why is intelligence gathering important

At the beginning of the XXI century, there is still no widely established definition of intelligence (Warner, 2009, p. 6) as each author draws upon his/her personal experience. One advantage of OSINT is its accessibility, although the sheer amount of available information can make it difficult to know what is of value. Zegart argues that, years after 9/11, the intelligence community remains disorganized, lacks central direction, and duplicates much of its efforts. But section 218, like many other provisions contained in the PATRIOT Act, is scheduled to sunset at the end of 2005. Before 9/11, the CIA never tried to develop their own John Walker Lindh, Yet even one such source could have obviated any need for Washington to connect the dots (Gerecht, 2004). Intelligence and National Security. 13, no. Other familiar topics include the need for international coordination in counterterrorism intelligence efforts (Kerstetter, 1979) and the differing roles played by the FBI and the CIA in combating terrorism (Prince, 1989). Business is that good. Many people are wary of competitive intelligence at first because they don't trust its sources. Because intelligence belongs to the realm of international relations, there is no surprise that probably the best-know intelligence agencies in the world are the USs Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), MI6 in the UK, and the defunct Soviet KGB (Andrew, 2004). Multidisciplinary Approaches to Security: The Paris School and Ontological Security, The Importance of Western and Soviet Espionage in the Cold War. Thinkers in the CIA critics school often advocate greater use of covert operations and preemptive military force against terrorist targets, but the major recommendation from this school is for increased emphasis on human intelligence. Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, however, my frustration continued as the FBI for numerous reasons, some of which I will describe below, was unable to share immediately relevant information about possible violations of criminal law with the criminal division. The U.S. attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York, for example, had accumulated extensive intelligence during its investigation and prosecution of numerous significant terrorism cases, such as the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Military historian John Keegan has claimed that the importance of intelligence in warfare has been overrated (Keegan, 2003, pp. Following the enactment of the PATRIOT Act, the Department of Justice took a number of steps to implement the aforementioned provisions and fully realize the potential of increased coordination and information sharing between intelligence officers and law enforcement officers. Intelligence is conducted on three levels: strategic (sometimes called national), tactical, and counterintelligence. Secondly, two questions will be raised: whether intelligence agencies are still needed today; and, if so, is there such a thing as international intelligence. Faced with uncertainty, risk, feelings of insecurity, or in search of some other goal, all human entities face a knowledge problem (Gill & Phythian, 2006, p. 30) and search for information that (they hope) will support their interests, relieve the feeling of insecurity, and allow them to handle their weak spots. Just think about the national security and foreign policy issues that President Obama and the senior leadership of our allies, including Prime Minister Turnbull, face every dayinternational terrorism; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; cyber warfare, espionage, and crime; drug trafficking and human trafficking; the crisis of governance in the Middle East and North Africa; Irans pursuit of hegemony in the Middle East; the saber rattling of North Korea; the aggressiveness of Russia, the rise of China, and on and on. Moses, Bruce D. Research paper, Army Command and General Staff College, 2004. But while the war on terrorism has led to larger budgets for intelligence services and a more prominent role for intelligence in national decision making, this greater attention has brought with it greater expectations, which scholars argue the intelligence communities of the United States and other nations are finding it difficult to meet. Historically, intelligence has been subject to a particular group of insiders, and there is no denying that much intelligence work must take place in secret if it is to be of value. With a Little Bit of Heart and Soul Analyzing the Role of HUMINT in . Using publicly available information and original market research is a crucial first step, but it's important to keep detailed records of where the information was found. But the American intelligence community, in particular, was viewed as weak in its ability to gain HUMINT on terrorist groups. Although most studies of intelligence and terrorism focus on the national or international level, a number of authors have pointed out that much of the critical intelligence work is done at the internal, domestic level, by local police and state and regional law enforcement authorities (Peterson, 2005; Riley et al., 2005). This section reviews these areas of consensus and points out important disagreements. A World of Secrets: The Uses and Limits of Intelligence. Reformists believe that the likelihood of future failures can be reduced by intelligence reforms along lines that have been proposed for the past 50 yearswhich often stress organizational changeand by efforts to ensure that decision makers take heed of intelligence warnings. It is now obvious that the task to define intelligence and its importance is not an easy one; therefore, the final notion will be presented at the end of this essay. Staying flexible in an adaptive world. Therefore this essay will analyse the importance of intelligence to international security. This gap in the literature may simply reflect the nature of the information involved. Dupont, A. Before the enactment of the PATRIOT Act, courts had ruled that surveillance under FISA could be utilized only when foreign intelligence was the primary purpose of a national security investigation. Human intelligence is not seen as the complete answer to the problem of terrorism, of course, and some authors argue that other sources can be very useful, such as signals intelligence (Aid, 2003), or open source intelligence (Sloan, 2006; Lewis & Chenoweth, 2007). Intelligence gathering makes it easier for security forces to identify individuals involved in planning and executing terrorist operations by providing and updating a database of identifying information, affiliations and past activities of perpetrators. She also argues that the most effective method of collection on terrorism is