Solution

• Intelligence reporting evolves recently to ensure that proper communication in terms of intelligence in general and reporting procedures and formats in particular exists between the different national intelligence agencies.

• Intelligence that is received or intercepted by one agency should be made available to proper audience in all other agencies within the right time and format.

• One major issue in the recent intelligence reporting evolution is related to the speed of reporting and dissemination. In many cases, there was a need to reduce the dissemination time that used to be slower due to some government bureaucratic regulations.

• For example, FBI enables starting 2009–2010 Intelligence Information Reports (IIRs) to be directly disseminated to all intelligence agents. Thorough reports such as analytic intelligence reports are still centralized and will only be reported through FBI headquarters.

Examples of Intelligence Reporting Formats

• Periodicals:

  Daily, weekly, or monthly operational reports. For routine intelligence activities, reports are submitted based on known templates on specific periods. Certain events may trigger exceptional reports.

• Intelligence summaries:

  Incidents, visits, certain events, may trigger special intelligence summary reports to be created.

• Intelligence Information Reports (IIRs).

• Operational narratives:

  Different intelligence and military activities require their own operational reports based on the targeted missions.

• Intelligence analysis fusion:

  Developed by operational and theater level security intelligence staff.

• Field and Daily Field Intelligence Report (DFIR).

• The Defense Intelligence Report (DIR).

• Intelligence information, by definition and default involves private or secret information that is not available for public or acquired from public sources.

• Nonetheless, cases may exist where information acquired from public or open sources is valuable/new from the perspectives of intelligence agencies. Other examples that may indicate public information with intelligence values:

• Information that was posted through the Internet and then removed.

• Printed or oral information.

• Information that was exchanged through proprietary or unpopular applications or languages.

• Information that is different from what is reported publicly.

• Information is available only through the dark or deep web.

• Intelligence is typically disseminated to security decision-makers, intelligence requesters, etc. However, there are cases where adversaries can also be targeted by certain types of information and intelligence.