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A person who commits espionage is called an espionage agent or spy. [1] Any individual or spy ring (a cooperating group of spies), in the service of a government, company, criminal organization, or independent operation, can commit espionage. The practice is clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome.
Basic agents can be formed into groups with leaders, or report directly to the controller. Basic agents include information providers, perhaps through espionage or expertise about some local subject. Also in the basic group are "executive agents", who will kill or commit sabotage, and recruiting agents.
Sexpionage is the involvement of sexual activity (or the possibility of sexual activity), intimacy, romance, or seduction to conduct espionage.Sex, or the possibility of sex, can function as a distraction, incentive, cover story, or unintended part of any intelligence operation.
Espionage is usually part of an institutional effort (i.e., governmental or corporate espionage), and the term is most readily associated with state spying on potential or actual enemies, primarily for military purposes, but this has been extended to spying involving corporations, known specifically as industrial espionage.
By definition, an "agent" acts on behalf of another, whether another individual, an organization, or a foreign government. Agents can be considered either witting or unwitting, and in some cases, willing or unwilling. Agents typically work under the direction of a principal agent or a case officer.
As the name suggests, human intelligence is mostly collected by people and is commonly provided via espionage or some other form of covert surveillance. However, there are also overt methods of collection, such as via interrogation of subjects or simply through interviews.
In espionage, a sleeper agent is one who has infiltrated the target country and has "gone to sleep", sometimes for many years. The agent makes no attempt to communicate with the sponsor or any existing agents or to obtain information beyond what is in public, and becomes active only upon receiving a pre-arranged signal or message from the sponsor or a fellow agent.
A walk-in agent is an individual who voluntarily offers to conduct espionage. [1] Specifically, a "walk-in" is an agent or a mole of a government who literally walks into an embassy or intelligence agency without prior contact or recruitment as an asset .