As Woogy says it, Risky business: private sector intelligence in the United States. (Intelligence).

[Mr. T]

Woogy Says, Why has this been nuried and hidden from the American Public?

 

Of the estimated $40 billion the United States is expected to spend on intelligence this year, experts say at least 50 percent will go to private contracts

 

Government Keeps a Secret After Studying Spy Agencies

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/washingt...amp;oref=slogin

 

WASHINGTON, April 25 — Concerned about the growing dependence of the nation’s spy agencies on private contractors, top intelligence officials have spent months determining just how many contractors work at the C.I.A., D.I.A., F.B.I., N.S.A. and the rest of the spook alphabet soup.

 

Now they have an answer. But they cannot reveal it, they say, because America’s enemies might be listening.

 

Ronald P. Sanders, chief human capital officer for the director of national intelligence, said that because personnel numbers and agency budgets were classified, he could not reveal the contractor count.

 

“I can’t give you anything that would allow you to impute the size of the I.C. civilian work force,” Mr. Sanders said, using shorthand for “intelligence community” in a telephone briefing that covered everything about the contractor survey except its core findings.

 

Mr. Sanders said the study did find that about 25 percent of the intelligence work now contracted out resulted from personnel ceilings imposed by Congress. But 25 percent of what, he said he could not disclose.

 

Steven Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said the decision not to reveal the numbers was a sign of dysfunctional policies.

 

“It reveals how confused the government is about what is really sensitive and what is not,” Mr. Aftergood said. “What would Osama bin Laden do with the fraction of intelligence workers who are contractors? Absolutely nothing.”

 

Risky business: private sector intelligence in the United States. (Intelligence).

 

When people think about intelligence, they usually focus on such organizations as the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), or perhaps the Chinese Ministry of State Security--all government-run agencies specializing in espionage, analysis, and usually some form of covert action. Most countries have similar intelligence organizations as well as counter-intelligence bodies to stop spies and protect national security secrets. In the aftermath of September 11, a great deal of attention has focused on intelligence and its role in national security. Intelligence in the private sector, however, has largely been ignored, although business intelligence, too, has been energized by recent events and reflects many of the same characteristics.

 

In fact, the field of intelligence has become significantly privatized as technology has advanced. Today, high-tech information collection through the use of satellites and electronics has replaced a great deal of old-fashioned espionage by government agencies such as the CIA. The once top-secret world of overhead satellite photography has become a commercial enterprise, and intelligence agencies that could not afford to launch their own satellites in the past can now buy photos to help spy on their adversaries. Commercialized high-tech spying is widely accepted as a non-intrusive method of espionage, while purchasable electronic countermeasures--such as firewalls, encryption programs, and scrambler phones--have become common as well. Private intelligence is emerging as an important part of the new world intelligence order.