An intelligence agency is a government agency, which is mainly responsible for gathering, analyzing, and passing the valuable information to the Government in support of national security, military, and foreign policy objectives.

The Intelligence agents protect sensitive information secrets, ie their own secrets as well as the secrets of their own country. They give early warning of impending crises.

There is a difference between “security intelligence” and “foreign intelligence“. Security intelligence pertains to domestic threats (left wing extremism, drug and human traficking etc). Foreign intelligence involves information collection relating to the political, or economic activities of foreign states.

Here are the list of Intelligence Agencies of some major countries.