Securing the Integrity of Intelligence
Your final paper is where you will weave the first two elements (the White Paper and Literature Review) together, and incorporate your analysis, to create a coherent paper that is 13-15 pages in length. While it is inappropriate (not to mention a violation of university policy) to cut-and-paste from past assignments in old courses into new ones, this research project is evolutionary and builds itself up from a white paper into a completed product. For this reason, in this class it is permissible to paste the information (as appropriate and as it makes sense) from the first two assignments assigned into your final assignment.
You are encouraged to refer to Belcher, Wendy Laura. 2009. "Editing Your Sentences." In Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success. Sage. This resource has an excellent step-by-step process for enhancing your writing. Additionally, you should refer to the University of Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL) to find out more about writing a white paper.
Format: Your final paper should include a title page, body, and reference page. Your paper should have one-inch borders on all four sides, use times new roman-12 point font, be double spaced, and not have an extra space in-between paragraphs. (You may need to turn this off in MS word by going to "paragraph" and clicking 'Don't add space between paragraphs of the same style'). Since this is an INLT course you need to use the Turabian author-date (aka parenthetical) style with a "References" page.
Your final papers should include the following sections.
Introduction. This section should be written last and should pull from some of the elements of your white paper. You will need to clearly provide an overview of the topic you are writing about, a concise synopsis of the issues, state your issue, and discuss why the situation is important to investigate. Writing the introduction last is helpful in ensuring that you've incorporated any changes that may have taken place over the course of your research. This section should be about 1 page in length.
Literature Review. Your literature review section is a synthesis of the sources that you identified in your second assignment in addition to other sources that you have identified to support your research. This section should be 5-6 pages in length.
Analysis and Findings. This section and the conclusion discussed below are essentially the two newest components of your final paper. You analysis and findings section should provide a narrative of your analysis and the analytical arguments that you will make as a result of your findings. In this section you will discuss ... Within this section you should provide support that answers your research question. This section should be 5-6 pages in length.
Conclusion. This section will contain concluding analytical arguments based on what the analysis has revealed. Here you will discuss some of the techniques and strategies that can be used to help..
Like any conclusion, it should provide a synopsis of the project, the strategy, the results, and what the analysis adds to our body of knowledge. Within your conclusion you should also offer suggestions for avenues of future research for other scholars as all knowledge is evolutionary. This section should be 1-2 pages in length.
References. This section will contain all of the sources you made reference to within the body of your paper. The should be listed using the Turabian author-date form and arranged alphabetically according to author last name.
Submission Instructions:
Submit your final paper under "Assignment 3: Final Paper," as a word document. Once uploaded, your assignment will be submitted to "Turnitin." Due Sunday, 11:55pm EST at the end of Week Seven.
Securing the Integrity of Intelligence
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Securing the Integrity of Intelligence
Introduction
Information security is of paramount importance to intelligence collection. Intelligence is information of high value and must be collected in secret. Confidentiality is also important at all levels of the agents who handle the intelligence (Mandel & Tetlock, 2018). The intelligence should only be accessed by the authorized individuals with the clearance to act on it accordingly. Ensuring the information is safely relayed to the intended recipients without compromising its integrity is difficult. Suppose the information is leaked at any stage or is accessed by an unauthorized individual. In that case, it may be relayed to enemies/competitors, and the information could lead to its strategic advantage. It is important to find new ways to ensure that the information does not reach malicious people or lose its strategic advantage to the collector. Collecting, storing, and transmitting digital information is increasingly becoming difficult, especially through the internet. Hackers and other malicious individuals are increasingly creating tools to access the information and either alter, delete or duplicate it. All these possible scenarios compromise intelligence.
