Throughout the course of history, wars have been fought with the armies of nation states. Added to traditional armies is the traditional collection of intelligence by the armies themselves. Throughout history, much of the intelligence collected came from both the military and private citizens. This is just the beginning. In the post-9/11 world, the need for intelligence collection is far from being satisfied. This leaves a large gap in the system and to fill this gap, many private agencies such as Stratfor, Global Strategies Group and iJET have stepped in and started to fill. The question that seems to arise in many places is the legal status of these agencies and who exactly governs their activities? Is the solution to hand over more intelligence operations to the private sector? The history of private intelligence dates back to the Civil War with Allan Pinkerton and his company Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Pinkerton provided these services to Abraham Lincoln. Since then, outsourcing US intelligence services has been an often-used option. More generally, the type of intelligence often outsourced is OSINT or better known as Open Source Intelligence. The oft-cited advantage of outsourcing intelligence operations to the private sector is that the private sector represents a departure from its highly centralized counterpart in the U.S. government. After the 9/11 Commission Report cited numerous problems within the current intelligence community, Congress decided to address them. Congress's response to the problems outlined in the commission's report was to expand the intelligence community to private contractors to meet wartime needs. more intelligence. When it happened...... middle of paper ......e Outsourcing is here to stay » News & Publications » The Institute of World Politics. Np, and Web. March 21, 2014. .Schultz, Norman O. “The Ethics of Business Intelligence.” Journal of Business Ethics 13.4 (1994): 305-14. JSTOR. Internet. April 8, 2014. .Williams, Steve and Nancy Williams. The impact on profits of Business Intelligence. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, 2007. PrintWILLINGHAM, BRIAN. “A Private Investigator’s Approach to Intelligence Gathering [INFOGRAPHIC].” Diligentia Group Professional Private Investigator New York RSS. Np, and Web. March 26. 2014. .