Challenges in the digital age to humanitarian NGOs' functionality and legitimacy as global governance actor

非政府组织越来越多地成为调解人，管理与人道主义伙伴、政府、资助者、受益社区和第三方的一系列复杂关系。然而，在这种作用中，强大的外部议程和地缘政治不稳定迫使非政府组织服从，这些组织面临着进一步远离它们赞同的中立和公正的核心人道主义原则以及它们作为全球治理行为体的合法性的风险。政府情报机构认识到非政府组织发挥的关键作用及其与政治和意识形态不稳定地区和个人的密切联系，公开表示有兴趣与非政府组织建立关系（DemMars，2001年）。中央情报局（CIA）的网站坦率地谈到了他们与非政府组织关系的重要性，并寻求促进“共同的目的感”（Laipson，2007年，第45段）。事实上，在冲突后的局势中，信息共享是一个迫切的需求，美国政府经常以“愿意共享”（Laipson，2007，第12段）作为回应，这已经扩展到美国[和英国]军方与非政府组织并肩工作，这些非政府组织已经制定了信息共享的合作安排（第18段）。然而，一般来说，非政府组织对与政府实体合作和分享信息有不同的看法，“非政府组织不愿意与参与秘密情报的机构联系”。（Prunckun，2017年，第49页），尽管这些机构收集的情报表明，在许多情况下，非政府组织援助的弱势群体已经被恐怖分子渗透（Copley，2016）。学者们警告说，尽管政府机构和非政府组织之间的信息共享在某些情况下可能是互利的，但这种人道主义情报“可以很容易地用于监视和控制”（Latonero & Kift，2018，第1页）。人们对许多情报收集程序知之甚少，因为它们“必须不让公众知道”，但这“使这些服务对民主构成危险，难以控制”（Jervis，2007年，第viii页）。因此，一些人可能认为，非政府组织与这些机构的密切关系和工作联系是加强民主理想所必需的，而另一些人可能认为，这对隐私和民主构成了真实的直接威胁。尽管如此，国家和国家资助的行为者访问人道主义数据的故事越来越普遍：2019年7月，黑客获得了数十台联合国服务器的访问权限，这些服务器存储了来自世界各地危机地区的数据和敏感信息，包括大量联合国系统的密码和访问密钥（帕克，2020年）。虽然黑客的议程和身份目前尚不清楚，但“联合国是国家支持的黑客攻击的自然目标”（第25段），而且此案具有复杂的超级大国情报行动的所有特征（博蒙，帕克引用，2020年）。无论如何，学者们一致认为，尽管政府机构开始认识到非政府组织收集的信息是一种尚未开发的资源，学术界也讨论了非政府组织作为情报机构的概念（Aday &利文斯顿，2009年; Constantine，1995年;奥尔森，2006年），“人道主义情报”是一个独特的部门失踪的情报工作（Prunckun，2017），对非政府组织新兴作用的理解，因此，这是一个成熟的探索领域（Zwitter，2016）。

NGOs are increasingly becoming mediators, managing a complex set of relationships with humanitarian partners, governments, funders, beneficiary communities and third parties. Yet in this role, where powerful external agendas and geopolitical instability pressure NGOs to conform, these organizations ru the risk of being pulled away further from the core humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality to which they subscribe as well as from their legitimacy as global governance actors. Recognizing the pivotal role played by NGOs and their close-knit contact with politically and ideologically volatile regions and persons, government intelligence agencies have publicly indicated their interest in building relationships with NGOs (DemMars, 2001). The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) website speaks candidly about the importance of their relationship with NGOs and seek to foster a 'shared sense of purpose' (Laipson, 2007, para. 45). Indeed, in post-conflict situations where information-sharing is an acute need, the US government has often responded with a 'willingness to share' (Laipson, 2007, para. 12) and this has extended to the US [and British] military working shoulder-to-shoulder with NGOs who have developed collaborative arrangements for information-sharing (para. 18). However, NGOs generally-speaking, have diverse views regarding cooperation and sharing of information with government entities and 'NGOs have been reluctant to associate with agencies that are involved in secret intelligence' (Prunckun, 2017, p. 49), even though intelligence gathered by such agencies indicates that there are numerous cases where the vulnerable populations assisted by NGOs have been infiltrated by terrorists (Copley, 2016). Scholars warn that although the mutual sharing of information between government agencies and NGOs may in some cases be mutually beneficial, this kind of humanitarian intelligence 'can just as easily be leveraged for surveillance and control' (Latonero & Kift, 2018, p.1). Little is known about many of the intelligence-gathering procedures as they 'must be kept from public-knowledge' however this 'makes the services dangerous to democracy and difficult to control' (Jervis, 2007, p. viii). It follows therefore, that an NGO's close relationship and working affiliation with such agencies may be viewed by some as necessary to reinforce democratic ideals, whilst others may argue that it poses a real and immediate threat to privacy and democracy. Be that as it may, stories of state and state-sponsored actors accessing humanitarian data, are increasingly common: In July 2019, hackers gained access to dozens of UN servers which housed data and sensitive information from crisis zones throughout the world including the passwords and access keys to a large volume of UN systems (Parker, 2020). Although the agenda and identities of the hackers are currently unknown 'the UN is a natural target for state-sponsored hacking' (para. 25) and this case has all the hallmarks of a sophisticated superpower's intelligence operation (Beaumont, as cited by Parker, 2020). In any case, scholars agree that as much as information gathered by NGOs is beginning to be recognized by government agencies as an untapped resource and the notion of NGOs as intelligence agencies have been discussed in academia (Aday & Livingston, 2009; Constantine, 1995; Olson, 2006), 'humanitarian intelligence' is a distinct sector missing from intelligence work (Prunckun, 2017), the understanding of the emerging role of NGOs and therefore, an area ripe for exploration (Zwitter, 2016).