Countering Hostile Surveillance: Detect, Evade, and Neutralize Physical Surveillance Threats
The Supreme Court recently addressed this technology in United States v. All nine Justices answered that question in the affirmative, but they produced three different opinions. Trying to make sense of the Jones concurrences and reduce them to a clear and administrable rule—or, alternatively, arguing that they make no sense and cannot be so reduced—has become something of a cottage industry amongst privacy law scholars.
Specifically, we propose that a new surveillance technique is likely to violate an expectation of privacy when it eliminates or circumvents a preexisting structural right of privacy and disrupts the equilibrium of power between police and suspects by making it much less expensive for the government to collect information. We explain how courts might put that general proposition into practice by using estimates of the actual costs of particular modes of location tracking to apply a rough rule of thumb: Although we derive this approach from the specific example of location tracking and limit our Essay to that topic, we are hopeful that it may also prove a useful tool in evaluating other surveillance techniques.
However, by closing with a citation to the theory of Professor Harry Surden, Ohm may point us towards another potential approach for identifying Fourth Amendment disequilibrium: In the pre-computer age, the greatest protections of privacy were neither constitutional nor statutory, but practical. Traditional surveillance for any extended period of time was difficult and costly and therefore rarely undertaken.
The surveillance at issue in this case—constant monitoring of the location of a vehicle for four weeks—would have required a large team of agents, multiple vehicles, and perhaps aerial assistance. Only an investigation of unusual importance could have justified such an expenditure of law enforcement resources.
Countering Hostile Surveillance: Detect, Evade, and Neutralize Physical Surveillance Threats
Devices like the one used in the present case, however, make long-term monitoring relatively easy and cheap. But the use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy. Indeed, one might nominate this approach as a fifth model of Fourth Amendment protection on top of the four that Kerr has already identified, if only there were a way to systematize and standardize its application.
Nor does the opinion use any data to elaborate on how great a cost difference between prolonged tracking before and after the introduction of GPS technology would justify an equilibrium-adjusting increase in Fourth Amendment protection. But sadly, as Stephen E. Those empirics do exist, however, and it is the project of identifying and modeling them to which we turn next.
Not all technologies result in the substantial cost savings that would warrant a recalibration of Fourth Amendment law. This distinction between ordinary technological advances and extraordinary rights-shifts becomes plain in even rudimentary, back-of-the-envelope calculations to estimate and compare the approximate cost of various location tracking techniques. We recognize that different techniques are often used in combination, but for the sake of argument we will estimate the cost of each in isolation.
In doing so, we rely on the following assumptions. Second, our calculations focus only on the cost of acquiring the location information being sought, and do not include the cost of later reviewing it or making investigative use of it. Third, our calculations do not include fixed costs, such as the cost of equipment, as they are amortized over time and over a large number of cases. We only include marginal costs such as personnel costs, operating costs, and other service fees that are specific to an investigation.
For example, we do not include the cost of purchasing the car but we do include costs associated with operating the vehicle, such as gasoline. We combine these costs to calculate the total average cost per hour of each type of surveillance for three different time periods of surveillance—one day, seven days, and twenty-eight days as in Jones —to demonstrate the falling cost per hour of certain techniques over time. The cost of some techniques does not vary depending on the length of the investigation, but for those with varying costs, we present a range of values.
We consider the cost of several location surveillance techniques: The most basic way to track the location of an individual is to assign an agent to follow that person on foot. Foot pursuit has clear advantages given that the agent is usually within the line of sight of the suspect and can immediately apprehend the suspect in the act of a crime.
Additionally, the agent has the ability to visually confirm that the person he is following is, in fact, the target. Regardless of the various pros and cons of foot surveillance, our main concern is with its cost as a means of acquiring location information. In our model, the primary cost of foot pursuit is the salary of the agent.
Law enforcement can also track a suspect from a vehicle, typically using two agents per vehicle. As with foot pursuit, the problems of single-vehicle pursuit are typically overcome by using a surveillance box. The hourly cost will vary depending on the length of the investigation, because the initial installation costs will be amortized over time.
Agents use Stingrays in a manner similar to their use of beepers, and with the exception of the attachment-related costs, the cost of using an IMSI catcher for surveillance is essentially the same as using a beeper. Therefore, putting aside the up-front cost of the IMSI catcher itself, the only costs for IMSI catcher surveillance are the cost of the agent operating the device, the cost of the agent driving the pursuit vehicle containing the device, and the operating costs of that vehicle.
