{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02234162895927602, 'fraction_numerical': 0.01668552036199095, 'mean_word_length': 5.205263157894737, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Profiles in intelligence: an interview with Sir David Omand

Sir David Omand GCB is currently a visiting Professor in the War Studies Department at King’s College London. During his career in British government service he held senior posts in defence, intelligence and security including serving for seven years on the UK Joint Intelligence Committee in the 1990s and 2000s. Sir David teaches intelligence studies at King’s College, at PSIA Sciences Po in Paris and at the Norwegian Defence University in Oslo, and is a member of the external advisory boards for the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies in Stockholm and for the German Federal University Masters course in Intelligence and Security Studies. He continues to provide advice to government and helps train government intelligence analysts. Sir David was a Foundation Scholar in economics at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. After graduating he began his career at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain’s code-breaking and signals intelligence agency. He has held a number of influential positions within the Ministry of Defence including Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State during the Falklands conflict, and Deputy Under Secretary of State for Policy during the Bosnian war. He also served as UK Defence Counsellor to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Brussels, Belgium. He was the Director of GCHQ in 1996–97 before being appointed Permanent Secretary of the Home Office. His final post in public service was as Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office serving as the first UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator (2002–2005). After the events of 9/11, he formulated Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST, still in force today (2019). He has published a range of scholarly articles and two books, Securing the State (London: Hurst/ Columbia 2010) and (with Mark Phythian, the editor of this journal) Principled Spying: the Ethics of Secret Intelligence (Oxford/Georgetown University Press, 2018). His next book How Spies Think: 10 Lessons from Secret Intelligence will be published by Penguin Viking in October 2020. He co-authored the first study of what he termed SOCMINT, ‘social media intelligence’, which analysed the potential use of social media for intelligence purposes. His paper entitled Digital Intelligence and the Norms that should Govern It (London, 2015) played an important role in shaping the outcome of Carl Bildt’s Global Commission on Internet Governance (2015). He was a member of the RUSI Independent Surveillance Review, A Democratic Licence to Operate, commissioned by the UK Deputy Prime Minister and that contributed to the passing of the Investigatory Powers Act of November 2016. In addition, the review he chaired on The Security Implications of Drones (Birmingham, 2014) made a significant contribution to the evolution of British policy on the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. His contribution to the academic study of intelligence and security issues has been widely recognised. He has received Honorary Doctorates from the University of Birmingham and the University of Glasgow. After retirement from the Civil Service, Sir David studied mathematics and theoretical physics with the Open University and was awarded a First Class honours degree. He continues to contribute to the study and practice of security policy as a Distinguished Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute and as a member of the editorial board of this journal. He is a frequent contributor to national