Intelligence collection

[Owen Lewis]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nicholas Bohm" <nbohm@ernest.net>
To: <ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Sent: 21 March 2001 11:05
Subject: Intelligence collection


> I am sure Owen Lewis ......
> ... view that intelligence gatherers do not distort what they collect
> because it would defeat their sole purpose of serving the truth to their
> customers is analogous to the argument that free markets protect customers
> from suppliers and regulation is unnecessary.

As with many analogies, this one breaks down quite quickly if one pursues
it.

No one argues that intelligence gatherers should not be regulated. Moreover,
unlike product suppliers serving an open market, intelligencers exist only
to service their customers. Free market suppliers exist to make a return on
their investment. Caveat emptor must always apply to free market suppliers.
The nature of the product of the intelligencers is such that it applies only
with less force. Reasons for this are:

    1. The customer, truly, can take or leave intelligence product. He is
not required to act upon it. It is informative only.

    2. The product, by the time the customer gets it, is rarely drawn from a
single source. The careful collation, cross checking and analysis of input
from all available *intelligence* sources is a fundamental part of
intelligence production. Similarly, when the user receives that carefully
balanced product it is but one of the several - sometimes many - inputs the
customer will use to determine what if any executive action will result.

It remains that no government of any persuasion has found it in the best
interest of their nation entirely to disestablish the national intelligence
apparatus. In Western society, govts continue to fund and profit from the
product of their intelligence services even when they know that, within a
very few years, control of and much access to those services will pass from
their hands into the hands of others who will not be their political
friends. Perhaps for this reason, in this country, an all-party Privy
Council  is one important customer for intelligence product, regardless of
the party in power.

....

> Returning to Whitehall, my own modest experience of acting for Government
> departments and other public sector bodies, and for other clients involved
> with them, confirmed the unsurprising truth that Whitehall consists of
> fiefdoms within principalities within kingdoms within empires, with the
> usual concomitant alliances, trading and warfare.

True. See posts passim. But this lives alongside and does not conflict
seriously which the basic point I have tried to make.

>The question of who the
> customers of intelligence gathering really are, and who it really serves,
> is therefore far from simple.

True also - but that is a very wide consideration and beyond the scope of
discussion here perhaps.
>
> My own impression is that, except in time of a major war, GCHQ's main
enemy
> is HM Treasury.  What GCHQ needs is intelligence that supports its budget
> case.  The same is true of the MoD.  Below this level there are no doubt
> countless layers of smaller, self-similar patterns of interest.

True - to the extent that if one can't produce or produce sufficiently one
will go out of business (to return almost to your analogy).  Therefore, one
tries hard to produce. However, produce falsely and be sure that the
responsible agency will be rumbled within a limited amount of time.
Supporting and interrelating inputs from other sources are such that any
such attempted agency deception on any scale should cause a marked disparity
between inputs to remarked on and watched even before the product got very
far or remained in being very long.

Intelligence can be mistaken. That is in the nature of things. Some may try
to ensure that is will be mistaken. The procedure must make full allowance
for this. But it cannot be knowngly corrupt and survive scrutiny for any
length of time. Time must serve only to prove one right :-)

 - mostly so when it is derived from a single sourcereachebecome apparent
become apparent even pecieously

> ..... while there is undoubtedly value to be had from efforts at
preserving
> the purity of collected material (evidential) through applied
cryptography, I doubt
> whether such techniques are uniquly of value to the evidence-collecting
> function rather than the intelligence-gathering one.

I say no more than this. Due to pressures of one kind or another, it is
known that evidence has been suppressed or otherwise tampered with in more
than one major case. We know this because satisfactory evidence of such
tampering later came to light. It is in the nature of the human condition
that such tampering will occur again, from time to time. In the matter of
covert recordings, perhaps especially audio recordings, for some years now
the means have existed and been widely available to alter such recordings
undetectably where opportunity to do so also exists. Therefore, I conclude
that, until the means of recording and storing the records are made
tamper-proof,  no man can be convicted entirely safely on evidence provided
by such recordings alone, nor even where such evidence, uncorroborated, is a
major plank in the case against him. As always when covering a complex topic
briefly, this neglects to cover some considerations but I am sure that the
general thrust is correct as it stands. For the time being, the
prosecutorial authorities would seem not to agree this position. I therefore
conclude that it can only be a matter of time (and perhaps a number of
wrongful convictions) before the point is finally proved.

Owen