A recent survey of over seventy law enforcement agencies demonstrates how new technologies are transforming policing: As with beeper technology, we conservatively estimate that this technology takes one hour to install and one hour to remove, with one agent doing the work and another agent looking out. Also as with the beeper, these fixed installation and removal costs result in a range of hourly costs depending on the length of the investigation. In addition to the personnel costs incurred by installing and uninstalling, there is a monthly service fee associated with GPS devices. There are private companies that provide service contracts similar to a consumer cell phone contract with a fixed cost for the device and a fee for its use.
Rather than pursue a suspect in the field, law enforcement agents can track subjects by following the signal of their cell phones by obtaining location information from the provider. Data gathered by the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU show that cell phone companies will provide location data to law enforcements at varying rates. Our calculations include any fees charged to initialize the process when applicable because they are specific to an investigation, but those costs are included in the hourly rate.
Given the downward trajectory of technological costs, the increased automation of these services via self-service web portals, and the fact that reimbursement to carriers is limited to reasonable, directly incurred costs, 55 we might expect that these rates will decline further over time. If a new surveillance technique eliminates a previous structural right of privacy by making it extremely inexpensive for the government to collect information that otherwise would have been impossible or prohibitively costly to obtain, the use of that technique violates an expectation of privacy.
Such a rule would effectively use the Fourth Amendment to impose new legal costs to replace a lost structural right and thereby restore equilibrium. The cost of GPS-based tracking does radically reduce the cost, however, because it reduces the manpower needed to just the few hours necessary to install and uninstall the device.
Focusing on the examples most relevant to the Karo beeper , Knotts beeper and Jones GPS device precedents, we find that the total cost of using one car and a beeper over a twenty-eight-day period is nearly three hundred times the cost of doing the same tracking using a GPS device. The difference between GPS tracking and traditional five-car pursuit is even more dramatic: In contrast, the difference in the cost of beeper surveillance and covert car pursuit without a beeper is significant but well within the same order of magnitude: Relying on the surveillance costs involved in these precedents, we arrive at a rough rule of thumb: If the cost of the surveillance using the new technique is an order of magnitude ten times less than the cost of the surveillance without using the new technique, then the new technique violates a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Unlike the concurrences, however, it provides a clear, objective metric for determining when a previously existing structural right has been lost. Has the new technique reduced costs by a factor of ten or more? If so, a rights-shift has occurred and the Fourth Amendment must be used to impose new legal costs and restore balance. This test provides an objective metric, as Ohm suggests, 59 but is both easier to derive and more specific to the particular case and technology at hand than the more general metrics he proposes.
Others will guess that they are rare. But exceedingly few will know the truth, which makes such probabilistic beliefs a poor basis for Fourth Amendment regulation. Similarly, the incredibly inexpensive technique of cell phone tracking clearly requires an equilibrium-adjusting application of Fourth Amendment protections for any length of surveillance. This conclusion is clear when comparing traditional covert car pursuit or beeper surveillance to even the most expensive hourly rate for cell phone tracking using the most expensive cell phone carrier.
The difference is even more dramatic when the length of the surveillance increases. Using beeper technology for the same period of time is nearly sixty times more expensive, while covert car pursuit is over times more expensive. Speaking more generally, any technology used for mass location surveillance would trigger our rule, because as the number of targets increases, the cost of tracking each one approaches zero. The new technologies enable, as the old because of expense do not, wholesale surveillance.
Rather than reserving judgment on the question, our rule asks and answers it: Put another way, our rule concludes that mass-tracking technology implicates the Fourth Amendment exactly because it is an efficient alternative to the impossibly costly hiring of another ten million police officers. This conclusion can be illustrated by a simple example.
The FBI has stated that in response to the Jones ruling, it had to either get warrants for, or deactivate, the 3, GPS devices that were deployed at that time across the United States. Without that technology, it would require 15, agents to covertly follow the same number of targets assuming five agents for each target. Therefore, even if the FBI were to instruct all of its 13, special agents 65 to ignore all other duties and remain active for every hour of every day an assignment that is humanly impossible , it would still be 1, agents short of being able to follow that many suspects.
