‘Intelligence’ conjures up many images. We set out in this Chapter what we mean by intelligence to help explain the approach and scope of the Review.
Government has come to expect much of intelligence, just as the public have come to expect much of government in providing for their security. So, in order to fairly assess the performance and preparedness of the intelligence community, we need to ask: What can government and the public reasonably expect from intelligence?
What is intelligence?
At the broadest level, intelligence has been defined either by the means it was obtained or by the outcomes it makes possible.
Those who have characterised it in terms of how it was obtained have used formulations like:
- ‘Intelligence is covertly obtained information ... obtained without the authority of the government or group who “owns” the information’[2], and
- ‘Secret intelligence is intelligence that others are seeking to prevent you from knowing, often with formidable security barriers and violent sanctions against those who cooperate with intelligence officers’[3].
However, those who have looked to what intelligence enables governments to do have used definitions like:
- ‘Probably the simplest definition of intelligence is that it is useful information’[4]
- ‘Intelligence is information gathered for policy makers in government which illuminates the choices open to them and enables them to exercise good judgment’[5]
- ‘Intelligence is the collection and processing of that information about foreign countries and agents which is needed by a government for its foreign policy and national security’[6]
- ‘The most basic purpose of intelligence is to improve the quality of decision making by reducing ignorance’[7]
- ‘Intelligence is information that has been analyzed and refined so that it is useful to policymakers in making decisions – specifically, decisions about potential threats to our national security’[8], and
- ‘Intelligence is the systematic collection and processing of information about the enemy or adversaries into analyses, briefings and other products that are relevant and useful to military commanders’[9].
Given that a central task of this Review is to assess the performance of the Australian Intelligence Community, we decided to use an outcomes based definition of intelligence because we are concerned with evaluating the results the AIC has produced for government and its ability to continue to deliver them.
Therefore, we define intelligence as:
Information that enables you to protect your interests or to maintain a valuable advantage in advancing your interests over those posing threats to them.
It is important to note that this definition does not distinguish between information that is obtained by clandestine means or through overt or publicly available sources. What matters is that the information confers an advantage through superior insight or the fact that you are in possession of information when others are not.
The definition does recognise that there is an offensive and defensive element to intelligence. It is about both obtaining information that confers an advantage and ensuring that your own information remains secure to protect your advantage.
Security and foreign intelligence
The notion that there is an offensive and defensive element to intelligence is reflected in the distinction between security and foreign intelligence:
- The term ‘security’ encompasses the protection of Australian people, interests and property at home and abroad[10], and
- A straight forward definition of ‘foreign intelligence’ is set out in section 5 of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (Commonwealth). It says: ‘Foreign intelligence means intelligence about the capabilities, intentions or activities of people or organisations outside Australia’. In that definition, ‘foreign organisation means an organisation (including a government) outside Australia’.
We think that distinction remains a valuable one in limiting the realm and nature of different types of intelligence efforts.
Definitions by level of use
Intelligence confers advantage at a number of levels, which is reflected in the helpful distinction between:
- Strategic intelligence: the intelligence required to form strategy, policy and military plans and operations at the national and international level
- Operational intelligence: the intelligence required for planning and conducting campaigns and major operations to accomplish strategic objectives within operational areas, and
- Tactical intelligence: the more immediate intelligence required in conducting operations.
These distinctions are important for this Review because Australia has seen the dramatic expansion of operational and tactical intelligence in the last 10 years.
Definitions referring to the method of collection
Intelligence is commonly further defined by the method of its collection. These definitions are of particular importance to Australia and its close allies because the structure of the community is built around these different methods of collection.
The categories set out below reflect the considerable sophistication and unique expertise that has developed around each of these disciplines.
One of the challenges this Review recognises in these definitions is the need to respect the distinctions between the different types of intelligence to preserve their distinctive capabilities but to bring all the information they generate together under one comprehensive definition and into a single outcome.
SIGINT – Signals Intelligence
Signals intelligence is derived from the interception of foreign communications. The Defence Signals Directorate is Australia’s collector of foreign sigint.
HUMINT – Human Source Intelligence
Human intelligence is elicited from a human source by an intelligence officer or agent.
The Australian Secret Intelligence Service is Australia’s principal collector of foreign humint. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation collects humint in its security operations in Australia and overseas.
