Controlling the flow: Security, exclusivity, and criminal intelligence in Ontario

This paper examines security networks in a context where security is increasingly regarded as a problem of intelligence. Data are derived from interviews with officers in criminal intelligence units in Ontario, Canada. A conceptual framework is developed to understand the limits of security intelligence within an emerging security network paradigm, focussing on the normative dimensions governing security networking, and the mechanisms and technologies limiting information deployment among public security agencies. Despite efforts to address security through the sharing of actionable information, security intelligence maintains an exclusive value. Technologies of control promoting this exclusivity also function to prevent intelligence from becoming common knowledge. Because of its limited value, intelligence is ill-suited for export into security governance writ large.