Report of the Independent Surveillance Review
71
governments are suspected of assisting criminal groups in operating fraud and extortion
rackets against democratic countries, on the basis that such operations are economically
damaging and difficult to ascribe to any foreign government.58
3.99
Whilst maintaining all the restrictions appropriate to a democratic society in the
interception and use of data for law enforcement and national security, Western
governments nevertheless have to reckon with international adversaries that do not
observe such restraints and whose policies can exploit more fully this new domain of
international relations.
58. See National Security Council, ‘Transnational Organized Crime: A Growing Threat to
National and International Security’, <www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/nsc/
transnational-crime/threat>, pp. 3–4.