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Open Source Intelligence (OSINT): issues and trends

Conference Paper · January 2020

DOI: 10.17234/INFUTURE.2019.23

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 Open Source Intelligence (OSINT): Issues and
Trends
Tomislav Ivanjko
Department of Information and Communication Sciences,
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
Ivana Lučića 3, Zagreb, Croatia
tivanjko@ffzg.hr

Tomislav Dokman,
Postgraduate doctoral student
Postgraduate doctoral programme of Information and Communication Sciences
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Zagreb,
Ivana Lučića 3, Zagreb, Croatia
dokman.tomislav@gmail.com
Summary
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is an intelligence product which has been
processed, analysed and obtained from the publicly available information. It
should be actionable and disseminated in a timely manner to the appropriate
audience. Open source intelligence transfers specific knowledge to beneficiaries
for them to use it in their actions and the decision-making process. Even though
intelligence has for years been considered a state activity, a new postmodern
intelligence paradigm (resulting from the post-Cold War period), along with the
new security threats and technological improvement within the information and
communication technology changed the understanding of intelligence and open
source intelligence. It is believed that the bulk of intelligence, according to
some estimates as much as 80 percent, comes from publicly available sources,
which unquestionably indicates that this specific intelligence knowledge can be
created outside of the traditional intelligence environment. The positive
characteristics of publicly available information is easy availability and
velocity, variety of topics, the ethical component and the low cost of its
collecting; while on the other hand, in the negative context, it is characterized
by manipulative character, disinformation potential, fragmented truth,
contradiction and mistrust. Since public domain is a suitable platform for
spreading influence, various actors in this domain are trying to have an impact
on the information, making it difficult to evaluate, compare and analyse. This
paper tries to explore the key advantages and disadvantages of open source
intelligence in the context of intelligence activities.

Key words: open source intelligence, information, intelligence, knowledge,

disinformation
INFuture2019: Knowledge in the Digital Age

Introduction

Open source intelligence (OSINT) is a gathering intelligence discipline which

consists of collecting raw data accessible to everyone from publicly available
sources. By further processing and analysing, this raw data is turned into
actionable intelligence knowledge; or in other words, into an intelligence
product, which is a crucial segment of intelligence activity. The end intelligence
product, most often called intelligence information, is at the same time the
crown of complex quality intelligence work since, by timely classification and
distribution of intelligence knowledge to its ultimate users, the decision-making
process is simplified, made quicker and easier, not only when it comes to
various political decisions but also to a variety of business decisions. The
traditional intelligence process is finished with this act. What preceded it was
getting a request, fact finding, processing and analysis, followed by the
beginning of a new cycle. It is also interesting to note here that up to date, there
is no concrete record of the first use of open source intelligence. It has been
claimed that the term itself, as well as the activity of collecting intelligence
from publicly available sources, have by now probably been in use for hundreds
of years (Hassan 2018). Despite the fact that for a long time intelligence activity
was considered to be an exclusive function of the state, the new postmodern
views that came into being as a consequence of the period after the Cold War,
new security challenges and technological progress within the framework of the
information and technology channel, changed the understanding of the concept
of both intelligence and open source intelligence. The fact that in the course of
the World War II, open source intelligence was predominantly associated with
the state bears witness to that. Today, the creation of actionable knowledge
using open source intelligence tools constitutes an essential quality of various
non-state organizations and business sector corporations. Namely, it is against
the law and it is a punishable activity for the private sector to collect strictly
confidential and/or classified information by means of industrial espionage
(Hulnick 2002: 566). Hence, the creation of new knowledge by using open
source intelligence activities has recently been conducted exclusively by non-
state participants. It is considered that most intelligence knowledge, according
to some estimates even up to 80%, comes from public sources (Wallner 1993;
Hulnick 2002; Riley et al. 2005), which is undeniable proof that actionable
knowledge can be created from publicly available information. In other words,
we can discern the level of reach of open source intelligence and its role in the
decision-making process. Although it is the non-state actors that have
predominantly used the public knowledge, it is wider professional and academic
communities that have a controversial view of the part and nature of opensource
intelligence in the intelligence work of state agencies while creating an
 OSINT: issues and trends

