A secret service is a
government agency
A government agency or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government (bureaucracy) that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, s ...
,
intelligence agency
An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, Intelligence analysis, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy obj ...
, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For instance, a country may establish a secret service which has some policing powers (such as
surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing, or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as ...
) but not others. The powers and duties of a government organization may be partly secret and partly not. The person may be said to operate openly at home and secretly abroad, or vice versa.
Secret police
image:Putin-Stasi-Ausweis.png, 300px, Vladimir Putin's secret police identity card, issued by the East German Stasi while he was working as a Soviet KGB liaison officer from 1985 to 1989. Both organizations used similar forms of repression.
Secre ...
and the FBI can usually be considered secret services.
Various states and regimes, at different times and places, established bodies that could be described as a secret service or secret police – for example, the ''
agentes in rebus'' of the late
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...
were sometimes defined as such. In modern times, the French police officer
Joseph Fouché is sometimes regarded as a pioneer of secret intelligence; among other things, he is alleged to have prevented several murder attempts on
Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...
during his time as First Consul (1799–1804) through a large and tight net of various
informant
An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a "snitch", "rat", "canary", "stool pigeon", "stoolie", "tout" or "grass", among other terms) is a person who provides privileged information, or (usually damaging) information inten ...
s. William Wickham is also credited with establishing one of the earliest intelligence services that would be recognized as such today and a pioneer of basic concepts of the profession, such as the "intelligence cycle."
[Elizabeth Sparrow, ''Secret Service: British Agents in France. 1792-1815'' (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999) ]
See also
*
Espionage
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...
References
External links
{{Authority control
National security
Government agencies by type
Espionage