Intelligence collection

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 16:56 21/03/2001 -0000, Owen Lewis wrote:
>
>----- 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 :-)

It can take a long time, and even then the agency responsible survives:
try "CIA" and "missile gap" or "bomber gap".  So I don't accept that market
forces work adequately to produce truth from intelligence.

> - 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.

With this I wholly agree.

Regards

Nicholas

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