Domestic intelligence aims to achieve a proactive and early detection of domestic threats by obtaining information through the use of different invasive methods that are often in contradiction with the democratic norms and rights. The key issue is finding a balance between ensuring security while maintaining privacy, which is one of the fundamental values in democracies. Firstly, the dissertation will present the expectations of democratic societies towards intelligence and security agencies through the presentation of privacy as a right, domestic threat genesis and public perception (using the findings of constructivism and securitization theories), and public expectations towards control over those services. The dissertation will then apply the theoretical framework to the case of the Slovenian system by presenting domestic threats, recognised in the government strategic documents, and their perception by the Slovenian public. The discovered threats will then be compared to the discretionary powers of the intelligence and security agencies. This will in turn reveal a certain gap in executive powers as they relate to the recognised threats. The thesis will also aim to prove that there is no societal imperative to eliminate the above-mentioned gap due to the lack of political interest and a negligible public perception of threat. The dissertation will be augmented by real-life experience provided by Andrej Rupnik, former Criminal Police Officer and former director of the Slovene Intelligence and Security Agency, who throughout his entire career fought against domestic threats to national security of the Republic of Slovenia.
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