Security News > 2020 > March > Coronavirus Confinement Challenges Intelligence Services
The home confinement of hundreds of millions of people worldwide to halt coronavirus contagion has presented intelligence services with a challenge: monitoring an explosion in internet traffic, above board and not, even as their own capacity is reduced.
In a bid to curb virus contagion among their ranks, intelligence services are alternating teams at the office, like many other essential businesses and services continuing to function amid the unprecedented global lockdown.
While some officials are equipped to work on encrypted systems from home, these generally do not grant them access to the most sensitive information, a former agent of France's DGSE foreign intelligence agency told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Brian Perkins, a researcher at the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington intelligence think-tank, pointed to a breakdown in covert fieldwork capabilities.
"The biggest challenge posed by COVID-19 is... the inability of intelligence field officers to extract human intelligence in areas with active outbreaks, particularly areas with significant restrictions on public interactions or travel," he told AFP. - 'Malign actors' -.