Counterintelligence: Importance for National Security (UAE Case Study)

This report delves into the multifaceted world of counterintelligence, defining its role as a crucial discipline for national security. It explores the functions of counterintelligence, which include identifying, assessing, and neutralizing threats from foreign intelligence services. The report details various threats, such as espionage, deception, and disruptive operations. It then outlines the importance of counterintelligence through a detailed analysis of the UAE's intelligence services. Furthermore, the report highlights the ethical considerations and legal frameworks that govern counterintelligence operations. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the subject, offering insights into the strategies and techniques used to protect national interests against foreign intelligence threats.

Counterintelligence (analyze the importance of counterintelligence for the security of a country;
critically explain the role of some leading intelligence services (Case study of UAE)

COUNTER INTELLIGENCE AGAINST FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE 1
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Need of Counter intelligence:..........................................................................................................2
Threats of Foreign Intelligence:......................................................................................................4
Deception/Perception Management:............................................................................................4
Other intelligence operations:......................................................................................................4
Functions of Counter intelligence:..................................................................................................5
Identify:.......................................................................................................................................5
Assessing the threats:...................................................................................................................6
Neutralizing the threats:...............................................................................................................7
Exploitation:................................................................................................................................8
Importance of Counterintelligence for the Security in UAE……………………………………8
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................9
References:....................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction:
Counter intelligence can be defined as a study that has an intelligence discipline, which
also has a mission of national security. Some of the tasks that are performed by a counter
intelligence system are locating spies and putting them in the jail. It provides a set of guidelines
that are helpful for the successful implementation of intelligence strategies. Most importantly, it
provides valuable information about threats from foreign intelligence for the United States and
the national policies that can be used to counter attack them. Counter intelligence involves a
number of processes and tasks such as determination of the authenticity of assets, utility,
suitability as well as the reliability of the case officers.
The following report will highlight the different aspects of counter intelligence and how
it is under to fight the threats from foreign intelligence services within the United States. The
following paragraphs will highlight a details study of the case study of foreign intelligence
services and explain the different roles of counter intelligence in their working operations. By the
end of this report the reader will have an in depth knowledge of the entire working of the Foreign
intelligence services and functionalities of Counter intelligence.
Need of Counter intelligence:
It is extremely important to first understand the roles and responsibilities of a counter
intelligence system in order to understand how it fights against the threats posed by the foreign
intelligence services. Counterintelligence has been extensively used in the history of United
States, which consists of the laws as well as the ethics. It has been found that severe cases for the
past has affected the society of America and saboteurs of German communists and their
communist movements have been executed. Counter intelligence has been used to put them into

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the jail. The kind of counter intelligence that used to be practiced earlier in the security states
such as Soviet Union is different form the type used in the committees in the United States.
Therefore, it is extremely important to study and understand its functioning in order to
understand its fight against the Foreign Intelligence Services (de Silva, 2015). Counter
intelligence also has the power to challenge the intellectuality of the people of the highest ranks
who are in power and the decision makers. Therefore, it is important to understand the way they
think in order to understand if the decision they take are right or wrong. That again is a major
reason for studying counter intelligence. The learning outcomes that the reader will be able to
gain from this report are the main reasons of understanding counter intelligence (Bruneau &
Dombroski, 2014). They are summarized below in the following points:
- Concept of counterintelligence will be clear. It place in the field of intelligence studies
will also be understood.
- Differentiating between tactical as well as strategic CI and the difference in the security
provided by them (Carlisle, 2015).
- Understanding the history of counter intelligence in the history of the United States.
- The different ethical principles, laws as well as oversighting government intelligence
within the United States will also be understood.
- Identifying the sub-disciplines of offensive as well as defensive CI will be identified.
Deception operations will also be defined.
Therefore, it is extremely important to understand the concepts of counter intelligence
due to the above-explained reasons.

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Threats of Foreign Intelligence:
Espionage:
In many cases, the adversaries from foreign places use their advanced capabilities of intelligence
in order to penetrate, gather, as well as compromise national secrets of U.S. security. They are
capable of planning as well as implementing the plans to cause risk and threats to the friends and
families of the common person in order to defy the US security standards. They also penetrate
sensitive business servers and steal confidential data from the proprietary systems. Intelligence is
collected from human resources as well as technically gathered information (Evans et al., 2014).
Deception/Perception Management:
The scenario of the reality is manipulated by the adversaries and based in the distorted
reality the policymaker’s plan as well as implement the security standards on a national level.
R&D and other programs, and economic policies as well as other research and development
programs are developed based on a false scenario presented to the policy makers, which again
causes manipulation of the result (Farrell & Finnemore, 2013). Foreign intelligence often
participate in corrupting the intelligence data collected and they often refuse to accept the
provided truth or facts (Blight & Welch, 2013).
Other intelligence operations:
Adversaries can often disrupt as well as counter attack the actions of the counter
intelligence systems. For instance they can convert the actions, carry out special operations such
as corrupting sensitive military or defense data. (e.g., covert action, special operations, and other
sensitive military and diplomatic activities). They can even collaborate with terrorist
organizations to cause mass destructions around the world and they often have political

