ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

Aviation Intelligence, HistoryAustria, Intelligenceand SecurityFollowing World War II, Austria faced the monumentaltask of restructuring its national government and intelligenceforces. The Nazi government before and during thewar substantially increased the nation’s intelligence service,but post-war Austria sought to distance itself from theNazi legacy. The intelligence system was reformed wholly,along with the nation’s extensive police and security forces.Because of its central geographic location, post-warAustrian military intelligence agencies played a crucialrole in signals intelligence during the Cold War.Intelligence and security forces in Austria follow thetraditional division between military and civilian, domesticand foreign intelligence agencies. The individual militaryservices and the Ministry of Defense supervise militaryagencies; the Ministry of Interior regulates civilianintelligence agencies and police forces. The main units ofthe military intelligence force are the NachrichtendienstlicheAufklärung, or Army Intelligence Service, and theNachrichtendienstliche Abwehr , Army CounterintelligenceService. Both agencies primarily focus on external intelligence,often working with Austrian civilian and internationalintelligence agencies.Austria’s premier civilian intelligence agency is theGeneraldirektion für dieÖffentliche Sicherheitt, or GeneralDirectorate for Public Safety. The agency coordinates domesticintelligence operations and assesses internal nationalsecurity risks. The Staatspolizei, State Police, is themain national police force. The State Police is chargedwith ensuring public welfare and aiding in the protectionof national interests within Austria’s borders.Proving that Austria is a pioneering nation in thewidespread use of scientific forensic evidence, its civilianand military intelligence agencies created a nationwideDNA database. Austria’s DNA database, the result of cooperationbetween the Ministry of the Interior and theInstitute of Legal Medicine at the University of Innsbruck,was created in 1997. While the police and security agenciesactively seek to expand the database, the Austriangovernment has enacted several measures to insure privacyand fairness in the use of the DNA database. TheMinistry of the Interior maintains a database with personalinformation on each sample, while personal informationis withheld from the lab that processes samples for criminaland intelligence investigations. The DNA database iscontroversial, but Austrian authorities claim the systemaids police forces, protects citizens, and greatly improvescounterintelligence operations.Austria’s domestic intelligence and security forcesdeclared a new effort to combat money laundering andbanking fraud in 2002. The country passed legislation in2000 and 2001 permitting the continued use of limitedEncyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Securityanonymous bank accounts. With the creation of a financialmarket intelligence unit, Austrian intelligence hope toclosely monitor the use of such accounts to ensure thattheir funds were not used to support fraudulent enterprise,illegal trafficking, or terrorism.Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks onthe United States, Austria joined the international coalitionto fight terrorism. A member of the European Union,Austria pledged to contribute signals intelligence technologyto pan-European counterterrorism measures. Austria’sadvanced and extensive financial intelligence networkaids the discovery and seizure of funds used byterrorist cells. Along with Switzerland, Austria ferreted outnearly forty percent of all such illegal funds seized inEurope in 2001. The Austrian government created aninter-ministerial committee to oversee counterintelligenceagainst the financing of terrorism. The committee, comprisedof representatives from the Ministries of Finance,Justice, and the Interior, coordinates the combined effortsof Austria’s various counterintelligence units and theircooperation with foreign intelligence agencies.SEE ALSOCounter-IntelligenceEuropean UnionAutomated Biometric IdentificationSystem.SEE IDENT (Automated Biometric IdentificationSystem).Automatic Target Recognition (ATR).SEE Brain-Machine Interfaces.Aviation Intelligence, History❚ JUDSON KNIGHTAs lengthy and complicated as any aspect of modernespionage, the history of aviation intelligence has involvedthe use of aircraft both as intelligence-gatheringplatforms and as objects of study. These two aspects ofaviation intelligence are known as aerial reconnaissanceand air technical intelligence, respectively. Over the decades,the United States has emerged as a leader in bothregards, from the earliest studies of the British DeHavilandfighter in World War I, to investigations of Soviet MiGfighters during the Cold War. From prop planes to missiles,from rickety biplanes to modern satellites high above73