Surf Wiki
Save to docs
general/private-intelligence-agencies

From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Private intelligence agency

Organisation

Summary

Organisation

A private intelligence agency (PIA) is a private sector (non-governmental) or quasi-non-government organization devoted to the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information, through the evaluation of public sources (OSINT or Open Source INTelligence) and cooperation with other institutions. Some private intelligence agencies obtain information deceptively or through on-the-ground activities for clients.

Private agencies have made their services available to governments as well as individual consumers; they have also sold their services to large corporations with an interest or investment in the category (e.g. crime, disease, corruption, etc.) or the region (e.g. Middle East, Vietnam, Prague, etc.) or to investigate perceived threats such as environmental groups or human rights groups.

Some private intelligence agencies use online perception management, social media influencing/manipulation campaigns, strategic disinformation (such as fake news production/propaganda production), opposition research and political campaigns using social media and artificial intelligence such as Psy-Group, Cambridge Analytica and Black Cube. The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab described the activity of Archimedes Group as practicing "information warfare". Former anti-corruption prosecutor Aaron Sayne said private intelligence is "an industry that's largely undocumented and has very flexible ethical norms" as agencies collect and use sensitive information "for one purpose on day one and some completely contradictory purpose on day two".

The private intelligence industry has boomed due to shifts in how the U.S. government is conducting espionage in the war on terror. Some $56 billion (USD) or 70% of the $80 billion national intelligence budget of the United States was in 2013 earmarked for the private sector according to The New York Times Tim Shorrock. Functions previously performed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), and other intelligence agencies are now outsourced to private intelligence corporations.

List of private intelligence companies

  • Active
    • AEGIS (UK)
    • AggregateIQ (Canada)
    • Archimedes Group (Israel)
    • BAE Systems (UK)
    • Black Cube (Israel & UK)
    • Booz Allen Hamilton (US)
    • Control Risks Group (UK)
    • Emerdata Limited (UK)
    • Fusion GPS (US)
    • Groupe GEOS (France)
    • Hakluyt & Company (UK)
    • Janes Information Services (UK)
    • Kroll Inc. (US)
    • NSO Group (Israel)
    • Oxford Analytica (UK)
    • Palantir Technologies (US)
    • Pinkerton National Detective Agency (US)
    • Smith Brandon International, Inc. (US)
    • Stratfor (US)
  • Inactive
    • Appin (India)
    • Cambridge Analytica (UK)
    • Psy-Group (Israel)
    • SCL Group (UK)
    • Western Goals Foundation (US)

References

References

  1. Smith, Michael. (2008-06-01). "Private Intelligence Companies".
  2. (2019-01-28). "The Case of the Bumbling Spy: A Watchdog Group Gets Him on Camera". The New York Times.
  3. Entous, Adam. (2019-02-28). "How a Private Israeli Intelligence Firm Spied on Pro-Palestinian Activists in the U.S.".
  4. Chang, Alvin. (2018-03-23). "The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, explained with a simple diagram".
  5. (2017-11-07). "Harvey Weinstein Hired ex-Mossad Agents to Track Women Accusing Him of Sexual Assault". Haaretz.
  6. (2019-01-25). "APNewsBreak: Undercover agents target cybersecurity watchdog".
  7. Keefe, Patrick R.. (2010-03-12). "The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence". Oxford University Press.
  8. Ripley, Amanda. (31 July 1998). "Rent A-Spook".
  9. (2016-01-18). "UK worry over Aussie spy link".
  10. (2018-10-20). "Revealed: Israel's Cyber-spy Industry Helps World Dictators Hunt Dissidents and Gays". Haaretz.
  11. (2018-04-01). "Private intelligence in the Republic of Slovenia: theoretical, legal, and practical aspects". Security Journal.
  12. Granville, Kevin. (2018-03-19). "Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: What You Need to Know as Fallout Widens". The New York Times.
  13. (2019-02-11). "Private Mossad for Hire".
  14. (2018-10-08). "Rick Gates Sought Online Manipulation Plans From Israeli Intelligence Firm for Trump Campaign". The New York Times.
  15. Biddle, Sam. (2019-06-11). "Right-Wing Sting Group Project Veritas Is Breaking Facebook's "Authentic Behavior" Rule. Now What?".
  16. Farrow, Adam EntousRonan. (11 February 2019). "Private Mossad for Hire".
  17. Cadwalladr, Carole. (2018-03-18). "'I made Steve Bannon's psychological warfare tool': meet the data war whistleblower". The Guardian.
  18. Samantha Bradshaw & Philip N. Howard, “Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation.” Samuel Woolley and Philip N. Howard, Eds. Working Paper 2017.12. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda. comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk. 37 pp. http://blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk/politicalbots/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2017/07/Troops-Trolls-and-Troublemakers.pdf
  19. Gabrielle Lim. "Disinformation Annotated Bibliography." Citizen Lab, University of Toronto, May 2019. https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Disinformation-Bibliography.pdf
  20. (16 May 2019). "Facebook says Israeli company used fake accounts to target African elections".
  21. (14 January 2017). "Dossier affair shines light on shadowy private intelligence work: In the corporate sphere paymasters sometimes have ulterior motives". Financial Times.
  22. Abbot, Sebastian. "The Outsourcing of U.S. Intelligence Analysis". News21 Project.
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

private-intelligence-agencies
Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Private intelligence agency — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report