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objectives as well, which again is harmful for the welfare of the United States (Breakspear,
2013).
Functions of Counter intelligence:
The main function of the counter intelligence strategies are to understand the threats
posed by the foreign intelligence strategies and take according actions in order to neutralize or
reduce the threats for United States. The main tasks that has to be performed by the United States
Counter intelligence can be briefly stated as to identify and then to assess the threat. The threat
should be accessed using suitable means and neutralized. Finally, the activities of the foreign
intelligence directed toward the counter intelligence strategies should be exploited. The
following paragraphs will explain these steps in ore details (Bruneau & Dombroski, 2014).
Identify:
The main role of the counter intelligence system is to first identify the foreign
intelligence strategies that are directed towards the interests of United Nations and deciding the
appropriate counter attack strategies against the foreign security. For this, the counter
intelligence experts need to understand: Who those people are and which government, entity or
the service they work for? What exactly are they planning to do? (Are they stealing important
information from the country or trying to establish their own front companies?). Where/against
which of the targets are they trying to operate? (e.g., Businessmen of American origin who are
travelling abroad, security laboratories in the national level, military communications systems,
CIA stations in the third world countries?). The research and the answers to these questions can
help counter intelligence to come up with security measures of handling information and
computers as well as the physical security of the organizations and the data centers all across the
United Nations (Turner, 2014).

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Assessing the threats:
The activities of the adversaries have to be analyzed using the most suitable intelligence
techniques. The competitors from their partners have to be studied suitable and it provides and
insight into their purposes as well as their plans in order to defeat them effectively. The interests,
plans as well as the different options in order to effectively defeat them are studied in the
concepts of counter intelligence operations. A sophisticated analysis of the threats by the foreign
intelligence is included in the strategies of counter intelligence. Threat assessment using counter
intelligence answer certain questions for the experts to understand in details. They are:
- How to effectively access them?
- What is the adversary service capabilities for the American Targets? (Counter
intelligence experts are there in the American defense in order to effectively deal with
such situations)
- What is the service deployment doctrine?
- What are the budget, training as well as personal development plans of counter
intelligence? (Sigholm & Bang, 2013).
- What are the liaison relationships of counter intelligence? What are the different targets
as well as the resources of counter intelligence?
- What are the foreign collection critical nodes imposed against us?
- What are the signatures of the intelligence precursors to an attack?
- What is their leadership structure?
- How and by whom are they tasked? (Gearon, 2015).

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Neutralizing the threats:
Neutralizing the threats from the foreign intelligence is an extremely important
responsibility of the counter intelligence strategies in order to protect the important inform action
as well as the secrets of United Nations. Tight security measures such as locks, guards as well as
tightly monitored gates is extremely important in the data centers (Zegart, 2013). Access of the
important rooms in the data centers is should be strictly based on the level of privilege of the
employees. CCTV cameras should be setup in all parts of the buildings to ensure optimum
security within the premises of the offices. Computers should be protected with enterprise
antivirus protections such as enterprise Kaspersky internet security and firewalls in order to
secure the networks within the organization. The background of the employees should be
verified in all the organizations in order to ensure there is no issues of employee vandalism in the
future within the organization. Polygraphs, computer, and network firewalls should be used in
the organizations such as network address translation (NAT). However, there are still alternate
options for the hackers as well as the adversaries who are still looking out for ways to steal the
data and intrude into the privacy of the private as well as the government organizations within
the United States. Counterintelligence strategies are always after the strategies of the adversaries
and make sure they are always up to date with the plans and strategies of the adversaries, which
in turn help them to pre plan their counter attack (Lowenthal, 2016). Counter intelligence teams
are always in a process to prepare plans in order to properly counter attack and plan the war
strategies against the foreign intelligence strategies. For example, in the Iraq War preparations,
the counterintelligence of the United States code, which was named “Imminent Horizon”, had
successfully mapped the Iraqi intelligence strategies and operations across the world in order to

