 | The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.(July 2021) |
Outsourcing intelligence is a method by which a country contracts out intelligence activities such as collection, analysis, and dissemination to non-governmental employees. In the United States of America, approximately 70% of the intelligence budget was spent on contracts in 2006.
The government of a country may outsource intelligence gathering that may not be obtainable through other means, where the only way may be through human intelligence such as the CIA's National Clandestine Service (NCS). [1] It may mean outsourcing to foreign nationals from a country of interest, they may outsource to private companies as well to gather the specified intelligence needed. For a company the ways of outsourcing intelligence are the same, in which third party individuals and corporations are hired to obtain data and other intelligence. Intelligence can also be outsourced for analysis by a third party, in similar fashion to what the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence does. [2]
Former analysts and officers of the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of National Intelligence are allowed to leave their government positions and go work for companies in the private sector the next day doing the same job. This is known as "butts in seats." [3] The reason one former government analyst did go work for a private intelligence firm was because the pay in the private sector was about 50% higher than the one he had from the government. [3]
Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States Congress increased the funding flow to the intelligence community. In November 2005, a CIA official accidentally revealed the intelligence budget to be $44 billion, which increased from a $26.6 billion budget reported by CIA Director George Tenet in 1997. [3]
The intelligence community is allowed to keep its budget secret. With this secrecy comes speculation that at least 50% of the entire budget now flows to the private sector [Abbot]. It is also estimated that in the intelligence community much of the 15,000 analysts are drawing private-sector paychecks as a result of "butts in seats." [3]
According to R.J. Hillhouse, "Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) workers revealed at a conference in May that contractors make up 51% of the staff in the DIA." Hillhouse goes further to say that, "the CIA has a similar situation…between 50% and 60% of the workforce of the CIA's most important directorate, the National Clandestine Service (NCS)… is composed of employees of for-profit corporations." [4] Hillhouse also says that, in terms of oversight the ratio is 1:25 (one government employee supervising twenty-five private contractors), which means that it will "involve multiple companies and multiple layers of administration." [5]
Since the September 11 attacks, U.S. telecommunications giants AT&T and Verizon have actually outsourced all their controversial NSA-mandated internet and telephone surveillance to the contractors Narus and Verint respective, both of which have close ties to Israeli intelligence services, [6] although they maintain headquarters in the U.S.
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is an intelligence agency and combat support agency of the United States Department of Defense, specializing in defense and military intelligence.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is a combat support agency within the United States Department of Defense whose primary mission is collecting, analyzing, and distributing geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in support of national security. Initially known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) from 1996 to 2003, it is a member of the United States Intelligence Community.
Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity that is or could be done internally, and sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another.
A private military company (PMC) is a private company providing armed combat or security services for financial gain. PMCs refer to their personnel as "security contractors" or "private military contractors".
Academi is an American private military company founded on December 26, 1996 by former Navy SEAL officer Erik Prince as Blackwater, renamed Xe Services in 2009 and known as Academi since 2011 after it was acquired by a group of private investors. In 2007, it received widespread notoriety for the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, when a group of its employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians and injured 20, for which four guards were convicted in the United States but later pardoned on December 22, 2020 by President Donald Trump.
Raelynn Hillhouse is an American national security and Intelligence community analyst, former smuggler during the Cold War, spy novelist and health care executive.
Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) describes the outsourcing of core information-related business activities which are competitively important or form an integral part of a company's value chain. KPO requires advanced analytical and technical skills as well as a high degree of specialist expertise.
The Directorate of Operations (DO), less formally called the Clandestine Service, is a component of the US Central Intelligence Agency. It was known as the Directorate of Plans from 1951 to 1973; as the Directorate of Operations from 1973 to 2005; and as the National Clandestine Service (NCS) from 2005 to 2015.
A private intelligence agency (PIA) is a private sector (non-governmental) or quasi-non-government organization devoted to the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information, through the evaluation of public sources and cooperation with other institutions. Some private intelligence agencies obtain information deceptively or through on-the-ground activities for clients.
Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. is an American former intelligence officer who served as Director of the National Clandestine Service Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He was the final CIA deputy director for operations (DDO) before that position was expanded to D/NCS in December 2004. Rodriguez was a central figure in the 2005 CIA interrogation videotapes destruction, leading to The New York Times Editorial Board and Human Rights Watch to call for his prosecution.
The Central Intelligence Agency, known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and performing covert actions. As a principal member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States. President Harry S. Truman had created the Central Intelligence Group under the direction of a Director of Central Intelligence by presidential directive on January 22, 1946, and this group was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency by implementation of the National Security Act of 1947.
The deputy director of the CIA for operations is a senior United States government official in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency who serves as head of the Directorate of Operations. The position was established December 1, 1950 and from January 4, 1951, until March 1, 1973, it was known as Deputy Director of Plans (DDP). When this unit was known as the Directorate of Plans, it at first accounted for about 75% of the CIA budget and about 60% of the personnel within the CIA.
Intelligence cycle management refers to the overall activity of guiding the intelligence cycle, which is a set of processes used to provide decision-useful information (intelligence) to leaders. The cycle consists of several processes, including planning and direction, collection, processing and exploitation, analysis and production, and dissemination and integration. The related field of counterintelligence is tasked with impeding the intelligence efforts of others. Intelligence organizations are not infallible but, when properly managed and tasked, can be among the most valuable tools of management and government.
National governments deal in both intelligence and military special operations functions that either should be completely secret, or simply cannot be linked to the sponsor. It is a continuing and unsolved question for governments whether clandestine intelligence collection and covert action should be under the same agency. The arguments for doing so include having centralized functions for monitoring covert action and clandestine HUMINT and making sure they do not conflict, as well as avoiding duplication in common services such as cover identity support, counterespionage, and secret communications. The arguments against doing so suggest that the management of the two activities takes a quite different mindset and skills, in part because clandestine collection almost always is on a slower timeline than covert action.
The United States intelligence budget comprises all the funding for the 16 agencies of the United States Intelligence Community. These agencies and other programs fit into one of the intelligence budget's two components, the National Intelligence Program (NIP) and the Military Intelligence Program (MIP). As with other parts of the federal budget, the US intelligence budget runs according to the Fiscal year (FY), not the calendar year. Before government finances are spent on intelligence, the funds must first be authorized and appropriated by committees in both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.
At various times since the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal government of the United States has produced comprehensive reports on CIA actions that marked historical watersheds in how CIA went about trying to fulfill its vague charter purposes from 1947. These reports were the result of internal or presidential studies, external investigations by congressional committees or other arms of the Federal government of the United States, or even the simple releases and declassification of large quantities of documents by the CIA.
The CIA publishes organizational charts of its agency. Here are a few examples.
The Defense Clandestine Service (DCS) is an arm of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which conducts clandestine espionage, intelligence gathering activities and classified operations around the world to provide insights and answer national-level defense objectives for senior U.S. policymakers and American military leaders. Staffed by civilian and military personnel, DCS is part of DIA's Directorate of Operations and works in conjunction with the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations and the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command. DCS consists of about 500 clandestine operatives, which is roughly how many case officers the CIA maintained in the early 2000s prior to its expansion.
The mass surveillance industry is a multibillion-dollar industry that has undergone phenomenal growth since 2001. According to data provided by The Wall Street Journal, the retail market for surveillance tools has grown from "nearly zero" in 2001 to about US$5 billion in 2011. The size of the video surveillance market rose to US$13.5 billion in 2012 and is expected to reach US$39 billion by 2020.