Secret service

This article is about the form of government policing. For the United States Secret Service, see United States Secret Service. For other uses, see Secret Service (disambiguation).

A secret service is a government agency, intelligence agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For instance, a country may establish a secret service which has some policing powers (such as surveillance) but not others. The powers and duties of a government organization may be partly secret and partly not. The organization may be said to operate openly at home and secretly abroad, or vice versa. Secret police and intelligence agencies can usually be considered secret services.

The French police officer Joseph Fouché is sometimes regarded as the primary pioneer within secret intelligence. Among other things, he is alleged to have prevented several murder attempts on Napoleon during his time as First Consul Bonaparte (1799-1804) through a large and tight net of various informers.

For instance, the KGB were a form of secret police.