Intelligence Outsourcing
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Outsourcing intelligence is a method by which a country contracts out intelligence activities such as collection, analysis, and dissemination to non-governmental employees. In the
United States of America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
, approximately 70% of the intelligence budget was spent on contracts in 2006.


Methods

The government of a country may outsource
intelligence gathering This is a list of intelligence gathering disciplines. HUMINT Human intelligence (HUMINT) are gathered from a person in the location in question. Sources can include the following: * Advisors or foreign internal defense (FID) personnel wor ...
that may not be obtainable through other means, where the only way may be through human intelligence such as the CIA's
National Clandestine Service The Directorate of Operations (DO), less formally called the Clandestine Service,Central Intelligence AgencyCareers & Internships Retrieved: July 9, 2015. is a component of the US Central Intelligence Agency. It was known as the ''Directorate o ...
(NCS). It may mean outsourcing to foreign nationals from a country of interest, they may outsource to private companies as well to gather the specified intelligence needed. For a company the ways of outsourcing intelligence are the same, in which third party individuals and corporations are hired to obtain data and other intelligence. Intelligence can also be outsourced for analysis by a third party, in similar fashion to what the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence does.


Jumping ship

Former analysts and officers of the
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
and Department of National Intelligence are allowed to leave their government positions and go work for companies in the
private sector The private sector is the part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is owned by private groups, usually as a means of establishment for profit or non profit, rather than being owned by the government. Employment The ...
the next day doing the same job. This is known as "butts in seats."Abbot, S.,
The Outsourcing of U.S. Intelligence Analysis: Will it make us more or less safe?
´, ''A Journalism Initiative of the Carnegie and Knight Foundations'', 28 July 2006, (latest access on 8 July 2009).
The reason one former government analyst did go work for a private intelligence firm was because the pay in the private sector was about 50% higher than the one he had from the government.


Private sector dominance

Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States Congress increased the funding flow to the intelligence community. In November 2005, a CIA official accidentally revealed the intelligence budget to be $44 billion, which increased from a $26.6 billion budget reported by CIA Director
George Tenet George John Tenet (born January 5, 1953) is an American intelligence official and academic who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, as well as a Distinguished Professor in the P ...
in 1997. The intelligence community is allowed to keep its budget secret. With this secrecy comes speculation that at least 50% of the entire budget now flows to the private sector bbot It is also estimated that in the intelligence community much of the 15,000 analysts are drawing private-sector paychecks as a result of "butts in seats." According to R.J. Hillhouse, "
Defense Intelligence Agency The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is an intelligence agency and combat support agency of the United States Department of Defense, specializing in defense and military intelligence. A component of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the I ...
(DIA) workers revealed at a conference in May that contractors make up 51% of the staff in the DIA." Hillhouse goes further to say that, "the CIA has a similar situation…between 50% and 60% of the workforce of the CIA's most important directorate, the National Clandestine Service (NCS)… is composed of employees of for-profit corporations." Hillhouse also says that, in terms of oversight the ratio is 1:25 (one government employee supervising twenty-five private contractors), which means that it will "involve multiple companies and multiple layers of administration." Since the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
, U.S. telecommunications giants
AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...
and
Verizon Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...
have actually outsourced all their controversial NSA-mandated internet and telephone surveillance to the contractors Narus and
Verint Verint Systems is a Melville, New York-based analytics company which was founded in 2002. The company sells software and hardware products for customer engagement management and business intelligence. Their products are designed to assist clien ...
respective, both of which have close ties to Israeli intelligence services,Bamford, James. ''The Shadow Factory,'' Doubleday, New York, 2008 although they maintain headquarters in the U.S.


References


Literature

* Shorrock, T., `''Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing''´, (
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London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
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Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
, May 2009, 2. Ed., ) * Van Puyvelde, D., `''Outsourcing US Intelligence: Contractors and Government Accountability''´, (
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, 2019, {{ISBN, 978-1-4744-5022-5) Intelligence Community Intelligence communities