GEOINT – Geospatial Intelligence
Geospatial intelligence is derived from the collection and analysis of images and geospatial information about geographical features and events with reference to location and time:
- Imagery is typically gathered from satellites, reconnaissance aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and hand held photographic equipment on the ground. It can take the form of electro-optical, infrared and radar images or video, and
- Geospatial information refers to geographic and physical information in the form of maps, three dimensional virtual representations of landscapes in preparation for military operations and data about landscapes which can be used to guide weapons systems.
The Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation is Australia’s collector of geoint.
Official information
Official information is information – often confidential in nature – that is non-covert but not publicly available. It is derived from liaison between Australian Ministers and officials and the ministers and officials of foreign governments or organisations or influential, informed individuals.
The most obvious and common source of official information is diplomatic reporting through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Open source information
Open source information is useful information collected from non-covert published or publicly available sources including newspapers, journals, radio, television, the internet and so on.
Open source information is a valuable contributor to the process of assessing intelligence and forming judgments.
As the Flood Report noted in 2004:
‘While intelligence information is important, and often vital, to assessment, it is normally not the main source of information used by intelligence assessment agencies. Open sources ... provide the greater part of the information available to the Australian Government’[11].
The Office of National Assessments has responsibility for Australia’s Open Source Centre.
Assessors
The advantage intelligence delivers comes not only through what we collect but how it is analysed. Assessors of all the intelligence that is collected have the responsibility to create superior insights for decision makers. In Australia, that responsibility falls to the Office of National Assessments, the Defence Intelligence Organisation and, in the case of security intelligence, ASIO.
Counter-intelligence
Intelligence activity is not limited to collection and analysis of others’ information.
We also gain an advantage in securing our own secrets and protecting the means, methods and people who obtain information for us. All of these activities fall under the definition of counter-intelligence.
What is it reasonable to expect from intelligence
Given the task of this Review is to assess the performance of the Australian Intelligence Community and its future preparedness, what is it reasonable for government and the public to expect?[12]
Some of the most senior members of the intelligence community around the world have been very concerned in recent times that expectations have become unrealistic.
In his nomination speech, the current Director of National Intelligence in the United States, James Clapper, said:
‘I think, too often, people assume that the intelligence community is equally adept at divining both secrets [information that is being kept from public knowledge] and mysteries [knowledge of what might happen in the future] ... but we are not’[13].
The Director General of the British Security Service explained this concern very clearly in a speech he made last year:
‘In recent years we appear increasingly to have imported from the American media the assumption that terrorism is 100% preventable and any incident that is not prevented is seen as a culpable government failure. This is a nonsensical way to consider terrorist risk and only plays into the hands of the terrorist themselves. Risk can be managed and reduced but it cannot realistically be abolished and if we delude ourselves that it can we are setting ourselves up for a nasty disappointment’[14].
We share their concern. It is important that Australia has realistic expectations about what intelligence can deliver.
Secrets
It may be possible to discover what DNI Clapper called ‘secrets’, which are existing states of affairs such as how many naval vessels a country has or what a foreign leader’s intentions are.
While secret information can confer great advantage, an intelligence community can advise government about the difficulty, cost and risk involved in trying to obtain those secrets and the probability of success. If government is prepared to face the difficulty, meet the cost and take the risk, then it is reasonable for government to expect that probability of success.
If we are to remain an open society, there are also some absolute limits to what we can know about our citizens’ secret intentions. As a result, there could be lone individuals or small groups seeking to plan and carry out violent plots that will be very difficult to detect.
Mysteries
More substantially, there are limits to what we can know about the future, that is, what DNI Clapper called ‘mysteries’. The more closed a society is, the harder it will be to predict its future. That is why many of the greatest intelligence surprises have come from the most closed societies.
It is not simply that high walls of secrecy make information hard to obtain. More importantly, when civil society is subjugated, we cannot know how it will operate when it is no longer repressed. It will be very hard to judge, for example, how well supported underground leaders might be when they come to public prominence or how ready individuals will be to risk their lives in protests.
We have to tailor our expectations of intelligence accordingly.
While there is much intelligence can do for us, on occasion terrorists will succeed and the world will change in ways that surprise and unsettle us. If we have had realistic expectations of what intelligence can do then, hopefully, we will also have invested in creating the capacity to meet the shocks societies will inevitably face.