When such surveillance would have required ludicrous expenditures of time and treasure, there was no need for the Fourth Amendment to protect against it. However, now that the structural constraints against that surveillance have disappeared and the absolutely impossible has become easily possible, Fourth Amendment protection is desperately necessary. This view is not only consistent with that of several scholars who have interpreted the Jones concurrences to support a rule restricting mass surveillance, 66 but is also consistent with the concerns expressed by the Justices themselves during the Jones oral argument.
As Justice Breyer put it: The Chief Justice put an even finer point on it: Ultimately, several Justices posed questions raising the concern that a failure to regulate GPS tracking could enable mass or indiscriminate warrantless surveillance. Collective counterintelligence is gaining information about an opponent's intelligence collection capabilities whose aim is at an entity. Defensive counterintelligence is thwarting efforts by hostile intelligence services to penetrate the service.
Many governments organize counterintelligence agencies separate and distinct from their intelligence collection services for specialized purposes. In most countries the counterintelligence mission is spread over multiple organizations, though one usually predominates. There is usually a domestic counterintelligence service, usually part of a larger law enforcement organization such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States. The United Kingdom has the separate Security Service , also known as MI5 , which does not have direct police powers but works closely with law enforcement called Special Branch that can carry out arrests, do searches with a warrant, etc.
Military organizations have their own counterintelligence forces, capable of conducting protective operations both at home and when deployed abroad [12]. Depending on the country, there can be various mixtures of civilian and military in foreign operations. In the United States , there is a very careful line drawn between intelligence and law enforcement. France , for example, builds its domestic counterterror in a law enforcement framework.
In France, a senior anti-terror magistrate is in charge of defense against terrorism. French magistrates have multiple functions that overlap US and UK functions of investigators, prosecutors, and judges. Spain gives its Interior Ministry, with military support, the leadership in domestic counterterrorism.
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Still, the FIS term remains the usual way of referring to the threat against which counterintelligence protects. In modern practice, several missions are associated with counterintelligence from the national to the field level. Counterintelligence is part of intelligence cycle security , which, in turn, is part of intelligence cycle management.
A variety of security disciplines also fall under intelligence security management and complement counterintelligence, including:.
The disciplines involved in "positive security", or measures by which one's own society collects information on its actual or potential security, complement security. For example, when communications intelligence identifies a particular radio transmitter as one used only by a particular country, detecting that transmitter inside one's own country suggests the presence of a spy that counterintelligence should target. In particular, counterintelligence has a significant relationship with the collection discipline of HUMINT and at least some relationship with the others.
Counterintellingence can both produce information and protect it. In many governments, the responsibility for protecting these things is split. Historically, CIA assigned responsibility for protecting its personnel and operations to its Office of Security, while it assigned the security of operations to multiple groups within the Directorate of Operations: At one point, the counterintelligence unit operated quite autonomously, under the direction of James Jesus Angleton.
Later, operational divisions had subordinate counterintelligence branches, as well as a smaller central counterintelligence staff. Aldrich Ames was in the Counterintelligence Branch of Europe Division, where he was responsible for directing the analysis of Soviet intelligence operations.
Countering Hostile Surveillance: Detect, Evade, and Neutralize Physical Surveillance Threats
US military services have had a similar and even more complex split. This kind of division clearly requires close coordination, and this in fact occurs on a daily basis. The interdependence of the US counterintelligence community is also manifest in our relationships with liaison services. We cannot cut off these relationships because of concern about security, but experience has certainly shown that we must calculate the risks involved.
On the other side of the CI coin, counterespionage has one purpose which transcends all others in importance: The emphasis which the KGB places on penetration is evident in the cases already discussed from the defensive, or security viewpoint. The best security system in the world cannot provide an adequate defense against it because the technique involves people.
The only way to be sure that an enemy has been contained is to know his plans in advance and in detail.
Moreover, only a high-level penetration of the opposition can tell you whether your own service is penetrated. A high-level defector can also do this, but the adversary knows that he defected and within limits can take remedial action. Conducting CE without the aid of penetrations is like fighting in the dark.
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Conducting CE with penetrations can be like shooting fish in a barrel. Clearly, the British were penetrated by Philby, but it has never been determined, in any public forum, if there were other serious penetrations. Golitsyn was generally believed by Angleton. Defensive counterintelligence starts by looking for places in one's own organization that could easily be exploited by foreign intelligence services FIS. Opposition might indeed be a country, but it could be a transnational group or an internal insurgent group.
