A "burn notice" is an official statement issued by an intelligence agency to other agencies. It states that an asset or intelligence source is unreliable for one or several reasons, often fabrication, and must be officially disavowed. This is essentially a directive for the recipient to disregard or "burn" all information derived from that individual or group.

Examples

In popular culture

Kill notice

The related term kill notice or kill notification is used by news and photo agencies to declare manipulated or faked documents as "not to be used". In March 2024, the term attracted considerable press commentary after news agencies issued kill notices on the Mother's day photograph of Catherine, Princess of Wales, which was found to have been digitally altered. Phil Chetwynd, AFP's global news director, said that the kill notices issued on the photograph were more typical for photographs from the state news agencies of North Korea and Iran.