A/HRC/10/3 page 17 49. Intelligence cooperation is often practised in the context of multilateral organizations such as NATO or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The Special Rapporteur is concerned that the secrecy and security of information policies that are adopted by States within these multilateral frameworks provide an insurmountable wall against independent investigations into human rights violations. For instance, the report of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (rapporteur Dick Marty) gives credible information that bilateral (secret) agreements that allowed for blanket overflight rights, access to ports and military bases for covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations, including secret detentions and renditions, were developed around “permissive” NATO authorizations agreed on 4 October 2001.54 In the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation cooperation between secret services is exercised without any oversight. A service merely requests “assistance”55 from another service upon which the receiving State “shall take all necessary measures to ensure a prompt and most complete execution of the request”.56 According to article 11.4 of the Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism, any information on the means used by agencies in order to provide assistance to another agency “shall not be subject to disclosure”. 50. To counter the lack of accountability in intelligence cooperation, cooperation between national oversight bodies should be enhanced. Existing initiatives in this field, such as the biannual International Intelligence Review Agencies Conference or the ad hoc meetings of parliamentary intelligence oversight committees of EU member and candidate countries, are a first step in the right direction but happen too infrequently and are currently limited to a too small group of States. The Special Rapporteur supports the idea, developed by Belgian Standing Committee I, of setting up a permanent knowledge-sharing platform for (parliamentary) review bodies of intelligence services, where best practices on legislation, jurisprudence and general developments in the field can be shared, thereby supporting the professionalization of the review bodies of Member States.57 Such a platform might even be extended to operational matters, whereby the collaboration on inquiries and the exchange of information could lead into a form of “joint oversight”.58 54 Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member States: second report, explanatory memorandum, Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, June 2007, paras. 11, 39 and 105. 55 The State just has to describe “the contents” of the required assistance (Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism, art. 8, para. 3). This can include interrogating, detaining and extraditing persons. 56 Ibid., art. 9. 57 A further model for such cooperation can be found in the periodic meetings of police oversight bodies in European States. 58 H. Born, “International intelligence cooperation: the need for networking accountability”, DCAF, 2007.