It is far from unusual to come across law enforcement agencies where the term HUMINT is used, or to come across law enforcement officers who talk about having attended HUMINT training or that they are involved in HUMINT activities.
Words matter and unfortunately, many do not realize that there are significant differences between HUMINT and managing a human source ( Confidential Informant, Covert Human intelligence source, CHIS.) For the most part the confusion arises because law enforcement have adopted the term and commenced to use it without fully understanding its meaning.
Let us look at the differences and to save time and space we will discuss to concepts HUMINT and Human Source Management (aka informant management)
HUMINT is carried out by the military and “HUMINT collection activities include these categories: tactical questioning, screening, interrogation, debriefing, liaison, human source contact operations (SCOs), document exploitation (DOCEX), and captured enemy equipment (CEE) operations.” (United States Department of Army 2006) HUMINT involves many different disciplines.
Human Source Management is carried out by law enforcement. It is about gathering information covertly from a person in order to further and investigation or to protect national security. It is a single discipline. It does not include interrogation of suspects, document exploitation, etc.
HUMINT is about the military obtaining information that helps them in battle. It embraces many different ways of collecting information.
Human Source Management is about interpersonal communication between a law enforcement officer and a member of the public.
HUMINT collection is governed by the rules of war and the relevant military regulations. The activities rarely are subject to public scrutiny.
Everything that is done by law enforcement must be done in accordance with the rules of evidence and in the expectation that what has been done may be presented in court.
Law enforcement generally do not have the structures in place to cover all the various activities embraced by the military with regard to HUMINT collection.
Much of what is trained on a HUMINT course, may be unsuitable for law enforcement use, as the methods used to obtain the information will not stand up to judicial or public scrutiny. Law enforcement will, of necessity always work in a more publicly accountable way.
Just because you are trained in either discipline does not mean your skills will readily transfer to the other domain.
Where there is a crossover between these concepts is when it comes to how an officer interacts with another person,to get them to pass the information the officer requires. This is where social psychology plays a significant part and officers from both HUMINT and Human Source Management share common ground. However here too there are differences. Talking to a someone in a conflict zone is likely to have variations from talking to a person in a modern urban location. Context directly affects the nature of interpersonal communication.
There are a couple of simple things to take away from this:
Law enforcement do NOT do HUMINT. If a law enforcement agency says they do, they don’t understand what they are talking about.
If you want training in regard to either topic make sure you get what you need. There is little point in law enforcement using military techniques to obtain information only for a court to later throw out your case. And it is unlikely that the evidential regime needed for law enforcement will work well in the middle of a battle.
If you want to discuss this further or disagree, please get in touch info@hsmtraining.com