Operations against a FIS might be against one's own nation, or another friendly nation. The range of actions that might be done to support a friendly government can include a wide range of functions, certainly including military or counterintelligence activities, but also humanitarian aid and aid to development i. Transnational criminal organizations include the drug trade, money laundering, extortion targeted against computer or communications systems, smuggling, etc.
Counterintelligence and counterterrorism analyses provide strategic assessments of foreign intelligence and terrorist groups and prepare tactical options for ongoing operations and investigations. Counterespionage may involve proactive acts against foreign intelligence services, such as double agents , deception , or recruiting foreign intelligence officers.
While clandestine HUMINT sources can give the greatest insight into the adversary's thinking, they may also be most vulnerable to the adversary's attacks on one's own organization. Before trusting an enemy agent, remember that such people started out as being trusted by their own countries. They may still be loyal to that country. Wisner emphasized his own, and Dulles', views that the best defense against foreign attacks on, or infiltration of, intelligence services is active measures against those hostile services.
Counterespionage goes beyond being reactive, and actively tries to subvert hostile intelligence services, by recruiting agents in the foreign service, by discrediting personnel actually loyal to their own service, and taking away resources that would be useful to the hostile service. All of these actions apply to non-national threats as well as to national organizations. If the hostile action is in one's own country, or in a friendly one with cooperating police, the hostile agents may be arrested, or, if diplomats, declared persona non grata.
From the perspective of one's own intelligence service, exploiting the situation to the advantage of one's side is usually preferable to arrest or actions that might result in the death of the threat. The intelligence priority sometimes comes into conflict with the instincts of one's own law enforcement organizations, especially when the foreign threat combines foreign personnel with citizens of one's country.
In some circumstances, arrest may be a first step, in which the prisoner is given the choice of cooperating, or facing severe consequence up to and including a death sentence for espionage. Cooperation may consist of telling all one knows about the other service, but, preferably, actively assisting in deceptive actions against the hostile service.
Defensive counterintelligence specifically for intelligence services involves risk assessment of their culture, sources, methods and resources. Risk management must constantly reflect those assessments, since effective intelligence operations are often risk-taking. Even while taking calculated risks, the services need to mitigate risk with appropriate countermeasures.
FIS are especially able to explore open societies, and, in that environment, have been able to subvert insiders in the intelligence community. Offensive counterespionage is the most powerful tool for finding penetrators and neutralizing them, but it is not the only tool. Understanding what leads individuals to turn on their own side is the focus of Project Slammer.
Without undue violations of personal privacy, systems can be developed to spot anomalous behavior, especially in the use of information systems. Decision makers require intelligence free from hostile control or manipulation. Since every intelligence discipline is subject to manipulation by our adversaries, validating the reliability of intelligence from all collection platforms is essential. Accordingly, each counterintelligence organization will validate the reliability of sources and methods that relate to the counterintelligence mission in accordance with common standards.
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For other mission areas, we will examine collection, analysis, dissemination practices, and other intelligence activities and will recommend improvements, best practices, and common standards. Intelligence is vulnerable not only to external but also to internal threats. Subversion, treason, and leaks expose our vulnerabilities, our governmental and commercial secrets, and our intelligence sources and methods.
This insider threat has been a source of extraordinary damage to US national security, as with Aldrich Ames , Robert Hanssen , and Edward Lee Howard , all of whom had access to major clandestine activities. Had an electronic system to detect anomalies in browsing through counterintellence files been in place, Robert Hanssen's searches for suspicion of activities of his Soviet and later Russian paymasters might have surfaced early. Anomalies might simply show that an especially creative analyst has a trained intuition possible connections, and is trying to research them.
Adding these new tools and techniques to [national arsenals], the counterintelligence community will seek to manipulate foreign spies, conduct aggressive investigations, make arrests and, where foreign officials are involved, expel them for engaging in practices inconsistent with their diplomatic status or exploit them as an unwitting channel for deception, or turn them into witting double agents.
Victor Suvorov , the pseudonym of a former Soviet military intelligence i. The Soviet operational officer, having seen a great deal of the ugly face of communism, very frequently feels the utmost repulsion to those who sell themselves to it willingly. And when a GRU or KGB officer decides to break with his criminal organization, something which fortunately happens quite often, the first thing he will do is try to expose the hated volunteer.
