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Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is an intelligence gathering discipline that involves collecting information from open sources and analyzing it to produce usable intelligence. OSINT includes a wide variety of information and sources:

  • Media - newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and computer-based information.
  • Public data - government reports, offical data such as budgets and demographics, hearings, legislative debates, press conferences, speeches.
  • Professional and academic - conferences, symposia, professional associations, academic papers, and subject matter experts.Lowenthal, Mark M. "Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy," 2nd Ed. (Washington D.C.: CQ Press, 2003) p. 79.

It is also known as unclassified intelligence or, in the business community, as "decision support" or "business intelligence". OSINT should not be confused with the OSIF (Open Source Information) on which OSINT is based. OSIF is any information that is publicly available; OSINT is an analytically-tailored intelligence product composed of OSIF that is designed to answer a specific tasking or to support decision-making rather than general research. "OSINT, like all other intelligence sources, is more than information. It represents a careful sifting, selecting, analyzing and presenting of open source material on a timely basis." Defense Daily Network Special Report, posted 5 May 1998 article Open Source Intelligence: Private Sector Capabilities to Support DoD Policy, Acquisitions, and Operations by Mr. Robert D. Steele President, OSS Inc. and Dr. Mark M. Lowenthal, President OSS USA

OSINT is distinguished from research in that it applies the process of intelligence to create tailored knowledge supportive of a specific decision by a specific individual or group.

OSINT is defined by the Department of Defense (DoD), as "information of potential intelligence value that is available to the general public".USA Department of Defense definition supplied by About

OSINT is, as of 2005, defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget under the category of "Forces And Direct Support" and specifically for the DoD under Commercial Code M320 as FAIR Act Inventory Commercial Activities Inventory Function Codes

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Collection/Processing
A wide variety of vendors sell information products specifically within this category.

Value

The secret intelligence world, which has resisted any significant expenditures on OSINT for the past fifty years, is finally beginning to slowly adapt to the modern world. According to the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction report submitted in March 2005, OSINT must be included in the all-source SECRET intelligence process for the following reasons (as stated in the report):

  1. The ever-shifting nature of our intelligence needs compels the IC to quickly and easily understand a wide range of foreign countries and cultures. - … today’s threats are rapidly changing and geographically diffuse; it is a fact of life that an intelligence analyst may be forced to shift rapidly from one topic to the next. Increasingly, IC professionals need to quickly assimilate social, economic, and cultural information about a country—information often detailed in open sources.
  2. Open source information provides a base for understanding classified materials. Despite large quantities of classified material produced by the IC, the amount of classified information produced on any one topic can be quite limited, and may be taken out of context if viewed only from a classified-source perspective. Perhaps the most important example today relates to terrorism, where open source information can fill gaps and create links that allow analysts to better understand fragmented intelligence, rumored terrorist plans, possible means of attack, and potential targets.
  3. Open source materials can protect sources and methods. Sometimes an intelligence judgment that is actually informed with sensitive, classified information can be defended on the basis of open source reporting. This can prove useful when policymakers need to explain policy decisions or communicate with foreign officials without compromising classified sources.
  4. Only open source can store history. A robust open source program can, in effect, gather data to monitor the world’s cultures and how they change with time. This is difficult, if not impossible, using the snapshots provided by classified collection methods. (The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities, 378-379). Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction

Process

Information collection in OSINT is generally a different problem from collection in other intelligence disciplines where obtaining the raw information to be analyzed may be a major difficultly, particularly if it is to be obtained from non-cooperative targets. In OSINT, the chief difficulty is in identifying relevant, reliable sources from the vast amount of publicly available information. However, this is not as great a challenge for those who know how to access local knowledge and how to leverage human experts who can create new tailored knowledge on the fly.

History

In the fall of 1992, Senator David Boren, then Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sponsored the National Security Act of 1992, attempting to achieve modest reform in the U.S. Intelligence Community. His counterpart on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was Congressman McCurdy. The House version of the legislation included a separate Open Source Office, at the suggestion of Larry Prior, a Marine Reservist familiar with the MCIC experience and then serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staff. This legislation was defeated by a combination of opposition from Senator John Warner of Virginia, who feared that reform would reduce intelligence jobs in Virginia, and a letter from then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Within the past several years, Lt. Gen Dr. Brent Scowcroft studied this issue again and repeated the recommendation that the three national agencies be removed from the Department of Defense, only to be dismissed by now Vice President Dick Cheney.