If intelligence reaches any unintended recipient, it can easily lose its strategic advantage to the collector. Intelligence is most vulnerable when being transmitted and or stored. If the channel or storage medium is compromised, all the information could be altered, deleted, or duplicated to serve the interests of the enemy. For example, if the Taliban get intelligence that the US military was about to bomb their camp using missiles, they can either flee or create countermeasures. Therefore, the US military's efficacy to neutralize the Taliban target is highly dependent on the Taliban never getting the information. This is the very reason why high-value targets of the military remain a secret and is only discussed by high-ranking officers. The world was informed about the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden after the US military had completed the mission ADDIN EN.CITE Mark Mazzetti2011 (Mazzetti, Cooper, & Baker, 2011)12Mark MazzettiBehind the Hunt for Bin Laden2011 (Mazzetti, Cooper, & Baker, 2011). If the information had reached Osama before the operation, possibly he could have escaped and or deployed other defensive measures to avoid being captured or killed by the US military. Closely guarding intelligence is very important. However, even the party being spied on is also trying to get a strategic advantage over its enemy and has its intelligence network. Part of the network is to find ways to intercept the intelligence to deploy countermeasures to the intelligence.
This study provides several reasons why securing intelligence is important. First, it loses its strategic advantage immediately it is accessed by anyone other than the people authorized to do so. It can easily reach the enemies who find ways to counter the strategic advantage of the information (Gill, 2018). It can also be embarrassing to let the enemy know your secrets as nearly every action is met with a well-fashioned reaction to it. If each program and operation is pegged on compromised intelligence, the objective is more likely to be unsuccessful. The enemy can use the channel to fool and misdirect the actions following the intelligence. The study provides a detailed literature review on theories of intelligence and integrity of intelligence. This is followed by analysis and findings of the general research on the security of intelligence and finally the conclusion.
Literature Review
Theory helps in creating a sense of various pieces of information through prediction or explanation of relationships amongst variables. Also, it helps clarify the different causal factors that are essential and appear peripheral. Importantly, theory simplifies, whereby it helps embrace significant facts and cases within a small number of conceptual assumptions alongside propositions. Such simplification process provides an effort that isolates the various factors that the researcher believes that best explains the existing dynamic under study; Columbia University Professor Richard Betts (Mandel & Tetlock, 2018).
Theoretical Framework
The intelligence analysis theory is one of the dominant theoretical frameworks for addressing the integrity of intelligence. The intelligence analysis theory explores the value of intelligence and various bases that constitute national and international intelligence (Sheftick, 2020). On the grounds of IAT, it has been established that security intelligence is becoming one of the most vital elements of security in contemporary society. The theory emphasizes intelligence as a detailed process involving data collection, analysis, classification, storage, and application in covert operations. With little intelligence, nations can be more susceptible to attacks, including terror attacks or cyberattacks aimed at breaching sensitive pieces of information.
The intelligence analysis theory is vital to understanding how to secure the integrity of intelligence in various ways. The theory emphasizes proper inputs in the key elements of intelligence, including data collection, analyses, and storage, as they affect the integrity of intelligence. For instance, if proper data is not collected, it is impossible to reach intelligence needs' apex. Poor data analyses also devalue intelligence. At the same time, improper storage of intelligence creates a platform for malicious attacks. With this theory, it becomes easier to understand the extent that the intelligence community must explore to match the needed index of the integrity of intelligence. With this theory, the study is guided on elements including the key elements of the integrity of intelligence, impacts of failing to secure the integrity of intelligence, and the recommendations to reach the required integrity outcomes in intelligence (Mandel & Tetlock, 2018).
However, the existing theoretical foundations of intelligence still appear rudimentary. In this case, various reasons are provided that support failure towards the development of intelligence theory. This is since there is still no concrete consensus on the definitions of the integrity of intelligence. However, there is a need to discuss how these theories of intelligence underlie intelligence work and could lead to a better understanding of general intelligence. Consequently, it is important to bridge the existing divide that has separated scholars and practitioners of intelligence for a long time.
There is a need for elaborate explanation as well as a description of the progress of intelligence theory. However, the intelligence theorizers fail in most instances to produce a single all-encompassing unified field theory for the issues surrounding intelligence. Each intelligence theory tends to provide an explanation of different facets of governmental intelligence function. As a result, the aspect of theorizing exposes a less search for an all-encompassing explanation for everything that an overall discussion regards in terms of cause alongside effects within the field.