Attacks against military, diplomatic and related facilities are a very real threat, as demonstrated by the attacks against French and US peacekeepers in Beirut, the attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, attacks on Colombian bases and on U. Force protection is defined to be a defense against deliberate attack, not accidents or natural disasters.
Gleghorn distinguishes between the protection of national intelligence services, and the intelligence needed to provide combatant commands with the information they need for force protection. Physical security is important, but it does not override the role of force protection intelligence Although all intelligence disciplines can be used to gather force protection intelligence, HUMINT collected by intelligence and CI agencies plays a key role in providing indications and warning of terrorist and other force protection threats.
Force protection, for forces deployed in host countries, occupation duty, and even at home, may not be supported sufficiently by a national-level counterterrorism organization alone. In a country, colocating FPCI personnel, of all services, with military assistance and advisory units, allows agents to build relationships with host nation law enforcement and intelligence agencies, get to know the local environments, and improve their language skills. FPCI needs a legal domestic capability to deal with domestic terrorism threats. They recognized American military personnel were billeted at Khobar Towers in the fall of , and began surveillance of the facility, and continued to plan, in June In March , Saudi Arabian border guards arrested a Hizballah member attempting plastic explosive into the country, leading to the arrest of two more Hizballah members.
Hizballah leaders recruited replacements for those arrested, and continued planning for the attack. In the US Army counterintelligence manual, CI had a broader scope against the various intelligence collection disciplines. Some of the overarching CI tasks are described as. It is not always clear, under this doctrine, who is responsible for all intelligence collection threats against a military or other resource. The full scope of US military counterintelligence doctrine has been moved to a classified publication, Joint Publication JP There is an additional category relevant to the broad spectrum of counterintelligence: It makes sense, therefore, to monitor trusted personnel for risks in these areas, such as financial stress, extreme political views, potential vulnerabilities for blackmail, and excessive need for approval or intolerance of criticism.
With luck, problems in an employee can be caught early, assistance can be provided to correct them, and not only is espionage avoided, but a useful employee retained. See Motives for spying for specific examples. Sometimes, the preventive and neutralization tasks overlap, as in the case of Earl Edwin Pitts. His activities seemed motivated by both money and ego over perceived bad treatment when he was an FBI agent. His sentence required him to tell the FBI all he knew of foreign agents. Ironically, he told them of suspicious actions by Robert Hanssen , which were not taken seriously at the time.
To go beyond slogans, Project Slammer was an effort of the Intelligence Community Staff, under the Director of Central Intelligence, to come up with characteristics of an individual likely to commit espionage against the United States. Additionally, persons knowledgeable of subjects are contacted to better understand the subjects' private lives and how they are perceived by others while conducting espionage.
These are mutually reinforcing, often simultaneous events.
They belittle the security system, feeling that if the information was really important espionage would be hard to do the information would really be better protected. This occurs when access to classified information is lost or there is a perceived need to prove themselves or both. Glamour if present earlier subsides. They are reluctant to continue. They may even break contact. Those wanting to reverse their role aren't confessing, they're negotiating. Both attempt to minimize or avoid punishment. According to a press report about Project Slammer and Congressional oversight of counterespionage, one fairly basic function is observing one's own personnel for behavior that either suggests that they could be targets for foreign HUMINT, or may already have been subverted.
News reports indicate that in hindsight, red flags were flying but not noticed. Some people with changed spending may have a perfectly good reason, such as an inheritance or even winning the lottery, but such patterns should not be ignored.
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Personnel in sensitive positions, who have difficulty getting along with peers, may become risks for being compromised with an approach based on ego. William Kampiles, a low-level worker in the CIA Watch Center, sold, for a small sum, the critical operations manual on the KH reconnaissance satellite. Future Slammer analyses will focus on newly developing issues in espionage such as the role of money, the new dimensions of loyalty and what seems to be a developing trend toward economic espionage. Military and security organizations will provide secure communications, and may monitor less secure systems, such as commercial telephones or general Internet connections, to detect inappropriate information being passed through them.
Education on the need to use secure communications, and instruction on using them properly so that they do not become vulnerable to specialized technical interception. The basic methods of countering IMINT are to know when the opponent will use imaging against one's own side, and interfering with the taking of images. In some situations, especially in free societies, it must be accepted that public buildings may always be subject to photography or other techniques.