intelligence product by means of information obtained from public sources. A

part of the academic and professional community considers the gathering of
secret information the quality of intelligence work and intelligence knowledge
only (Random 1958; Warner 2002; Johnston 2005; Gil and Phythian 2012,
Warner 2009). It needs to be pointed out that the authors listed here are
primarily experts, who consider the creation of intelligence knowledge from
their own specific paradigm, unfoundedly depreciating open source intelligence
and giving support to the superiority of classified sources. It is Liaropulus
(2006: 8) who points out that in the recent past, information was not sufficiently
accessible and it was mainly a product of covert and expensive operations,
while in the contemporary world, owing to the Internet, all this information is
easily available, cheap and more tangible. Because of this, in this paper I would
like to explain what open source intelligence is, what the open source
intelligence cycle is, as well as explore key advantages and disadvantages of
open source information.

Open Source Intelligence and the Intelligence Cycle

When dealing with intelligence, the term is above all determined by a definition
controversy, since in its wider sense, it is identified through organization,
knowledge, information and process; while in its narrower sense, the idea of
intelligence refers to analysed information as the basis for decision-making. On
the other hand, Tuđman (2002) states that the term intelligence refers to the
knowledge one has about the enemy, the activity of gathering and the
organization that deals with intelligence activities, including the procedure of
collecting, processing, analysing, connecting and evaluating the information at
our disposal. In other words, there is intelligence potential in all collecting
intelligence disciplines, no matter what the origin of data collected is. It is
crucial that the data collected is structured, processed, evaluated, correlated,
analysed and timely disseminated to their end users. The actionable character of
an intelligence product or information is among its essential qualities.
The development of the Internet has, in our contemporary world, together with
the availability of information in the digital form, had considerable impact on
the growth in the quantities of open source information. The way information is
gathered has also changed – until recently, it was available mostly in the printed
or audio-visual form. On the other hand, with technological progress and the
appearance of the Internet, an opportunity was created to gather information
desired at a greater speed, no matter whether the content was displayed in one’s
mother tongue or a foreign language, from another country or another continent.
According to Mercado (2004), it is with one movement and one click of the
mouse that “analysts and officials understand the world.” In other words,
knowledge has never before been within such an easy reach, it has never been
as widespread as today. As for defining the term, one of the founders and one of
INFuture2019: Knowledge in the Digital Age

the people who have done the most on advancing open source intelligence
information, Robert David Steele, emphasises that OSINT is “unclassified
information that has been deliberately discovered, discriminated, distilled and
disseminated to a select audience in order to address a specific question (Steele
2006: 129). On the other hand, Williams and Blum (2018: 8) give a definition
of OSINT as “publicly available information that has been discovered,
determined to be of intelligence value, and disseminated by a member of the
IC.” “Open source intelligence is also a specific intelligence collection
discipline such as human intelligence (HUMINT), intelligence gathered by
interception of signals (SIGINT), imaginary intelligence (IMINT) and the
scientific and technical processing of data collected from different moving and
immovable sources (MASINT) or measurement and signature intelligence
(NATO 2001).” In other words, it is a discipline whose predominant feature is
the availability of unclassified information. According to Mercado (2005) “open
sources often equal or surpass classified information in monitoring and
analysing such pressing problems such as terrorism, proliferation, and
counterintelligence.” For Mercado (2005), the space of public and secret
information is often interwoven with frequent meandering from the clandestine
space to the public area and the other way around. The author states that it is in
the public space that we often find information obtained by leaking secret
information, while state systems are characterised by obtaining intelligence
information from secret sources and are quite often an amalgam of open source
information. It is essential to point out here that OSINT “products can reduce
the demands on classified intelligence collection resources.” (Steele 2006: 129)
Steele is of the opinion that collecting data in a secret way should be reduced to
a minimum, or that they should be gathered in such ways only when we know
what it is that is still missing in a certain puzzle. Steele in fact here deals with
the problem of optimizing state resources, with quality planning being a
precondition for that, which in a concrete case means collecting the publicly
available, and only after that the less readily accessible, classified information.
Matey (2005: 8) thinks that “OSINT is changing the traditional conception of
intelligence”, and as a consequence, there will be more and more situations
where the private sector enters the field of intelligence and the process of
creating intelligence knowledge. Today, there are numerous organizations
which, by using open sources advance intelligence knowledge and create
analytical work in the area of national security based on publicly available
information. Some of the better-known ones are the American think-tank
organization, RAND Corporation, along with Jane’s Information Group, and
the British BBC Monitoring. The traditional open source intelligence process
(request - collection - processing - analysis - dissemination) shows the
cyclically interconnected parts exchanging within a circle. It is a never-ending
process; after the dissemination of intelligence knowledge in the form of
information is done, it goes on and a new cycle of collecting unclassified data
 OSINT: issues and trends

