Intelligence (information gathering)

Intelligence, in the context of information gathering, refers to a wide range of techniques for picking and prioritizing the subjects of interest, collecting and validating raw information, and inferring meaning by analyzing (ideally) multiple sources of information on a given subject. Once the analytical results are available, they must be disseminated to the people that need it.

In a military, law enforcement, business, and national intelligence process, some of the means of collection, and possibly analysis, may be secret, for if the opponent knew the methods were in use, that person or organization could take precautions against them. Therefore, there is a delicate balance between the number of people that receive the analyzed material, and the risk of revealing "sources and methods". The discipline of counterintelligence focuses on protecting one's own sensitive information, not just one's intelligence processes, from an opponent.

Intelligence collection

While methods and their selection are discussed, at length, in intelligence collection management and discipline-specific models of technique, the major categories are:

• Human-source intelligence (HUMINT): Information collected from humans, including interrogation, documents, and willing cooperation; the latter includes such things as scouts and diplomats as well as spies
• Signals intelligence(SIGINT): Information collected from deliberate signals, including human-understandable (e.g., radio messages and captured encrypted documents) and machine-to-machine (e.g., radar analysis)
• Measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT): Information extracted from inadvertent signals, environmental disturbances (e.g., acoustic noise, chemical emissions, magnetic fields)
• Imagery intelligence (IMIINT): Information generically from picture-taking, although it extends to exact placement of the images with respect to location (geospatial intelligence) and the analysis of non-image components of the picture (e.g., heat or color)
• Open source intelligence (OSINT): Information obtained from published or broadcast sources; verified OSINT (V-OSINT) confirms it with non-public methods
• Financial intelligence (FININT): Information obtained from formal and informal financial transactions, analysis of expenditures, etc.
• Technical intelligence ((TECHINT): Information obtained from the detailed engineering analysis of captured, purchased, or stolen equipment and supplies

Intelligence analysis: models

Broadly speaking, there are four major paradigms for intelligence analysis:

• Social and experimental science with hypothesis testing, first formulated by Sherman Kent, , elaborated into specifying requirements and analytic techniques, and examining cognitive traps for intelligence analysis based on knowledge of error in the social sciences.
• Social science with philosophical and ideological assessment of intentions, based on understanding of the actors rather than specific knowledge. This makes a firm distinction from social science, where the sources are not deliberately trying to deceive; deception is an advanced doctrine with many nations. Another difference from social science is that the adversary may try to overload the analyst, making the signal-to-noise ratio infeasible for structured analysis.,
• Law, where the "is it possible" comes into play: Vice President Cheney expressed a guiding principle shortly after 9/11:

  if there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction — and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time — the United States must now act as if it were a certainty.

• Engineering, where the emphasis is on capability rather than assessment.