Intelligence Agencies: U.S.

National security policy is driven by intelligence, which consists of information assessments concerning potential security risks. Raw information is contextualized and analyzed in order to produce intelligence from it. That intelligence is then used to inform the policy-making process and to augment the utility and information-richness of existing intelligence. Typically, intelligence analysis deals with information pertaining to threats such as terrorism, criminal extremism, and organized crime, assessing potential targets and their vulnerability. Intelligence agencies gather, archive, and analyze intelligence information to combat a variety of transnational security threats, including terrorism, narcotics and arms trade, human trafficking, cybercrime, and weapons proliferation. Intelligence-gathering activities often include evaluating public sources, technical and physical surveillance activities, liaison relationships, human source operations, and data searches. [Page 197]Intelligence analysis converts intelligence ...