few of these disclosures, this article argues that when the Government Communications Security Bureau decided to assist the New Zealand police with its extradition of Kim Dotcom to the United States it stimulated a flurry of media interest which not only signalled the widespread confusion among the intelligence community over the meaning of national security but also revealed systemic deformities within the intelligence community itself. The article concludes that this confusion over national security and those systemic deformities constitute a prima facie case for reforming New Zealand’s intelligence community, though the prospects for an immediate transformation remain dim.