begins. The process is initiated with a previously defined request, or an ad-hoc

task, and it is with this aim that raw data is collected again. When consulting
open sources, raw data is gathered from the Internet, i. e. various web pages,
blogs, social media, social networks, and by accessing the traditional media
such as television, radio and newspapers, including grey literature and
geographical data (Hassan 2018). Before open source information is
disseminated, it is of key importance to structure, evaluate, explain and
correlate the data collected so far, which is done in the data-processing phase, in
the phase of analysis, when the end intelligence product is made, prior to its
dissemination to the end users. In order to fully comprehend the value of
OSINT, it is of crucial importance to point out the American view of it,
according to which “information does not have to be secret to be valuable”
(CIA 2010), in other words, an open source piece of information can be equally
useful, assuming it is obtained in time and is actionable in its character. In such
cases, open source data is collected, mostly raw, the data is then sorted out,
structured or processed, thus making them adequate for analytical processing
and the creation of an intelligence product for dissemination to ultimate users.

The advantages and disadvantages of OSINT

In order to discuss the positive and negative features of open source

information, we need to point out that the value and usefulness of this particular
collection discipline outweighs its certain disadvantages and the negative traits
of this discipline. These features of OSINT are summarized in Table 1 and
Table 2.

Table 1: The advantages of OSINT

Advantage Characteristics
The simplicity of obtaining information Technological development and the
Internet have resulted in simple ways of
obtaining open source information. To get
open source information, one needs a PC
and Internet access. “This is the reason
why OSINT is more accessible, ubiquitous,
and valuable.” (Mercado 2004: 47)

The speed at which a great quantity of Digital data are suitable for generating
information is gathered great quantities of information. They also
make it possible to search through a great
volume of available open source
information within a very short time-span,
which is not a feature of any other
intelligence discipline.

Covering a wide spectrum of content units The advantage of open source work is the
INFuture2019: Knowledge in the Digital Age

coverage of a variety of national security

topics, which is not possible in covert
information gathering by using one human
source or other intelligence collection
disciplines.

Searching for data from the recent past This discipline is superior when it comes to
the investigation of post festum events,
when it is necessary to collect a wider
information pool about an event from the
past, and investigate and/or a reconstruct a
certain, especially recent, past event.

Low level of danger (safe model) Here we are dealing with a risk-free way of
information gathering, which is why this
discipline can be described as the most
acceptable data-collecting technique, as far
as matters of security are concerned. In
other words, exploiting open source
information access can diminish or
optimize the necessity to use much more
dangerous and much more complex ways
to gain factual knowledge with the help of
human sources.

Open- source pieces of information do not cost Considering the fact that open source data
much is publicly available, mostly they do not
have to be paid for. Still, there are certain
magazines, studies and articles in think-
tank organizations that can be used on
condition they are given an extra fee.

Real time information gathering This particular data gathering discipline

makes it possible for us to keep track of
certain events and phenomena in real time.
It is possible to follow migrants’ routes,
investigate the consequences of a terrorist
attack, outburst of an epidemic, the
organization of violent demonstrations and
the like.

