Private military/security companies essay

It is worth mentioning the fact that such services as surveillance and intelligence services are also quite questionable from the legal point of view, especially in the context of the poor accountability of private military and security companies. Obviously, they may violate the privacy rights of individuals but the poor accountability protects them from the legal liability. Therefore, private military and security companies raise a number of legal issues because of their poor accountability.

At the same time, the risk of transformation of private military and security companies into offensive instead of defensive, as they are at the moment, is high. This means that the usually defensive nature of the mandate of private military and security companies may be changed to include offensive action to repel attacks. In actuality, private military and security companies perform defensive functions mainly but it is obvious that they can shift to offensive operations justifying them by preventive measures, which they have to apply to protect areas they are supposed to defend.

Thus, taking into account all above mentioned, it is important to place emphasis on the fact that private military and security companies raise a number of legal and ethical problems. Their legitimacy is unclear, whereas poor accountability makes operations conducted by these companies not transparent. As a result, private military and security companies private military and security companies may be involved in military operations and become active participants of military conflicts that apparently exceeds their obligations as government contractors or companies’ contractors because they are primarily used for defensive purposes and provision of intelligence services, logistics and other services. Finally, activates of private military and security companies is poorly regulated at the state and international level.