Countermeasures include putting visual shielding over sensitive targets or camouflaging them. When countering such threats as imaging satellites, awareness of the orbits can guide security personnel to stop an activity, or perhaps cover the sensitive parts, when the satellite is overhead. This also applies to imaging on aircraft and UAVs, although the more direct expedient of shooting them down, or attacking their launch and support area, is an option in wartime.
In democratic societies, even in wartime, censorship must be watched carefully lest it violate reasonable freedom of the press, but the balance is set differently in different countries and at different times. Many British journalists find that this system is used fairly, although there will always be arguments. In the specific context of counterintelligence, note that Peter Wright , a former senior member of the Security Service who left their service without his pension, moved to Australia before publishing his book Spycatcher.
While much of the book was reasonable commentary, it did reveal some specific and sensitive techniques, such as Operation RAFTER , a means of detecting the existence and setting of radio receivers. MASINT is mentioned here for completeness, but the discipline contains so varied a range of technologies that a type-by-type strategy is beyond the current scope. Offensive techniques in current counterintelligence doctrine are principally directed against human sources, so counterespionage can be considered a synonym for offensive counterintelligence.
Defensive counterintelligence operations that succeed in breaking up a clandestine network by arresting the persons involved or by exposing their actions demonstrate that disruption is quite measurable and effective against FIS if the right actions are taken. If defensive counterintelligence stops terrorist attacks, it has succeeded.
Offensive counterintelligence seeks to damage the long-term capability of the adversary. The terminology is not the same as used by other services, but the distinctions are useful:. Manipulating an intelligence professional, himself trained in counterintelligence, is no easy task, unless he is already predisposed toward the opposing side. Any effort that does not start with a sympathetic person will take a long-term commitment, and creative thinking to overcome the defenses of someone who knows he is a counterintelligence target and also knows counterintelligence techniques.
Terrorists on the other hand, although they engage in deception as a function of security appear to be more prone to manipulation or deception by a well-placed adversary than are foreign intelligence services. A person willing to take on an offensive counterintelligence role, especially when not starting as a professional member of a service, can present in many ways. A person may be attracted by careful nurturing of a sense that someone may want to act against service A, or may be opportunistic: Opportunistic acquisition, as of a walk-in, has the disadvantage of being unexpected and therefore unplanned for: In this situation the necessity of assessing the candidate conflicts also with the preservation of security, particularly if the officer approached is in covert status.
Volunteers and walk-ins are tricky customers, and the possibility of provocation is always present. On the other hand, some of our best operations have been made possible by volunteers. The test of the professional skill of an intelligence organization is its ability to handle situations of this type. When an agent candidate appears, judgments are needed on four essential questions to decide if a potential operation makes sense, if the candidate is the right person for the operation, and if one's own service can support the operation. Negative answers on one or even two of these questions are not ground for immediate rejection of the possible operation.
But they are ground for requiring some unusually high entries on the credit side of the ledger. The initial assessment comes from friendly debriefing or interview. The interviewing officer may be relaxed and casual, but underneath the surface his attitude is one of deliberate purpose: For instance, if an agent walks in, says he is a member of another service, and reveals information so sensitive that the other service would surely not give it away just to establish the informant's bona fides, there are two possibilities:.
Sometimes, the manner in which the man conducts himself will suggest which of the two it is. In addition to establishing the individual's true identity and examining his documents, there is also a need to gain information on the walk-in's service. It may be more difficult to determine the reason why the agent presented himself than to establish who he is and what service he represents, because motivation is a complex of mental and emotional drives.
The question of the double agent's motivation is approached by the interviewing officer from two angles:. If a recruit speaks of a high regard for democratic ideology, but casual conversation about Western history and politics may reveal that the potential double agent really has no understanding of democracy, then ideology may not be the real reason why he is willing to cooperate. While it is possible that such an individual created a romanticized fantasy of democracy, it is more likely that he is saying what he thinks the CI officer wants to hear.
CI officers should make it comfortable for the agent to mention more base motivations: It can be informative to leave such things as luxury catalogs where the agent can see them, and observe if he reacts with desire, repugnance, or disbelief. To decide between what the officer thinks the motive is and what the agent says it is not easy, because double agents act out of a wide variety of motivations, sometimes psychopathic ones like a masochistic desire for punishment by both services.