through a synergistic effort, using technical means as well as human sources (Sims, 2005, p. 55). (2003). Such walls would increase the risk that critical information would not be shared with law enforcement officials in a timely manner and reverse the integration of intelligence efforts and law enforcement efforts that has proven so successful since September 11th. Second, as a product, formerly circulated as paper, but now distributed through multilevel secure electronic databases. Heres a second way to think about itthe way Mike Hayden, a former director of both CIA and NSA, likes to put it. Many analytical techniques deploy sophisticated software facilitating the analysis of relational data. Some analysts and scholars take a macro view, arguing that blame for 9/11 must be assigned more widely than just to the intelligence community. Beyond Competitive Intelligence. Why is intelligence important for a leader? Pulver, Aaron; Medina, Richard. For these reasons and others, I agree, based on my experience at the Department of Justice, with the conclusion of the 9/11 Congressional Joint Inquiry Report, which observed that our ability to connect the dots about the plans and activities of al Qaeda before the attacks of September 11th was substantially inhibited by the lack of communication and collaboration between intelligence agencies and law-enforcement agencies. Intelligence is all about finding. Naturally, a question that arises is whether the extensive spending on intelligence has actually made a difference. Scholars such as Arce and Sandler (2007) use the tools of game theory to improve our understanding of how intelligence can be used against terrorism, and more work here could prove very useful. At the state level, intelligence may help to save lives; at the international, it can provide, or be used to provide, the pretext to go to war, and hence cost lives (Gill & Phythian, 2006, p. 172). Some analysts minimize the importance of intelligence while others argue it is essential. Additionally, there are discussions as to the possibility of organizing intelligence at a transnational level. Examples include the British use of intelligence in Northern Ireland (Bamford, 2005), Greek intelligence success in dismantling the 17 November group (Nomikos, 2007), and the lessons to be learned from the Israeli intelligence communitys experience with terrorism (Kahana, 2005; Pedahzur & Perliger, 2007). The list of offenses triggering this presumption currently includes certain drug crimes carrying maximum prison terms of 10 years or more, but it does not include most terrorism crimes. This primary purpose standard, however, had the effect of discouraging intelligence investigators from sharing information and coordinating with law enforcement officers. Dec. 3, 2003). A surge in the number of analysts assigned to counterterrorist components meant analysts were almost stumbling over each other in turning out large numbers of papers, only a tiny proportion of which could be expected to be of real use in heading off the next major attack (Pillar, 2007, p. 156). As their name suggests, they often deliver various services to the government and increasingly this involves active efforts to shape the world as well as merely reporting about it (Lowenthal, 2002, p. 8). This view is expressed by the title of an op-ed by Amy Zegart in the Los Angeles Times: American IntelligenceStill Stupid (Zegart, 2006). Passively determining the network range to find out the machines in the network that you can focus on. This school of thought, which may be called the intelligence reformist school, is expressed most prominently in the 9/11 Commission Report (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, 2004) and in the work of scholars such as Amy Zegart (e.g., Zegart, 2007a, 2007c). The first is that Western nations must fund their intelligence services to the level thats necessary for them to be effective. Securing the Globe: Intelligence and the Post-9/11 Shift from Liddism to Drainism. It would be an unnecessary gamble, however, to give the surveillance powers now possessed by the FBI to an agency without any track record and tradition of safeguarding fundamental liberties. Identifying the significance of Human Intelligence in the post 9/11 environment will aim to renew confidence in the effectiveness of the HUMINT enterprise and its reliability for being a premier intelligence asset in combating transnational threats. The Senate has already passed legislation allowing for the surveillance under FISA of lone-wolf terrorists, and I hope that this proposal is swiftly enacted into law. 189-199). Our failure to deny pretrial release presumptively to individuals changed with federal crimes of terrorism has already enabled terrorists to escape justice. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the need of further intelligence services was questioned (Hughes, 2011). Everyone has instant access to it, and it goes beyond language and physical borders. Many in this group argue that America and the world are facing a new type of warfare; Bruce Berkowitz, for example, writes that the 9/11 attacks were an act of military geniusand may well foreshadow the next era of warfare (Berkowitz, 2002a, pp. Former CIA officer Gerecht (2004, p. 1) describes the principal problem as the failure of the CIA to develop a clandestine service with a methodology and officers capable of penetrating the Islamic holy-warrior organizations in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere. In the words of Robert Baer, also a former CIA officer (2005, p. 66), Not to be too blunt about it, but if the DO had a source close to Osama bin Laden, 9/11 would not have happened.. 1980). You could see it from the ground or from space but you couldnt destroy it without starting World War III. Intelligence is all about finding. Paul Pillar, for example, argues that the U.S. intelligence community has been working hard on the problem of international terrorism since at least 1986, when the CIAs Counterterrorist Center was established. I believe we did a good job of that during my tenure, but more is always possible. In addition, coordination between intelligence and law enforcement is not easy, in large part because the cultures of the two communities are very different and because of real and perceived legal separations between domestic and international intelligence activities (Treverton, 2003; Waxman, 2009). Deny pretrial release presumptively to individuals changed with federal crimes of terrorism has already enabled terrorists escape! Without starting World War III Bit of Heart and Soul Analyzing the of... As weak in its ability to gain HUMINT on terrorist groups and points out important disagreements the Cold.... 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