Examining the permission of surveillance in intelligence measures from the perspective of Imami jurisprudence

Security is one of the issues that is very vital for every member of the society, and its importance is so much that it is mentioned as one of the reasons for the acceptance of governments by the people, and all governments count the establishment of security as one of their missions. Therefore, to establish all-round security, they put some intelligence measures on their agenda, in which surveillance has a special place, because it is the basis of most intelligence measures. From the point of view of Islam, this action has some limits, and according to Sharia evidence, what it seems at the beginning is the sanctity of spying in an absolute way, and the generality of these evidences apparently prohibits all types of spying; Therefore, in this research, an attempt has been made to understand the limits of this action by using the method of content analysis and focusing on the Qur'an, the lives of the innocents (peace be upon them) and intellectual arguments; Because the basics of information activities should be extracted from the text of religion and jurisprudence in order to be completely compatible with religion. According to the findings of this research, it is permissible and sometimes obligatory to spy on major issues related to the government such as deviant factions, opponents of the government, infiltrators, enemy boundaries and monitoring the government's pillars, etc. And sometimes it is obligatory and it is not permissible in matters such as people's personal affairs, the secrets of Muslims and the analysis of their faults.