Combining Street Smarts and Book Smarts: Operational Methods in Primary Source Intelligence

摘要

Primary source intelligence has occasionally become a topic of trepidation, as the memory of the Hewlett-Packard pre-texting scandal is still fairly fresh in the minds of many people. Arguably, both secondary source and primary source collection can be fraught with ethical landmines. Just because something was written down doesn't mean that it was documented for public consumption. Reading improperly disposed documents obtained from purchased garbage is a great example of this. On the contrary, just because information is obtained through communication with another person, doesn't mean the information wasn't public. A tip from a loyal employee in a branch office about a competitor running attack advertising in that market is an example of public but unwritten information. New billboards are generally not something that would be considered newsworthy by the mainstream media, or even dedicated bloggers. Without that loyal employee's tip, the head office probably would have not have found that information; it's certain that no RSS feed or traditional clipping service would have caught that.