ECHELON, originally a secret government code name, is a surveillance program operated by the United States with the aid of four other signatory states to the UKUSA Security Agreement: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, also known as the Five Eyes.
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether communications between people or from electronic signals not directly used in communication. Signals intelligence is a subset of intelligence collection management. As classified and sensitive information is usually encrypted, signals intelligence in turn involves the use of cryptanalysis to decipher the messages. Traffic analysis—the study of who is signaling whom and in what quantity—is also used to integrate information again.
An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, and foreign policy objectives.
Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions. This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a range of sources, directed towards the commanders' mission requirements or responding to questions as part of operational or campaign planning. To provide an analysis, the commander's information requirements are first identified, which are then incorporated into intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination.
Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or other intelligence activities conducted by, for, or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons.
Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of data gathered from open sources to produce actionable intelligence. OSINT is primarily used in national security, law enforcement, and business intelligence functions and is of value to analysts who use non-sensitive intelligence in answering classified, unclassified, or proprietary intelligence requirements across the previous intelligence disciplines.
Traffic analysis is the process of intercepting and examining messages in order to deduce information from patterns in communication, which can be performed even when the messages are encrypted. In general, the greater the number of messages observed, or even intercepted and stored, the more can be inferred from the traffic. Traffic analysis can be performed in the context of military intelligence, counter-intelligence, or pattern-of-life analysis, and is a concern in computer security.
The United States Intelligence Community (IC) is a group of separate United States government intelligence agencies and subordinate organizations, that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities to support the foreign policy and national security of the United States. Member organizations of the IC include intelligence agencies, military intelligence, and civilian intelligence and analysis offices within federal executive departments.
An intelligence officer is a person employed by an organization to collect, compile or analyze information which is of use to that organization. The word of officer is a working title, not a rank, used in the same way a "police officer" can also be a sergeant, or in the military, in which non-commissioned personnel may serve as intelligence officers.
The Research and Analysis Wing is the foreign intelligence agency of India. The agency's primary function is gathering foreign intelligence, counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, advising Indian policymakers, and advancing India's foreign strategic interests. It is also involved in the security of India's nuclear programme.
Intelligence analysis is the application of individual and collective cognitive methods to weigh data and test hypotheses within a secret socio-cultural context. The descriptions are drawn from what may only be available in the form of deliberately deceptive information; the analyst must correlate the similarities among deceptions and extract a common truth. Although its practice is found in its purest form inside national intelligence agencies, its methods are also applicable in fields such as business intelligence or competitive intelligence.
Stovepiping is a metaphorical term which recalls a stovepipe's function as an isolated vertical conduit, and has been used, in the context of intelligence, to describe several ways in which raw intelligence information may be presented without proper context. It is a system created to solve a specific problem. The lack of context may be due to the specialized nature, or security requirements, of a particular intelligence collection technology. It also has limited focus and data within is not easily shared. Alternatively, the lack of context may come from a particular group, in the national policy structure, selectively presenting only that information that supports certain conclusions. The term is typically used in the health care system. An example would be how money funded for research is not evenly allocated, but instead goes toward one specific ailment remedy.
Signals intelligence by alliances nations and industries, many organizations, national or not, are responsible for communications security as well as SIGINT; the organization makes codes and ciphers that it hopes opponents cannot break. There is a synergy between the two components; there is a saying among cryptologists that no one is qualified to create a cipher unless they have successfully cryptanalyzed a cipher of equivalent complexity.
Intelligence collection management is the process of managing and organizing the collection of intelligence from various sources. The collection department of an intelligence organization may attempt basic validation of what it collects, but is not supposed to analyze its significance. There is debate in U.S. intelligence community on the difference between validation and analysis, where the National Security Agency may try to interpret information when such interpretation is the job of another agency.
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.
Intelligence Analysis Management is the process of managing and organizing the analytical processing of raw intelligence information. The terms "analysis", "production", and "processing" denote the organization and evaluation of raw information used in a phase informally called "connecting the dots", thus creating an "intelligence mosaic". The information may result in multiple analytic products, each with different security classifications, time scales, and levels of detail. Intelligence analysis goes back to the beginning of history. Sherman Kent is often considered the father of modern intelligence analysis. His writings include a 1947 book, Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy.
National intelligence programs, and, by extension, the overall defenses of nations, are vulnerable to attack. It is the role of intelligence cycle security to protect the process embodied in the intelligence cycle, and that which it defends. A number of disciplines go into protecting the intelligence cycle. One of the challenges is there are a wide range of potential threats, so threat assessment, if complete, is a complex task. Governments try to protect three things:
Failure in the intelligence cycle or intelligence failure, is the outcome of the inadequacies within the intelligence cycle. The intelligence cycle itself consists of six steps that are constantly in motion. The six steps are: requirements, collection, processing and exploitation, analysis and production, dissemination and consumption, and feedback.
The CIA publishes organizational charts of its agency. Here are a few examples.
