Secret service

The Secret service is a broad term that means a group of people or organisation that is employed by a government (usually a national government) to help the government to be run well, by collecting information about other governments/countries, collecting information about people who oppose the government within their own country and to keep secrets from people from other secret service agencies in other governments as well as in some cases keeping secrets from the population of their own governance (usually of their country), especially where revealing the truth would be likely to either harm the government or else create panic.

Key roles of the secret services

1. Find out secret information from other nations (especially from other nations' secret services).
2. Keep their own secret information safe from other nations (especially from other nations' secret services).
3. Find out information about people from within their nation that oppose the government.
4. In certain circumstances, keeping secrets from the general population of their own nation.

Major types of secret services

Secret services can be split into 2 groups:

1. Secret service organisations that spy on other nations.
2. Secret service organisations that spy on people within their own nation.

Most countries know about the secret service organisation that spies on their own nation, but not so much about the secret service organisation that spies on others.

For example: ASIO spies on Australia's own people whilst ASIS spies on foreign governments.

Major methods of secret service organisations that spy on their own nation

1. Disinformation - giving false information that media will pick up on that hides the true story.
2. Plausible deniability - when secrets are discovered, try to pretend that the secrets are actually something else.

Some governments may have the power to also arrest or even assassinate someone who finds out secrets or who exposes secrets about a government. Hypothetically, this doesn't happen in "developed" countries, although it does happen on a wide scale in less "free" countries. The CIA is often accused of assassinating its own people in order to cover up various secrets.

Examples of secret service agencies

• MI5 in UK.
• ASIO and ASIS in Australia.
• CIA and FBI in USA.

Fiction of secret service agencies

• James Bond is based on someone who actually worked in UK's MI6 agency.