A sleeper cell is a cell of sleeper agents that belongs to a large national or terrorist organization. The cell "sleeps" (lies dormant) inside a population until it decides to act. In a less common usage a sleeper cell may also be a cell of covert opritives/spies that also lay dormant until nessecary. A covert cell structure is a method for organizing undercover or unconventional fighters against a large and well-established organization. ... Sleeper agents are spies who are placed in a target country or organization, not to undertake an immediate mission, but rather to act as potential assets if activated at a later point in time. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with black ops. ... Espionage is the practice of obtaining information about an organization or a society that is considered secret or confidential (spying) without the permission of the holder of the information. ...

Sleeper cells have risk assessment levels ranging from Low to Urgent and may or may not act on its own, collectively as a hive mind, or under instruction and when directed, can be directed at a local, regional, national or international level. Risk assessment is a step in the risk management process. ...

Low Risk cells would be disorganized, untrained, unsupported, dissafected individuals with no special skills, no special knowledge, no access and no training but some open source information collection and discussion interests that might lead to collective action. Appropriate surveillance might include data mining and filters. Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is an intelligence gathering discipline that involves collecting information from open sources and analyzing it to produce usable intelligence. ... Data mining (DM), also called Knowledge-Discovery in Databases (KDD) or Knowledge-Discovery and Data Mining, is the process of automatically searching large volumes of data for patterns such as association rules. ...

Medium Risk cells would be semi-organized, paramilitary or military trained, peer supported, dissafected or criminal groups or gangs with some special skills, some special knowledge, some ability to gain access, some training and some covert source collection abilities plus a history of protesting or demonstrating against presumed grievances and/or, vandalism and/or petty crime which may have resulted in some prison gang contact with radical or extremist ideologies. Appropriate surveillance might include data mining and behavioral analysis. A paramilitary organization is a group of civilians trained and organised in a military fashion. ... Extremism is the act of taking a belief, political view or ideology to its most literal extreme. ... Behaviorism is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behaviour can be studied and explained scientifically without recourse to internal mental states. ...

High Risk cells would be organized, military trained, funded and supported, ideological groups with special skills, special knowledge, opportunistic access, training, covert source collection abilities plus no history of protesting or demonstrating against presumed grievances. Appropriate surveillance might include total information awareness, communications and control surveillance and disruption, covert observation and premptive strike preparedness.

Urgent Risk cells would be self actualizing, covert military, well funded and supported, non ideological groups with a wide range of special skills, special knowledge, virtually unlimited inside access, elite training, sophisticated covert source collection abilities including counter surveillance skills, plus no history, or record of presence. An appropriate level of surveillance is impossible.

Givin the secritive nature of sleeper cells exact classification into the above classifications is not always simple, a single group may fall into more than one of the risk assessment levels at the same time.