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To go "undercover" is to avoid detection by the entity one is observing, and especially to disguise one's own identity or use an assumed identity for the purposes of gaining the trust of an individual or organization to learn or confirm confidential information or to gain the trust of targeted individuals in order to gather information or evidence. Traditionally, it is a technique employed by law enforcement agencies or private investigators, and a person who works in such a role is commonly referred to as an undercover agent. ==History== Undercover work has been used in a variety of ways throughout the course of history, but the first organized, but informal, undercover program was first employed in France by Eugène François Vidocq in the early 19th century. At the end of 1811, Vidocq set up an informal plainclothes unit, the ''Brigade de la Sûreté'' ("Security Brigade"), which was later converted to a security police unit under the Prefecture of Police. The Sûreté initially had eight, then twelve, and, in 1823, twenty employees. One year later, it expanded again, to 28 secret agents. In addition, there were eight people who worked secretly for the Sûreté, but instead of a salary, they received licences for gambling halls. A major portion of Vidocq's subordinates were ex-criminals like himself. Vidocq personally trained his agents, for example, in selecting the correct disguise based on the kind of job. He himself still went out hunting for criminals too. His memoirs are full of stories about how he outsmarted crooks by pretending to be a beggar or an old cuckold. At one point, he even simulated his own death. In England, the first modern police force was established in 1829 by Sir Robert Peel as the Metropolitan Police of London. From the start, the force occasionally employed plainclothes undercover detectives, but there was much public anxiety that these powers were being used for the purpose of political repression. In part due to these concerns, the 1845 official ''Police Orders'' required all undercover operations to be specifically authorized by the superintendent. It was only in 1869 that Police commissioner Edmund Henderson established a formal plainclothes detective division. The first Special Branch of police was the Special Irish Branch, formed as a section of the Criminal Investigation Department of the MPS in London in 1883, initially to combat the bombing campaign that the Irish Republican Brotherhood had begun a few years earlier. This pioneering branch was the first to be trained in counter terrorism techniques. Its name was changed to Special Branch as it had its remit gradually expanded to incorporate a general role in counter terrorism, combating foreign subversion and infiltrating organized crime. Law enforcement agencies elsewhere established similar Branches. In the United States, a similar route was taken with the establishment of the Italian Squad in 1906 by the New York police commissioner William McAdoo to combat rampant crime and intimidation in the poor Italian neighbourhoods. Various federal agencies began their own undercover programs shortly afterwards - the Federal Bureau of Investigations was founded in 1908.〔Marx, G. (1988). Undercover: Police Surveillance In America. Berkeley: University of California Press〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Undercover operation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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