Others have financial, religious, political, or vindictive motives. The last are often the best double agents: Making the judgment about the agent's psychological and physical suitability is also difficult. Sometimes a psychologist or psychiatrist can be called in under some pretext. Such professionals, or a well-trained CI officer, may recognize signs of sociopathic personality disorder in potential double agents. From the point of view of the double agent operation, here are their key traits:. The candidate must be considered as a person and the operation as a potential.
Possibilities which would otherwise be rejected out of hand can be accepted if the counterintelligence service is or will be in a position to obtain and maintain an independent view of both the double agent and the case. The estimate of the potential value of the operation must take into consideration whether his service has the requisite personnel, facilities, and technical support; whether running the operation will prejudice other activities of his government; whether it will be necessary or desirable, at the outset or later, to share the case with foreign liaison; and whether the case has political implications.
A subject of offensive counterintelligence starts with a loyalty to one service. Double agents and defectors start out being loyal to service B, which immediately creates the potential for emotional conflict. False flag operations also have the potential for conflict, as these operations recruit people who believe they are working for service C, but they have not been told the truth: Moles start out as loyal to service A, but may or may not be a trained intelligence officer of that service. Indeed, those that are not trained, but volunteer to penetrate a FIS, may either not understand the risk, or are tremendously brave individuals, highly motivated against Country B and willing to risk its retaliation if their limited preparation reveals their true affiliation.
Note that some intelligence professionals reserve mole to refer to enemy personnel that personally know important things about enemy intelligence operations, technology, or military plans. A person such as a clerk or courier, who photographs many documents but is not really in a position to explore enemy thinking, is more generically an asset.
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To be clear, all moles are assets, but not all assets are moles. Another special case is a "deep cover" or "sleeper" mole, who may enter a service, possibly at a young age, but definitely not reporting or doing anything that would attract suspicion, until reaching a senior position. Kim Philby is an example of an agent actively recruited by Britain while he was already committed to Communism.
An individual may want to leave their service at once, perhaps from high-level disgust, or low-level risk of having been discovered in financial irregularities and is just ahead of arrest. Even so, the defector certainly brings knowledge with him, and may be able to bring documents or other materials of value. Before even considering double agent operations, a service has to consider its own resources.
Complexity goes up astronomically when the service cannot put physical controls on its doubles, as did the Double Cross System in World War II. From beginning to end, a DA operation must be most carefully planned, executed, and above all, reported. The amount of detail and administrative backstopping seems unbearable at times in such matters. But since penetrations are always in short supply, and defectors can tell less and less of what we need to know as time goes on, because of their cut-off dates, double agents will continue to be part of the scene.
Services functioning abroad—and particularly those operating in areas where the police powers are in neutral or hostile hands—need professional subtlety as well. Depending on whether the operation is being run in one's own country, an allied country, or hostile territory, the case officer needs to know the relevant laws. Even in friendly territory, the case officer needs both liaison with, and knowledge of, the routine law enforcement and security units in the area, so the operation is not blown because an ordinary policeman gets suspicious and brings the agent in for questioning.
The most preferable situation is that the service running the double agent have complete control of communications. When communications were by Morse code, each operator had a unique rhythm of keying, called a "fist". MASINT techniques of the time recognized individual operators, so it was impossible to substitute a different operator than the agent.
The agent also could make deliberate and subtle changes in his keying, to alert his side that he had been turned. While Morse is obsolete, voices are very recognizable and resistant to substitution. Even text communication can have patterns of grammar or word choice, known to the agent and his original service, that can hide a warning of capture.
Full knowledge of [the agent's] past and especially of any prior intelligence associations , a solid grasp of his behavior pattern both as an individual and as a member of a national grouping , and rapport in the relationship with him. The way a double agent case starts deeply affects the operation throughout its life.
Almost all of them begin in one of the three ways following:. However, this process can be quite convoluted and fraught with uncertainty and suspicion. Therefore, for sake of ease, wherever double-agents are discussed the methodologies generally apply to activities conducted against terrorist groups as well.
A double agent is a person who engages in clandestine activity for two intelligence or security services or more in joint operations , who provides information about one or about each to the other, and who wittingly withholds significant information from one on the instructions of the other or is unwittingly manipulated by one so that significant facts are withheld from the adversary.