This instinct for oversight will persist, as will the need for intelligence agencies.
What is the need for intelligence agencies when the cold war has been over for more than 20 years?
Today, the Bush administration's doctrine of pre-emption increases the need for intelligence on nuclear and other unconventional arms.
Indeed, the most valuable workers are often not the most strenuous but rather the most ingenious and resourceful, and as their tasks increase in complexity and responsibility, the need for intelligence and imagination increases.
Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, stresses the need for intelligence agencies to act quickly to intercept potential terrorist communications ahead of any court proceeding that might slow those interceptions.
It is expected to strongly defend the need for intelligence agencies to collect bulk communications data on citizens – a tactic that was supported by Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, in evidence to the committee – so long as there are clearer rules on purpose, reporting, oversight and the length of retention.
It underlines the need for intelligence-gathering by humans as well as by machines, and illustrates the gap between spying and policy.
And post-Charlie Hebdo and a few other things, I think they're settling in on an equilibrium, where people in the public recognize the need for good intelligence to protect the country, and people within the intelligence community recognize the need to uphold the privacy expectations of the American people and how you can't have one without the other.
Second, just as ardent civil libertarians recognize the need for robust intelligence capabilities, those with responsibilities for our national security readily acknowledge the potential for abuse as intelligence capabilities advance, and more and more private information is digitized.
In both cases, the need for artificial intelligence is obvious.
