Commentary
While it is true that intelligence services have a murky reputation—all that cloak and dagger stuff—in reality what they do is not all that complicated. As to how they do it, well that is another matter. The most closely held secret within these organizations is what we call “sources and methods,” and these are critical to keep out of the public eye for, if disclosed, collection efforts are made that much more difficult.
But getting back to the what part, it is actually quite simple. Agencies such as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) gather information (for that is ultimately what intelligence is), assess it for accuracy, corroborate it from other independent sources, summarize it in small snippets (because busy clients have neither the time nor interest in reading long documents), and disseminate it to senior government officials. Recipients may have more questions, or further requirements, and these are fed back into what is known as the “intelligence cycle” which starts the whole ball rolling again….