Espionage

Literally the conduct of spying (from the French espion meaning “spy”), espionage is usually referred to as “covert collection” by the intelligence community, as opposed to the gathering and processing of information from publicly available open sources. Covert collection is broadly grouped into five collection methods, known in U.S. parlance as “collection disciplines”: (1) human intelligence, (2) signals intelligence, (3) imagery intelligence, (4) measurements intelligence, and (5) signatures intelligence.

Human intelligence (HUMINT) is the receipt of information from human sources or agents (career employees of intelligence services are always designated intelligence officers). This can include highly sensitive reporting from informants active within a target group or government known as penetration agents; defectors who are former members of the target groups who have changed sides and fled their home community; information provided by escaping servicemen or gleaned from the interrogation of prisoners of war; and less sensitive materials by debriefing refugees and business travelers.

Human intelligence requires very careful evaluation or validation to establish what the information does or does not indicate, and whether the information can be trusted or not. Agents can be mistaken or captured and “played back” on their controllers to feed deceptive information, a practice known as doubling an agent. Agents may also be sincerely mistaken or exaggerate claims to curry favor with the intelligence officer to whom they report. In their favor, human sources can provide unique insight into the intentions, personalities, and methods of a target organization or government.

Signals intelligence (SIGINT) comprises the interception and interpretation of (mainly) electromagnetic signals. SIGINT is divided into the interception and interpretation of communications (COMINT) and the monitoring of noncommunicative signals such as radar or telemetry transmissions or electromagnetic leakage from the operation of various electronic systems grouped together as electronic intelligence (ELINT). Signals can be intercepted from ground-level facilities such as mobile units of the army or air force on land or ships at sea and at fixed scale monitoring stations (known colloquially as “antenna farms”). Signals can also be monitored either by staffed or unstaffed aircraft operating in the atmosphere (known as air breathing platforms) or from Earth orbit by reconnaissance satellites (termed non-air-breathing platforms). Most communications, even over targeted channels, are of little or no intelligence value. Consequently, a distinction is drawn between the overall body of intercepted traffic or take and that which is actually of intelligence use, which is [Page 221]termed product. Product is typically as little as 10% or less of the take.

Intercepted communications are generally divided between encrypted, which are in code, and clear traffic, which is not, whether in the form of voice or text. Encrypted materials must be decoded before they can be processed or exploited. However, even if a particular cipher is not successfully broken, a great deal can be learned about the target just from the pattern of communications being generated. Direction finding uses multiple receivers to triangulate the location of a transceiver, whereas traffic analysis examines which transceivers or “nodes” in a communications network send and receive the most traffic and to and from which other nodes.

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