Intelligence Collection Management - Source Sensitivity

Source Sensitivity

Intelligence is taken from such extremely sensitive sources that it cannot be used without exposing the methods or persons providing such intelligence. One of the strengths of the British penetration of the German Enigma cryptosystem was that no information learned from it was ever used for operations, unless there was a plausible cover story that the Germans believed was the reason for Allied victories. If, for example, the movement of a ship was learned through Enigma COMINT, a reconnaissance aircraft was sent into the same area, and allowed to be seen by the Axis, so they thought the resulting sinking was due to IMINT. Once an adversary knows that a cryptosystem has been broken, they most often change systems immediately, cutting off a source of information. Sometimes, and perhaps this is even worse, they leave the system in place to deliver disinformation apparently from a genuine source (Layton 1985). See Handling Compartmented Information

In the context of strategic arms limitation, a different sort of sensitivity applied. Early in the discussion, the public acknowledgement of satellite photography reflected a concern that the "Soviet Union could be particularly disturbed by public recognition of this capability ...which it has veiled." In the Soviet political context, revealing that "spies" could traverse the "Motherland" without being stopped by the Red Army, or the "Sword and Shield" of the organs of state security, was immensely threatening to the leadership.