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make them. National security makes extensive of the counter intelligence strategies in order to
retain nation peace (Middlebrook & Hughes, 2013).
Exploitation:
By exploiting the in depths of the activities of foreign intelligence, counterintelligence
turns things into the advantage of the United States. For instance, Morris Childs who was chief
deputy head of the USA Communist Party and the trusted former instructors, Yuri Andropov
(later KGB head as well as the Soviet Union), Mikhail Suslov (later the chief ideologist of
Politburo). The FBI also had a highly successful operation called the “Operation solo” which ran
for 23 years. There are strategies to understand if the counterintelligence strategies are being
misled or if they are going in the right track in a particular operation and who are responsible for
them to take the decisions they take. These questions help the counter intelligence teams to
properly understand and analyze the different advantages as well as the disadvantages and the
other aspects of the operations they conduct (Fidler, 2013). The main reasons for the counter
intelligence to exploit the available information of the foreign intelligence are explained below in
the following points:
- Their main aim is to penetrate into the secret operations of the opposition and understand
their strategies as well as the future plans without their own knowledge.
The evaluation of the techniques of the opposition are carefully analyzed and studied by the
counter intelligence teams and experts in order to protect the sensitive information of the
government agencies of United states do that the important and crucial information of the
country are not misused by the hacker’s and the intruders (Gaines & Kappeler, 2014).

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Importance of Counterintelligence for the Security in UAE
Counter intelligence are the agencies that work for the internal and external security of
the counter. UAE has faced some challenges in their country regarding the cybercrime and
spying issues. There are some cases that have come to the surface of UAE government
challenging the security matters of the country. One such incident is the Cheers Exhibition
Company case where the company lost about $53,000 (Dh194,700) in a phishing case
(arabianbusiness.com, 2019). The Dubai based exhibition company email account was been
hacked by some hacker and they sent emails to the clients in order to transfer their payment in an
overseas bank. The hackers targeted the email account of the CEO of the company and they sent
mails to the consumers, seeking them to send their payments to an overseas bank. The incident
came in the knowledge of the CEO only after one of the client enquired about it with him. The
hacker hacked the company systems and gathered information of all the pending payments and
ongoing contracts. This situation would have been handled by the special cells of counter
intelligence. The role of such agencies are to have expert intelligence over the activities in cyber
levels. The counter intelligence would have been able to resist the phishing of the email or they
would have reduced the amount of loss by rapid counter activities. Again, the increased number
of cybercrime ion the UAE is to be managed by the trained team of intelligence agencies like
SIA or Signals Intelligence Agency.
The spying detection is another task of the counterintelligence agencies. Foreign spies are
the great threat to the country security. Hence UAE took immediate action on the basis of their
counter intelligence agency report in the case of Mathew Hedges. This British research scholar
was accused of spying on behalf of UK (bbc.com, 2018). Matthew is found to be enquiring about
the foreign policies and other important policies of the country. The charges against Matthew

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was that he was spying over UAE on behalf of UK. This could have been a great threat for the
country’s economic, political and military security. The counterintelligence work for the
identification of the spies in the country so that the security treats could be reduced. The case of
Matthew proves that the effectiveness of the counterintelligence is undeniable in the security
system of the country. UAE is facing several challenges in the world of cybercrime or in the
context of spying. Therefore, the counterintelligence agency UAE State Security investigated the
case of Matthew and found him guilty in the process. The counterintelligence agencies are the
shield for the internal security problems (Duvenage, Sithole & von Solms, 2017). The detection
of any kind of threat in UAE by the foreign agents need to be detected before it can harm the
country security. Protecting the intelligence program of a country is necessary so that the
oppositions or foreign country agencies do not get the chance to attack its security. In UAE
MISS or Military Intelligence Security Services is concerned with the threats against the military
services and security.
Conclusion:
Therefore it can be concluded from this study that even though there are advanced
technologies as well as strategies for the foreign intelligence to intrude into the security of
United states, there are always counter attack mechanisms as well as intelligence operations that
the counter intelligence are equipped with at all points of times. These counter intelligence
techniques find their usefulness during the wars with the other nations for instance during Iraq’s
war with the United States where the US intelligence used advanced techniques to defend the
crucial information of the nation. The security of the United States will be highly improved
provided the counter intelligence strategies are efficiently implemented. Like the USA, UAE also

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is depended on its counter intelligences agencies for their shield against foreign attacks. There
are three intelligence agencies in the country among which UAE State Security plays the central
role in internal security. The MISS has the responsibility to protect the country from military
threats and spying activities. The effectiveness of the counter intelligence agencies in UAE can
be realized in the cases of Cheers Exhibition Company and the spy detection case of Matthew
Hedges. The problems in the spying cases is that the identification of the spies might have to go
through various stages and it takes time. Again, in the cybercrime actions, the SIA is actively
contributing their services to the country. The phishing of money in the case of the exhibition
company can be the signal of greater security hacking in the country. The way the hackers have
got into the system of the company, they can also hack and access the security websites and
details of the country security system. Therefore, it is necessary for the UAE government to
provide the intelligence agencies with all required technological or financial supports so that they
can build a plausible resistance against any kind of cyber threats or hacks. Therefore, it can be
concluded that counter intelligence are a significant weapon for a country’s security and power.