In
intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...
, assets are persons within organizations or countries being spied upon who provide information for an outside spy.
They are sometimes referred to as agents, and in law enforcement parlance, as confidential
informants
An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a “snitch”) is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informan ...
, or "CIs" for short.
There are different categories of assets, including people who:
* Willingly work for a foreign government for ideological reasons such as being against their own government, but live in a country that doesn't allow political opposition. They may elect to work with a foreign power to change their own country because there are few other ways available.
* Work in intergovernmental relations for a different part of their government but relay information to their country's intelligence agency. They often obtain useful information in the course of their other work and are sometimes tasked with seeking it out.
* Work for monetary gain. Intelligence services often pay good wages to people in important positions that are willing to betray secrets.
* Have been blackmailed and are forced into their role.
* Do not even know they are being used (so called "
useful idiot
In political jargon, a useful idiot is a term currently used to reference a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause—particularly a bad cause originating from a devious, ruthless source—without fully comprehending the cause's goals, a ...
s"). Assets can be loyal to their country, but may still provide a foreign agent with information through failures in information safety, such as using insecure computers or not following proper
OPSEC
Operations security (OPSEC) is a process that identifies critical information to determine if friendly actions can be observed by enemy intelligence, determines if information obtained by adversaries could be interpreted to be useful to them, a ...
procedures during day-to-day chatting.
See also
*
Vetting
Vetting is the process of performing a background check on someone before offering them employment, conferring an award, or doing fact-checking prior to making any decision. In addition, in intelligence gathering, assets are vetted to determine th ...
References
Espionage
Spies by role
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