Scans_Daily

A lot of it I think comes about, at least in the U.S., from the post-Watergate sociopolitical consciousness in this country. The distrust in government and authority that came from Watergate and similar scandals over the next few decades until today. Add in the increasing pop culture depictions of spycraft as a murkier world with less clear-cut morals and in a few depictions, how its own rank and file are at risk from upper-administration (Three Days of the Condor, Hopscotch, etc...)

Add in the general incompetence/level of dirty tricks that intelligence agencies whether domestic focused (Hoover's FBI) or foreign focused but sometimes domestic against remit (CIA) had over their history, and the general sheen of spying was starting to wear off. Heck, even the most famous superspy in fiction would in 1987 shift from the colorful and suave Roger Moore Bond, to the more more subdued and bitter Timothy Dalton Bond in The Living Daylights.

Even the Mission:Impossible film series has had turns of pointing out that the teams morality doesn't always coincide with those above them given directives, and has even hinted vaguely Suicide Squad-esque recruiting conditions (operatives are paying a debt back to society for previous crimes) whereas the original series was more citizens assisting their country, in the vein of "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

It also doesn't help that in an increasing age of interconnected media, we've seen public discourses on the age old security vs privacy question, in regards to the ability of intelligence and law enforcement to access personal devices of suspects such as personal computers, tablets and phones. So the idea of government authority, especially in intelligence, being more and more willing to subvert things in order for a vaguely defined safety and control, thus feeds into the realm of comics, where authority is often nebulous, uncaring, and anyone decent is often ground down or forced to rely on someone outside the system to get things done (see: Commissioner Gordon, etc.)