Several DCI's in succession refused to implement the Aspin-Brown Commission recommendations, including the recommendation in 1996 that stated that US access to open sources was "severely deficient" and that this should be a "top priority" for both funding and DCI attention. Consequently, the US entered the new century completely ignorant of all of the open source information in all languages relevant to identifying and containing Al Qaeda, which has been active, publicly, since 1988.

Concurrent with the Commission's effort, the HPSCI commissioned its own review. Staff Director Mark Lowenthal has also published useful books on the intelligence process and the literature of intelligence. "IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century"

In July 1997 then DCI George Tenet received a report conducted by Senior Intelligence Service officer Boyd Sutton."The Challenge of Global Coverage" After interviewing virtually all of the Assistant Secretaries of Defense and State, and the heads of the varied intelligence organizations, the report recommended that the U.S. Intelligence Community, which continues to focus on seven "hard targets" and continues to ignore the Third World and all but two of the ten threats identified by the High Level Threat Panel of the United Nations, should spend $1.5 billion a year (a fraction of 1% of the total intelligence community budget) to provide a $10 million dollar a year "insurance policy" for each of 150 lesser countries and topics associated with instability and non-traditional threats. In July 1997 DCI George Tenet told the author of the report that CIA was in the business of doing secrets for the President, the report was to be archived, and none were to speak of this again. speaking at IOP in January 2006

In issuing its July 2004 report, the 9/11 Commission recommended the creation of an open-source intelligence agency, but without further detail or comment.See page 413 of the 9-11 Commission Report (pdf). Subsequently, the WMD Commission (also known as the Robb-Silberman Commission) report in March 2005 recommended the creation of an Open Source Directorate at the CIA.

Following these recommendations, in November 2005 the Director of National Intelligence announced the creation of the DNI Open Source Center. The Center was established to collect information available from "the Internet, databases, press, radio, television, video, geospatial data, photos and commercial imagery."Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "ODNI Announces Establishment of Open Source Center". Press release, 8 November 2005. In addition to collecting openly available information, it would train analysts to make better use of this information. The Center absorbed the CIA's previously existing Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), originally established in 1941, with FBIS head Douglas Naquin named as director of the Center.Ensor, David. "The Situation Report: Open source intelligence center". CNN, 8 November 2005.

In December 2005, the Director of National Intelligence appointed Eliot A. Jardines as the Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Open Source to serve as the Intelligence Community's senior intelligence officer for open source and to provide strategy, guidance and oversight for the National Open Source Enterprise. Office of the Director of National Intelligence "ODNI Senior Leadership Announcement". Press release, 7 December 2005.

The Director of National Intelligence's Chief Information Officer, MG Dale Meyerrose, USAF, has broken with the insular traditions of the past and sponsored both an open forum on open standards for information sharing, and a major conference open to foreigners, to discuss all aspects of the U.S. Intelligence Community's Intelink program for sharing and making sense of all sources of information. This is a major positive change, and could conceivably lead to the establishment of a Multinational Information Sharing System that is open to all legitimate governments and organizations. Note: the original Open Source Information System (OSIS) has been re-named Intelink-SBU.

In February 2006 speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seems to have acknowledged the importance of open media as a component of national security in the information age.

Open source intelligence services are as diverse and tailored as one can imagine. The specific services listed in the NATO reference include data data conversion; database construction and stuffing; document acquisition, human intervention; imagery interpretation & annotation, indexing & abstracting; international studies analysis; modeling & simulation; online collection; open source intelligence portals; private investigation; scientific & technical analysis; signals processing; and telephone surveys (also known as primary research).

See also

References

Further reading

General articles

Advocacy and analysis of OSINT

News and commentary

External links

Intelligence | OSINT

Intelligence des sources ouvertes | Osint | オープンソース・インテリジェンス | Frikildeetterretning | OSINT

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Open source intelligence".

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