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Understanding Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Part 1, What is HUMINT?
Human Intelligence exist almost as old as war itself, the practices of Human Intelligence goes far back from the first interrogation of POW in war, to the first informant. No country fought without certain degree of intel or information. Hence there would be a need of a way to collect Intelligence from Human source. This method predate all other intelligence gathering method, commonly knows as Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) or Imagary Intelligence (IMAINT) which most likely require modern technology to goes with the information gathering.
What is Human Intelligence?
Basically, all information collected by way of Human interaction are called Human Intelligence. Human Interaction including talking, listening, sensing or by means of indirect apporach, in other words, questioning and interrogation.
Human intelligence can be obtain thru numerous of method, commonly either by inserting agent on a rival intelligence (Spying), which INTEL community coined it "Penetration" or by questioning and interrogation of subject and individual. However, advance technique such as "fishing" Where a person is being temped or tricked into divulging their own intelligence given by a form of token information may also classified as Human Intelligence.
What HUMINT is for?
There are basically 3 categories for HUMINT to apply
1.) Positive Intelligence - Information that would be used to make political decision, intel which benefit the executive branch of the government, where they can be used to make the overall decision toward a general area.
Say for example, if a human agent response to the intelligence gathering on A country, and get hold of what their intention would be if Their own country invaded Country B, Country A neighbour, that intel would dictate or put into consideration for the own Country step toward country B. That is called Positive Intelligence.
2,) Operational Intelligence - Information that would be determine or assist on operation/operational integrity. With an ongoing operation at hand, situation change from minute to minute, it's utmost important to get the intelligence right to make move against or support a certain ongoing operation, that intel could be required by Human Source and would be said as being Operational Intelligence.
For example. A EPW could give out Operational intel to your enemy combatent, such as the troop movement and troop deposition in the region, which would change every minute but related to the ongoing operation you are conducting.
Operational intelligence usually are time sensitive, once the operation at hand were finished and the intelligence itself would becoming useless. So most operational intel would have a TTL (Time-to-Live) limitation attached.
3.) Counter Intelligence - Information that would help understanding rival entity and also confuse and misdirect foreign intelligence operation.
Most intelligence organisation rely heavily on penetration into enemy or rival agency for counter intelligence operation. Suuch works usually clandestine and could be considered the highest form of espionage.
Counter intelligence could be existing as one of the 2, the first being a penetration that extract rivialry intelligence and put them to use within your own intelligence organisation. Usually involve spying on rival agency by mean of agent, asset, mole or all of the above.
The second being funneling misinformation into rivalry agency. Such act would deter and confuse the rivalry agency which denial their ability to get actual applipable intelligence from your own country.
On the surface, HUMINT Info can be used for making political decision, operational security, and informtion gathering (data Mining) but it does not, however, limited to such role. it could be used as a secondry information for any precaution or preduence toward a stand alone operation. In short, no intel is a form of intel, as usually there would be chatter within information pipeline, a clear sign of no collectable intelligence mean soemthing is going wrong with the current situation.
How HUMINT are collected
There are 2 ways to do it, either by covertly (Clandestine Operation) or overtly (Open but discreed Operation)
Covert Operation involve a series of agents and asset to be implemented in the target country without the local government knowledge, there are numerous cover an agent or its case officer can use when applying to this operation. They can be covered as governmental authority (Official in an embassy on a foreign land) or Non-Governmental Cover (such as Businessman or NGO worker) or simply a resident.
Covert operation can and will provide sourceful intel on Positive Intelligence and Counter intelligence, their ability to provide operational intel is low as most Operational intel are live intel and clandestine ops usually take months to set up, any operational intel cames up would most likely to be chance intel.
The other way to collect HUMINT is by overtly, meaning you do it in an open and discreed manner. That's involve skilled advanced interrogation, people volunteering with intelligence, both domestic and internationally and finally by trickry, by use of fishing, tempting and honey trap.
Intelligence can be obtained by interrogation of EPW, political criminal and even civilian. Skilled are very much heavily depended upon on overt ops. Where it almost always generate operational intel, sometime with positive intel, but less effective against counterintelligence.
Advantage over other Intel Collection method.
Compare to SIGINT, and IMGINT, HUMINT are still use and very useful today because of one very simple reason, all intelligence are processed first hand. When you look at Satallite imagry, you could not actually tell what is behind the said image. You can see, for example, the enemy is fuelling their rocket or testing something, but without operational HUMINT, you would not know the story behind it, and the story is pretty important.
While you can take away some work on HUMINT by working both SIGINT and IMGINT together, the facts remained that all viable intel thruought HUMINT are first hand, first account. And if the vetting and association is done right, those intel are almost always legitimate. As to not going to give you any fog of war.
We will discuss the different between HUMINT, SIGINT and IMAINT closely in part 3
Part - 2 will be the understanding of HUMINT operation.
