ABSTRACT
If we are to have a good understanding of how an intelligence management system will work effectively, we need a rudimentary understanding of each of the processes that will contribute intelligence to that system, what that process can contribute, and the limitations of those processes. For reasons previously discussed in Chapter 9, many in law enforcement are of the mistaken belief that all the intelligence they will need will come from their records management system and open sources such as the Internet. This is a fallacy. Criminal gangs and terrorist groups are not going to post their operational plans for criminality on the Internet and no matter how sophisticated a search engine is available or how elaborate the analysis is of the material that is found, if a law enforcement agency (LEA) wants to know what criminals are doing, it must use covert means to obtain that information. As Brinner (2011) comments,
Such operations involve considerable effort. Criminals are going to put as many obstacles in place as they can to prevent law enforcement from penetrating their organizations and finding out their intentions. The more sophisticated and better established the gang, the greater the number of hurdles that law enforcement will have to jump over to get to the information that is desired. Johnson (2007:2), when discussing intelligence gathering in a national security context, details the lengths that those involved may need to go to in order to obtain the desired information:
In this chapter, space does not allow for providing a comprehensive guide as to how each of these types of operations should be managed. The sections that follow concentrate on the structures necessary to get the information originating from covert operations to where it needs to go, so that it can be used for intelligence purposes.
