A/HRC/10/3 page 16 oversight body for instance is charged with reviewing all “intelligence, surveillance and security services carried out by, under the control of, or on the authority of the public administration”.50 B. Intelligence cooperation 47. When it became clear, soon after the events of 11 September 2001, that the attacks were prepared in part in Western Europe, and that some of the terrorists apparently involved in the attacks were under observation by, inter alia, the German and French intelligence agencies, the need for more effective and coordinated cooperation between intelligence agencies was widely acknowledged.51 The benefit of sharing intelligence is clear: no State has an all-seeing “Eye of Providence” which enables it to know all potential information which might be relevant for its national security interests. 48. This legitimate cooperation often poses accountability problems. This is mainly because on the one hand domestic accountability mechanisms only tend to take into account the actions of domestic agencies because their mandate does not cover the cooperation of their agencies with third partners or, where they are mandated to scrutinize cooperation, these powers are often very limited. On the other hand, two key concepts that underlie most top secret intelligence-sharing agreements, namely the “need to know” approach to intelligence distribution52 and the policy of “originator control”,53 increase the possibility that many countries, including liberal democracies opposed to torture, become complicit in international crimes. Because of the desire to maintain cooperation from (especially more powerful) foreign agencies, intelligence services have limited incentives to request clarification on how certain information has been obtained or to ensure that the information they share will not be used in a manner that leads to human rights violations. At the same time domestic oversight bodies are often powerless to oversee the adherence of a foreign intelligence agency to any conditions attached to outgoing information. 50 Ibid., section 1. 51 Security Council resolutions 1373 (2001), para. 3 (a) and (b), and 1465 (2003), para 3; EU Declaration on combating terrorism, 2004, para. 9; Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Convention on Counter Terrorism, 2007, art. VI (h). 52 Under the “need to know” principle, “individuals should have access to classified information only when they need the information for their work, and access should never be authorized ‘merely because a person occupies a particular position, however senior’”, NATO Security Committee, A Short Guide to the Handling of Classified Information (Brussels, NATO Archives, 22 August 1958, AC/35-WP/14), quoted in A.S. Roberts, “Entangling alliances: NATO’s security policy and the entrenchment of State secrecy”, Cornell International Law Journal, vol. 36, No. 2 (2003), p. 337. 53 Under the principle of “originator control” - also often referred to as the “third party rule” - intelligence agencies only send intelligence under the understanding that neither the information nor its source will be disclosed without the prior consent of the entity which provided it.