Law Enforcement Intelligence Processes :: essays research papers

LAW ENFORCEMENT INTELLIGENCE PROCESSES   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The fundamental key for any successful intelligence mission is the ability to access information from the different intelligence disciplines: Imagery Intelligence (IMINT), Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), Measures and Signals Intelligence (MASINT), Human Intelligence (HUMINT), and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). These five disciplines are in essence the only way for the analyst to gather information, short of actually traveling the world to investigate hands on.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The development of intelligence within the law enforcement field began in the early 20th century as a collection method during the investigation of organized crime organizations. The Sicilian crime families across the United States were the focal point from the 1940s to the 1980s, which were known as the La Cosa Nostra or the Mafia. During the 1980s, law enforcement realized that other organizations were sprouting up into a new era in organized crime. Today’s analysts are responsible for investigating and analyzing information on other non-traditional crime organizations like drug cartels, outlaw motorcycle gangs, street gangs, and various other non-Sicilian Mafia organizations.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The common denominators in all organized criminal activities are violence, corruption, and organization. The problem of dealing with the new non-traditional organizations is that there is not an extensive amount of information on each organization spanning over the last couple of decades. New information must be acquired, recorded, and filed. Modern technology has been crucial in the latter for creating databases.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One of the most imperative pieces to completing any organized crime scenario are the day in and day out facts of how the organization was ran, what people were contacted, and the different types of activities that were illegally preformed. The analyst must be able to obtain information in order to make an analysis of what or who may or may not be at the root of a crime(s). This type of information can be found in law enforcement files, which are now moving towards electronically storing information. The analyst must be especially computer literate in order to research criminal activity and association. One device that the analyst has available is the Internet. Although this is not the only open source information-collecting device, it is one of the most commonly used open source methods. The problem of the â€Å"wheat versus chaff† can be realized very easily at any search engine. The Internet can be a very valuable tool for the analyst, but can also be a very time-consuming and an overwhelming obstacle if the analyst does not know how to overcome the problems of over-information.