The Integrity of Intelligence
The value of intelligence harbored by different agencies stems from the integrity that such pieces of information command. The integrity of intelligence is a concept that demands the custody of intelligence by the right individuals at the required times (Sheftick, 2020). Only specific people should bear some pieces of intelligence at specific times. In different security agencies, the information on various security issues is shared according to the seniority of the stakeholders. That is, integrity begins with trust among individuals and agencies. Those who can be trusted to protect the information bear higher security clearance than those who are less trusted. The intelligence community agencies also train their stakeholders on matters including intelligence integrity, privacy, and confidentiality. Intelligence integrity must begin with the people who work with the agencies.
Technology has also been used to secure the integrity of intelligence besides reliance on individual personnel's integrity. Multiple challenges emerge in an age where security agencies rely on computerized or cloud platforms to store information. Primarily, security agencies are concerned about cyber-attacks (Sheftick, 2020). The intelligence agencies rank above organizations, including cryptocurrency exchanges, online casinos, and e-commerce platforms, when it comes to the threats of cyberattacks. To protect their intelligence's integrity, agencies within the intelligence community must have layers of security protocols and firewalls to evade the possibilities of those attacks.
Contextualization of intelligence is another strategy that agencies employ to ascertain integrity. In security agencies, threats are received from every place and every time. Some of the threats are not as serious as others. The challenge is on identifying what could harm security and ignoring the rest. Currently, security agencies emphasize the contextualization of threats to track and mark the integrity of their intelligence. Contextualization of threats means that security agencies classify intelligence to ensure that the right pieces of information are subjected to necessary action pieces. With contextualization, the agencies can understand where to reach pieces of intelligence to put them into their utmost use. That enhances integrity. Besides, if intelligence can be tracked appropriately, it eases analyses and storage. Pieces of intelligence that are not classified can easily be breached without any trace. Contextualization has helped in stabilizing intelligence for its primary purposes (Gill, 2018).
Lack of Integrity in Intelligence
A lack of integrity in intelligence can trigger multiple challenges to a nation or international community's security. Currently, the biggest security threat that the world is facing emanates from terrorism. Terrorists have shown their intelligence and ability to penetrate highly secured places. Like intelligence agencies, terrorists are bound to understand who tracks them and the trackers' strategies. Notorious terrorist groups intend to remain as private as possible. To achieve such objectives, terrorists must be efficient both internally and externally (Mazzetti, Cooper, & Baker, 2011). Terrorist organizations are known to make multiple attempts to penetrate the intelligence community apparatus. The terror groups are known to employ even extreme strategies that even include employing some of the best cyber attackers, tricking security agencies into employing some of their members, and collaborating with the agencies in pretense. To a small extent, some of such strategies have yielded in compromising the integrity of intelligence.
There are multiple ills linked with compromising intelligence integrity by terrorist groups. Primarily, when a terrorist group penetrates the intelligence community, they immediately develop counter-intelligence strategies (Schneider, 2013). That can make it easy for them to understand the moves of the agencies. Terrorist groups also need to understand the weaknesses of security agencies to make their moves more efficient. Any failure to secure the integrity of intelligence opens avenues for physical access into borders, thereby easing direct attacks. The terror groups must also be stopped from accessing sensitive intelligence because they can destabilize security agencies' functionality. Such terror groups can kill agents, evade attacks, and instigate attacks with the aim of destabilizing intelligence operations. Nations must understand that their security stands at the biggest threat when it is at the mercy of terror groups.
Protecting the integrity of intelligence also comes with benefits to members of the public. Individuals and organizations bear multiple sensitive pieces of information that they need to keep to themselves. The Snowden case unearthed the fact that intelligence community stakeholders such as the NSA harbor so much information about private individuals and organizations. When such information is not treated with the necessary integrity, the chances are high that those who access the information will hurt individual members of the public. Subjecting public members to ills such as blackmail or extortion can be dangerous, especially when executed on a large scale with groups known to command largescale terror activities.
Ultimately, intelligence integrity must be ensured to instill trust and ethics in collaborating with the public to ensure the security protocols' implementation. The success in collecting and analyzing intelligence is majorly embedded in collaboration between the public and the intelligence agencies (Schneider, 2013). When intelligence is not secured, the public is bound to suffer from the outcomes. Security agencies cannot afford a revolution against their activ...