Assessing Damage, Urging Action lance, without post-hoc notification to those concerned, may be permissible, but only under exceptional conditions.167 The use of covert surveillance and intrusive data-gathering powers raises potentially difficult issues if the authorities wish to rely on the findings in subsequent legal or criminal proceedings, and this is discussed below. The Panel was disturbed at the reports of a general lowering of legal standards in the gathering, storing and sharing of intelligence. Judicial authorisation and oversight is a useful safeguard, but it seems that States are moving away from this standard, precisely when the extent and nature of the interference with the right would rather require the authorities to strengthen such safeguards. The Panel received no clear, still less valid, reason for this departure from good practice. 2.2 Arrest, detention and interrogation powers In its Hearings around the world, the Panel was informed that intelligence services have had overall (or lead) responsibility for counter-terrorism operation placed under their control.168 They have been given new powers of interrogation and detention (for the purposes of intelligence gathering), and/or have effectively taken the place of the ordinary law enforcement authorities in the pursuit of terrorist offences. The Panel notes that it is a common premise of criminal justice that arrest and interrogation is carried out by law enforcement officers, with the aim of bringing suspects before the courts. Intelligence traditionally plays an important role in providing information and assisting in the building of criminal investigations, so information sharing between intelligence and law enforcement agencies about terrorist crime has gained increasing relevance post 9/11. Yet the roles of intelligence and of law enforcement are fundamentally different and need to remain separate. Evidence from the Hearings suggests that this traditional approach is under serious attack as some governments argue that the extraordinary and exceptional character of the terrorist threat demands that intelligence agencies be given powers to detain and interrogate people, including for the purposes of gathering intelligence. In other words, both the agents responsible, and the purposes served by arrest and interrogation, are changing. This trend is problematic in principle. Institutional, legal and procedural safeguards built up in law enforcement over the generations have few corollaries in the intelligence arena. Moreover, detention for the purposes of intelligence gathering means that people who are not even suspected of wrongdoing 167 ECtHR, Judgment of 6 September 1978, Klass and Others v. Germany, Application No. 5029/71, para. 58. 168 The Federal Law No. 35-FZ “On Counteraction to Terrorism” of the Russian Federation adopted March 6, 2006, for example, authorises the President to appoint the commander of a counter-terrorism operation and in practice this authority is entrusted to the Federal Security Services. The law allows far reaching powers of search, seizure of homes and correspondence to be invoked without judicial authorisation. The law also significantly limits accountability, including by way of immunity provisions, and has also given the President the authority to order counter-terrorism operations outside the territory of the Russian Federation without parliamentary authorisation. See EJP Russian Federation Hearing. 73