There is certainly such evidence, you don&#x27;t even need it really as it&#x27;s literally in the mission statement of some of these intelligence agencies: they do anything that is &quot;in the national interest&quot;. Yes, keeping people safe is clearly in the national interest, but many other things are too, hence the fact that GCHQ has spied on climate change talks, trade deals, attempted to influence online discussions, the NSA has hacked oil companies, etc. They are in no way limited to a mission of &#x27;keeping people safe&#x27;.<p>This is one reason I tend to think intelligence agencies should be disbanded and their best people merged into police forces. The police have a clear and (relatively) focused mission: fight crime. Most of those criminal investigations are about keeping people safe in one form or another. Police forces aren&#x27;t tasked with economic wellbeing or &quot;cyber defence&quot; or any of the other crap that the intelligence community has tried to take on for itslf.