Culture of Security in Italy
| Autor | Giovanni De Gennaro |
| Páginas | 149-159 |
Page 149
The establishment of Italy's Security Intelligence System, as outlined by the 2007 reform law, coincided with a time of great change in the international scenarios where intelligence is involved.
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After the end of the Cold War, along with the rise of global economic competition, interrelations between national security policies and economic policies have become increasingly complex in all developed countries. Thus, intelligence has been confronted with the need to have an increasingly global approach, with a close net of interdependencies between internal and external, offensive and defensive, public and private activities.
As needs have changed, several countries have reached the belief that their intelligence services should undergo a «restyling» or, in some cases, a major reorganization.
In Italy, Law no. 124 of 2007 introduced major innovations:
1) the missions of the two operational services (AISE — Agenzia infor-mazioni e sicurezza esterna [External Intelligence and Security Agency] and AISI — Agenzia informazioni e sicurezza interna [Internal Intelligence and Security Agency]) have been significantly expanded, so much so that the legislator made a point of specifying that the tasks of safeguarding the independence, the integrity and the internal and external security of the Italian Republic are performed also by protecting «political, military, economic, scientific and industrial interests»;
2) the role of the CISR— Comitato interministerialeper la sicurezza della Repubblica [Interministerial Committee for the Security of the Republic], which assists the President of the Council of Ministers in governing this sector, changed as it is now entrusted not only with advising and making proposals, but also with making decisions re-garding the lines and general goals of the security intelligence policy;
3) the DIS — Dipartimento informazioni per la sicurezza [Security Intelligence Department] was set up to coordinate security intelligence activities carried out by the two agencies — AISE and AISI. While in the past the agencies were respectively under the authority of the Minister of Defense and the Minister of the Interior, now they are both answerable to the President of the Council of Ministers. In some cases autonomously, in other cases on behalf of the Government Authority, the DIS oversees the activities of the two agencies, without interfering with their operational autonomy, thus assuming a su-perordinate position vis-à-vis the agencies. In this regard, mention should be made of the tasks attributed to the DIS in terms of inspec-
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tions and internal inquiries, archives management, planning of human and financial resources, and training;
4) the powers of the COPASIR— Comitato parlamentare per la sicurezza della Repubblica [Parliamentary Committee for the Security of the Republic] — which by law is now chaired by a member of the oppo-sition — were strengthened;
5) functional guarantees were introduced to exempt intelligence agents from punishment when, while performing their institutional duties, they engage in forms of conduct deemed by the law to constitute a criminal offense;
6) the discipline of the state-secret status was modified;
7) provisions regarding the administrative safeguard of classified infor-mation were introduced.
Thus, not only has the reform introduced new offices, but also new legal institutions and new tasks. Such novelties require public debate and scien-tific approach, which in Italy are still inadequate and develop at a slow pace.
Confronted with the sensitivity of these matters, the legislator felt the need to accompany the reform law with the «culture of security» as a pre-requisite for the reform's success. The culture of security is also a major lever for a new way of conceiving the relationship between the Institution and citizens.
In this perspective, to foster the culture of security means to create the conditions necessary to share widely the new legislation with its great impact in organizational terms.
As a matter of fact, it is important to highlight some fundamental no-tions that can serve as the basis for reflection on the purposes and character-istics of security intelligence in the globalization era, in consideration also of newly emerging aspects such as economic intelligence and cyber-threat.
In addition, some issues still unresolved by the reform should be taken into due account.
Both these steps are indispensable for the reform to develop all its poten-tial and thus allow intelligence services to operate as effectively as the new globalized world requires.
Now, I will briefly illustrate the main open issues in relation to both aspects.
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First of all, in order to develop a new culture of security, it is necessary to revise some notions from both a semantic and conceptual point...
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