But intelligence gathering activities also carry their own risks, and rather than informing effective policies, they can undermine them.

In national security matters particularly, the magnitude of the mission generates an impulse, almost an obligation, among those working in the field to push all boundaries of reason in searching for those magical pieces of information that will save the country from all imaginable harm. The problem is there’s a lot you would pay, and a lot of tactics you could justify, to obtain perfect knowledge that you would never spend on a best guess based on limited information. Yet, when policy makers discuss their need for “intelligence,” they talk about it as if it is an oracle of perfected knowledge, and budget accordingly. The closed and secretive intelligence process makes it harder, not easier to discover and correct errors in fact, mistakes in judgement, and intentional distortions. The intelligence “process” can then add more confusion than it clears by masking sources and methods, compartmentalizing information and knowledge, inserting error or bias, failing to incorporate contrary facts or arguments, and bending to political influences. What they won’t say is that intelligence is “timely, accurate and trustworthy information.” In fact, the “intelligence” used to justify the Iraq war was determined to be “ stale, fragmentary, and speculative,” and even “ nefarious and unreliable.” This is because the raw material for intelligence often comes from dubious informers with sketchy motives, leaked or stolen documents of unknown provenance, and the potentially flawed perceptions of intelligence agents and analysts. Most often, intelligence agencies describe intelligence as a process, or the product of a process. And without a defined understanding of “intelligence,” policy makers don’t know what they are investing in when they give the intelligence community broad power and resources, which often leaves them disappointed in the results. But when you ask intelligence officials to define “intelligence,” they tie themselves in knots. In national security or foreign policy arena, we expect the intelligence community to provide it. Advance Constitutional Change Show / hideĮveryone can agree that our government leaders need timely, accurate, and trustworthy information in order to make informed policy decisions.National Task Force on Democracy Reform & the Rule of Law.Government Targeting of Minority Communities Show / hide.Campaign Finance in the Courts Show / hide.Gerrymandering & Fair Representation Show / hide.Ensure Every American Can Vote Show / hide.- Russian National Charged with Conspiring to Have U.S.Justice Department Seeks Seizure of Boeing 747 Cargo Plane Grounded in Argentina - United States Obtains Warrant for Seizure of Airplane of Sanctioned Russian Oligarch Andrei Skoch Worth More Than $90 Million.- United States Obtains Warrant for Seizure of $45 Million Airplane Owned by Russian Energy Company PJSC LUKOIL.

Domestic espionage definition