A security agency is a governmental organization which conducts intelligence activities for the internal security of a nation. They are the domestic cousins of foreign intelligence agencies, and typically conduct counterintelligence to thwart other countries' foreign intelligence efforts. For example, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a security agency, while the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a foreign intelligence agency, which deals with the country's external security and intelligence. A similar relationship exists in Britain between MI5 and MI6.
The distinction, or overlap, between security agencies, national police, and gendarmerie organizations varies by country. For example, in the United States, one organization, the FBI, is a national police, an internal security agency, and a counterintelligence agency. In other countries, separate agencies exist, although the nature of their work causes them to interact. For example, in France, the Police nationale and the Gendarmerie nationale both handle policing duties, and the Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur handles counterintelligence.
Likewise, the distinction, or overlap, between military and civilian security agencies varies between countries. In the United States, the FBI and CIA are civilian agencies, although they have various paramilitary traits and have professional relationships with the U.S.'s military intelligence organizations. In many countries all intelligence efforts answer to the military, whether by official design or at least on a de facto basis. Countries where various military and civilian agencies divide responsibilities tend to reorganize their efforts over the decades to force the various agencies to cooperate more effectively, integrating (or at least coordinating) their efforts with some unified directorate. For example, after many years of turf wars, the member agencies of the U.S. intelligence community are now coordinated by the Director of National Intelligence, with the hope to reduce stovepiping of information.
Security agencies frequently have "security", "intelligence" or "service" in their names. Private organizations that provide services similar to a security agency might be called a "security company" or "security service", but those terms can also be used for organizations that have nothing to do with intelligence gathering.
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Famous quotes containing the words security and/or agency:
“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it ... and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied ... and it is all one.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (b. 1908)
“It is possible that the telephone has been responsible for more business inefficiency than any other agency except laudanum.... In the old days when you wanted to get in touch with a man you wrote a note, sprinkled it with sand, and gave it to a man on horseback. It probably was delivered within half an hour, depending on how big a lunch the horse had had. But in these busy days of rush-rush-rush, it is sometimes a week before you can catch your man on the telephone.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)