Human Intelligence exist almost as old as war itself, the practices of Human Intelligence goes far back from the first interrogation of POW in war, to the first informant. No country fought without certain degree of intel or information. Hence there would be a need of a way to collect Intelligence from Human source. This method predate all other intelligence gathering method, commonly knows as Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) or Imagary Intelligence (IMAINT) which most likely require modern technology to goes with the information gathering.
What is Human Intelligence?
Basically, all information collected by way of Human interaction are called Human Intelligence. Human Interaction including talking, listening, sensing or by means of indirect apporach, in other words, questioning and interrogation.
Human intelligence can be obtain thru numerous of method, commonly either by inserting agent on a rival intelligence (Spying), which INTEL community coined it "Penetration" or by questioning and interrogation of subject and individual. However, advance technique such as "fishing" Where a person is being temped or tricked into divulging their own intelligence given by a form of token information may also classified as Human Intelligence.
What HUMINT is for?
There are basically 3 categories for HUMINT to apply
1.) Positive Intelligence - Information that would be used to make political decision, intel which benefit the executive branch of the government, where they can be used to make the overall decision toward a general area.
Say for example, if a human agent response to the intelligence gathering on A country, and get hold of what their intention would be if Their own country invaded Country B, Country A neighbour, that intel would dictate or put into consideration for the own Country step toward country B. That is called Positive Intelligence.
2,) Operational Intelligence - Information that would be determine or assist on operation/operational integrity. With an ongoing operation at hand, situation change from minute to minute, it's utmost important to get the intelligence right to make move against or support a certain ongoing operation, that intel could be required by Human Source and would be said as being Operational Intelligence.
For example. A EPW could give out Operational intel to your enemy combatent, such as the troop movement and troop deposition in the region, which would change every minute but related to the ongoing operation you are conducting.
Operational intelligence usually are time sensitive, once the operation at hand were finished and the intelligence itself would becoming useless. So most operational intel would have a TTL (Time-to-Live) limitation attached.
3.) Counter Intelligence - Information that would help understanding rival entity and also confuse and misdirect foreign intelligence operation.
Most intelligence organisation rely heavily on penetration into enemy or rival agency for counter intelligence operation. Suuch works usually clandestine and could be considered the highest form of espionage.
Counter intelligence could be existing as one of the 2, the first being a penetration that extract rivialry intelligence and put them to use within your own intelligence organisation. Usually involve spying on rival agency by mean of agent, asset, mole or all of the above.
The second being funneling misinformation into rivalry agency. Such act would deter and confuse the rivalry agency which denial their ability to get actual applipable intelligence from your own country.
On the surface, HUMINT Info can be used for making political decision, operational security, and informtion gathering (data Mining) but it does not, however, limited to such role. it could be used as a secondry information for any precaution or preduence toward a stand alone operation. In short, no intel is a form of intel, as usually there would be chatter within information pipeline, a clear sign of no collectable intelligence mean soemthing is going wrong with the current situation.
How HUMINT are collected
There are 2 ways to do it, either by covertly (Clandestine Operation) or overtly (Open but discreed Operation)
Covert Operation involve a series of agents and asset to be implemented in the target country without the local government knowledge, there are numerous cover an agent or its case officer can use when applying to this operation. They can be covered as governmental authority (Official in an embassy on a foreign land) or Non-Governmental Cover (such as Businessman or NGO worker) or simply a resident.
Covert operation can and will provide sourceful intel on Positive Intelligence and Counter intelligence, their ability to provide operational intel is low as most Operational intel are live intel and clandestine ops usually take months to set up, any operational intel cames up would most likely to be chance intel.
The other way to collect HUMINT is by overtly, meaning you do it in an open and discreed manner. That's involve skilled advanced interrogation, people volunteering with intelligence, both domestic and internationally and finally by trickry, by use of fishing, tempting and honey trap.
Intelligence can be obtained by interrogation of EPW, political criminal and even civilian. Skilled are very much heavily depended upon on overt ops. Where it almost always generate operational intel, sometime with positive intel, but less effective against counterintelligence.
Advantage over other Intel Collection method.
Compare to SIGINT, and IMGINT, HUMINT are still use and very useful today because of one very simple reason, all intelligence are processed first hand. When you look at Satallite imagry, you could not actually tell what is behind the said image. You can see, for example, the enemy is fuelling their rocket or testing something, but without operational HUMINT, you would not know the story behind it, and the story is pretty important.
While you can take away some work on HUMINT by working both SIGINT and IMGINT together, the facts remained that all viable intel thruought HUMINT are first hand, first account. And if the vetting and association is done right, those intel are almost always legitimate. As to not going to give you any fog of war.
We will discuss the different between HUMINT, SIGINT and IMAINT closely in part 3
Part - 2 will be the understanding of HUMINT operation.
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. ELINT and SIGINT often see encrypted comms cracked or protected.
