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

非政府组织正日益成为调解人，处理与人道主义合作伙伴、政府、资助者、受益社区和第三方的一系列复杂关系。然而，在这个角色中，强大的外部议程和地缘政治不稳定迫使非政府组织遵守，这些组织冒着进一步远离中立和公正的核心人道主义原则的风险，以及他们作为全球治理参与者的合法性。政府情报机构认识到非政府组织所发挥的关键作用，以及它们与政治和意识形态不稳定的地区和个人的密切联系，已公开表示有兴趣与非政府组织建立关系（DemMars, 2001）。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，并寻求培养一种“共同的目标感”（Laipson, 2007，第39段）。45)。事实上，在冲突后的情况下，信息共享是一种迫切需要，美国政府经常以“愿意分享”作为回应（Laipson, 2007，第7段）。这已经扩展到美国[和英国]军队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12段）。18)。然而，一般来说，非政府组织对与政府实体的合作和信息共享有不同的看法，“非政府组织一直不愿意与参与秘密情报的机构联系”（Prunckun, 2017, p. 49），尽管这些机构收集的情报表明，有许多情况下，非政府组织援助的弱势群体被恐怖分子渗透（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“也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”，然而这“使这些服务对民主构成危险，难以控制”（Jervis， 2007年，第viii页）。因此，非政府组织与这些机构的密切关系和工作联系可能被一些人视为加强民主理想的必要条件，而另一些人可能会认为这对隐私和民主构成了实际和直接的威胁。尽管如此，国家和国家支持的行为者获取人道主义数据的故事越来越普遍：2019年7月，黑客入侵了数十台联合国服务器，这些服务器存储着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（Parker, 2020）。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。25)这个案子具有一个复杂的超级大国情报行动的所有特征（博蒙特，帕克引用，2020）。无论如何，学者们一致认为，尽管非政府组织收集的信息开始被政府机构视为一种未开发的资源，学术界也讨论了非政府组织作为情报机构的概念（Aday & Livingston, 2009; Constantine, 1995; Olson, 2006），但“人道主义情报”是情报工作中缺失的一个独特部门（Prunckun, 2017），对非政府组织新兴角色的理解，因此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).