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Hans-Joerg Albrecht
institutions (like customs and money laundering control agencies). The
trend towards efficiency and with that towards unrestricted exchange of
information is evident. However, September 11 th rather accelerates a general
trend which has been initiated already in the 80ies and which was justified
at the origins by particular problems in controlling and investigating
organized crime (Albrecht, 1998).
In particular in Germany, the powers of secret services as well as the
relationship between secret services and police have always been of special
political relevance (Huber, 2002, p. 793). In this field, terrorism control
laws have brought upon changes that consist on the one hand in expanding
powers of secret services and on the other hand new rules for
communication and exchange of information between secret services, police
and other public institutions (Paeffgen, 2002). Recently, e.g., data exchange
between immigration authorities and secret services has been authorized. In
Canada, anti-terrorism legislation allows now for exchange of information
between secret services and money laundering control institutions. The
American Patriot Act 2001 increases data exchange between secret services
and law enforcement agencies which has been restricted seriously in the
70ies. The viewpoint of national security, existing approaches for the
control of transnational and organized crime as well as money laundering
thus lead to coordinated systems which include secret services, customs,
central and local police, the military and money laundering control. Such
coordination materializes in task force approaches [in Australia e.g. the
National Crime Authority Agio Task Force; in Canada: national security
enforcement teams; in France: anti-terrorism coordination groups (UCLAT
and CILAT) as well as Vigipirate Renforcé (which coordinates police,
military and customs); in Italy: Political-Military Units (NPM); in the USA:
Office for National Security and the recently established Ministry of
Domestic Security]. Such task force approaches not only coordinate
information but also organizations on the basis of special tasks. They
particularly respond to changes in concepts of security and the integration of
internal and external security as well as to the obvious demand to increase
domestic intelligence collection which can routinely be used for prosecution
(Chalk/Rosenau, 2004). Task force approaches develop on supernational
levels into inter-governmental or supra-governmental forms like e.g.
European cooperation in the Schengen information system, Europol or joint
investigation forces.
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