espionage

Clandestine acquisition of confidential information

EntityQ165950

Also known as spying · spycraft · intelligence gathering

Subclass of: clandestine HUMINT
, violation of law

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret, confidential, or in some way valuable information. Such information is also referred to as intelligence. A professional trained in conducting intelligence operations by their government may be employed as an intelligence officer. Espionage may be conducted in a foreign country, domestically or remotely. The practice is clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome. In some circumstances, it may be a legal tool of law enforcement and in others, it may be illegal and punishable by law.

Overview

All data

65 statements · 20% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Practiced by: spy
covert agent
double agent
Partially coincident with: information leak

On other databases

53 identifiers linking espionage across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

20%

externally sourced

Source last edited September 9, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). espionage (Q165950). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/espionage-Q165950