Human Intelligence (HUMINT) (original) (raw)
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Forewords We started with this research about intelligence Community from the United States because it is one of the best and from which there are many sources. The choice was random and did not contain any decision other than the available sources. Information intelligence collection system Despite the magnitude reached by the US intelligence system in the current period, with tens of thousands of employees, huge budgets and access to the most diverse technologies, this has not always been the case. Until the beginning of World War II, American intelligence agencies were too fragile compared to the size of power that the nation had already achieved. There were military intelligence organizations in the Navy and the Army, and the FBI served as intelligence for internal security. The sectors responsible for signal intelligence and decryption in both arms had a few dozen employees. In the course of the war, information from the European scene was basically transferred from the larger and more sophisticated British intelligence organizations, with an information exchange agreement that lasts to the present day. Throughout the war, especially in the Pacific, the US had to invest heavily in the area, including breaking the Japanese ciphers and gaining access to the content of its communications. In Europe, in addition to military organizations, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was created with the purpose of gaining intelligence while promoting covert actions behind the German lines, promoting sabotage, guerrilla warfare and resistance actions against the invader. After the war, the OSS was dismantled, maintaining the military intelligence organizations and the FBI. With the onset of the Cold War with the Soviets, the US government quickly turned back on the need for an agency that centralized intelligence efforts and created the CIA. Thus, one has the initial mark of the modern conformation of the intelligence structure of this country.
Intelligence Sources in the Process of Collection of Information by the U.S. Intelligence Community
SECURITY DIMENSIONS, 2019
Every day, U.S. intelligence agencies gather huge amounts of information from a variety of sources. Collection of information is an essential part of the process described as Intelligence Cycle. The purpose of this article is to identify the essence and nature of intelligence sources and to analyze their practical use by the agencies and departments that make up the U.S. Intelligence Community. The author characterizes the main types of intelligence sources
INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION ACTIVITIES AND DISCIPLINES Defining Intelligence
Intelligence is the product resulting from the collection, collation, evaluation, analysis, integration, and interpretation of collected information.[1] It is a specialized information product that provides the United States or an adversary with information required to further its national interests. One of the most important functions of intelligence is the reduction of the ambiguity inherent in the observation of external activities. In the most obvious case, adversary intelligence organizations may seek information concerning military capabilities or other matters that directly threaten the national security of the United States. In other cases, adversary nations, or other groups, may seek information about U.S. diplomatic negotiating positions, economic programs, or proprietary information from U.S. corporations. In each of these cases, the information sought may provide the adversary with an edge and might allow him to implement a well-developed strategy to reach his goals. In most cases, the development of an intelligence product involves collecting information from a number of different sources. In some cases, information may be disseminated immediately upon collection based upon operational necessity and potential impact on current operations. This type of raw intelligence is usually based on fragmentary information about fast-breaking events and may contain substantial inaccuracies or uncertainties that must be resolved through subsequent report and analysis. Finished intelligence products contain information that is compared, analyzed, and weighted to allow the development of conclusions. Finished intelligence is produced through analytical review in the intelligence process. The intelligence process confirms a fact or set of facts through a multiplicity of sources to reduce the chance of erroneous conclusions and susceptibility to deception. Intelligence is divided into strategic and operational intelligence. Strategic intelligence provides policy makers with the information needed to make national policy or decisions of long-lasting importance. Strategic intelligence collection often requires integrating information concerning politics, military affairs, economics, societal interactions, and technological developments. It typically evolves over a long period of time and results in the development of intelligence studies and estimates. Operational intelligence is concerned with current or near-term events. It is used to determine the current and projected capability of a program or operation on an ongoing basis and does not result in long-term projections. Most intelligence activities support the development of operational intelligence. [2] The Intelligence Cycle The intelligence cycle is the process through which intelligence is obtained, produced, and made available to users. In depicting this cycle, the United States Intelligence
The information actions promoted by governments are not only under the responsibility of the intelligence community of a country, despite their centrality. The person responsible for these activities will vary according to the situation of peace or war and the kind of propaganda action to be unleashed. In addition, the available information products have quite different characteristics, and the type of employment can be tactical or strategic. Although the information service is the field of secret services par excellence, it encompasses, to a certain extent, the entire US public machine. Institutional responsibilities for informational and psychological operations, for example, are defined by the status of the target country's relations with the US. In the case of peace, the strategic objectives to which the other organs must subordinate are the Department of State, and this task remains under its control until the beginning of the hostilities. In a situation of conflict, the burden is passed on to the Department of Defense, which then becomes the centralizer of the use of such instruments, linking these informational actions with the other military measures involved.
The Lack of HUMINT: A Recurring Intelligence Problem
The United States has accumulated an unequivocal ability to collect intelligence as a result of the technological advances of the 20th century. Numerous methods of collection have been employed in clandestine operations around the world including those that focus on human, signals, geospatial, and measurements and signals intelligence. An infatuation with technological methods of intelligence gathering has developed within many intelligence organizations, often leaving the age old practice of espionage as an afterthought. As a result of the focus on technical methods, some of the worst intelligence failures of the 20th century can be attributed to an absence of human intelligence. The 21st century has ushered in advances in technology have allowed UAVs to become the ultimate technical intelligence gathering platform; however human intelligence is still being neglected. The increasing reliance on UAVs will make the United States susceptible to intelligence failures unless human intelligence can be properly integrated. In the near future UAVs may be able to gather human level intelligence, but it will be a long time before classical espionage is a thing of the past.
Behavioral International Economic Development Society, Center for U.S. Federal Intelligence Policy, 2023
The Intelligence Community is a critical component of operational national security and has been instrumental since the foundation of this country. Our use of intelligence has evolved and changed from just being used to assist with war to being a necessary factor in economic projects to being a billion-dollar industry today. During its growth, the Intelligence Community has been plagued with issues resulting in endless legislation attempting to fix them. However, there are still issues in the Intelligence Community today, such as the community's size, secrecy, and efficacy in completing the national security mission. This paper examines these problems throughout the intelligence community's history and seeks to find solutions to these long-standing issues in our modern era.
Intelligence services are currently focusing on the fight against terrorism, leaving relatively little resources to monitor other security threats. For this reason, they often ignore external information activities that do not pose immediate threats to their government's interests. Extremely few external services operate globally. Almost all other services focus on immediate neighbors or regions. These services usually depend on relationships with these global services for information on areas beyond their immediate neighborhoods, and often sell their regional expertise for what they need globally. A feature of both internal and external services is that they behave like a caste. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.25847.68006
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND EDUCATION IN THE AIR FORCE, 2018
Academic studies in the sphere of intelligence and counterintelligence focused predominantly on aspects of the intelligence cycle area, intelligence typology, collecting information from technical sources, axiological aspects (especially those related to the ethics connected to the process of collecting information, recruiting sources), or the feedback received from the decision-makers / beneficiaries of the finite intelligence product, but they have put less emphasis on collecting information from human sources, process and technique that have occupied and continue to occupy a central and determinant role within the domains of reference. Although the intelligence field has developed and applied scientific methods, the HUMINT approach as a discipline is found in the context of other socio-human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, or communication sciences. The concerns in this regard are largely circumscribed to the applied psychology and US intelligence agencies', practices succeeding the Second World War in an attempt to support operational intelligence by delimiting sets of techniques explicitly addressing intelligence from human sources.[1]