Availability of information from various Another advantage of this discipline is also

languages obvious when it comes to looking through
content in various foreign languages and
having the chosen content translated into
our mother tongue by means of machine
translation.

Collecting information from a single spot This secret data collecting discipline from
 OSINT: issues and trends

human sources is characterised by the fact

that information can be collected without
going to some place, environment or
society, i. e. the required data is collected
directly from our offices.

Simple data dissemination procedures Considering the fact that here we are
dealing with the data readily available to
everybody, their dissemination should not
be based on spreading them restrictively or
in a limited way; such pieces of
information are suitable for both horizontal
sharing and they can be made available to
the broader public in general.

Secret information authentication/ verification The comparison of classified information

with publicly available data is an
outstanding method of checking whether
there is maybe some “secret” data being
circulated in open sources. There is a
possibility that some data were previously
publicly known, so this method can be used
to ascertain the validity and evaluate both
the content and the source of covert
information, at the same time channelling
further collection of classified information.

Business intelligence suitability Using open source data can definitely be

helpful in bringing adequate business
decisions, planning future projects,
conducting pilot projects, market research,
comparing and evaluating competitors, as
well as ensuring appropriate publicity for
one’s own business ideas.

Other authors have also been studying the good and bad sides of open source
intelligence information and their opinions concur with the insights given here.
For instance, Annie Ahuja (2018: 470) states the advantages of open source
intelligence are: 1) Less Expensive; 2) Accessing Information; 3) Security; 4)
Business; 5) Social Media; 6) Updated Data and Metadata; 7) Semantic
Understanding; 8) Applications. Simultaneously, Mercado (2005) emphasises
OSINT’s “value advert, speed, quantity, quality, clarity, ease of use and cost.”
OSINT is a unique discipline that can share its product with everyone, the profit
being greater if we take into consideration the fact that it is also shared with
humanitarian aid missions and forces of security, law and order. The fact that
the results of OSINT’s inquests are used as contributions to early warning
systems also needs to be born in mind (Steele 2006: 133). On the other hand, it
INFuture2019: Knowledge in the Digital Age

is important to point out that OSINT has not been put in place to replace other
intelligence disciplines in the production of actionable knowledge, i.e. it is not
aimed at one discipline replacing an existing one.

Table 2: The disadvantages of OSINT

Disadvantage Characteristics
Great quantities of accessible information Public space is characterised by great
quantities of available information. Quite
often the data is badly laid out and therefore
confusing, and then it is also difficult to find
the exact data we are looking for. Hassan
(2018) thinks that we live in an information
world, with millions of people in constant
communication and constantly sharing all
kinds of information. Namely, the daily data
production, according to some estimates,
amounts to about 2.5 quintillion bytes, the
assumption being that this number is bound
to increase even further with further Internet
growth (Marr 2018)

Information contradiction The availability of a wide information fund

has been caused by the democratization of
the net, coupled with the opportunity of an
individual to create and spread information
without too much difficulty. It is important
to objectively view the data collected in
order for the product of public intelligence
knowledge to be as accurate as possible.

The manipulative character of publicly Public space is obviously an excellent area

available information for spreading disinformation and fake news
in order to achieve certain effects. By
influencing the corpus of public knowledge,
using information and counter information in
the public arena, those in charge of various
campaigns want to gain information
superiority (Akrap 2009: 80). It is due to this
reason that this discipline is characterised by
the constant checking and rechecking of all
the material at our disposal.

Conclusion

Until the emergence of the Internet and the state-of-the-art communication and
information-sharing applications, open source intelligence information was
 OSINT: issues and trends

considered to be of low value as an intelligence discipline. Not accepting the

real value of open source intelligence mostly corresponded with an a priori
attitude that an intelligence product could exclusively come from covert
information sources, while work with publicly available data was considered to
be less valuable and less interesting for the intelligence activity. However, in
the current, above all changing security environment, when traditional threats
became more divergent and changed in their configuration, especially when the
gathering of secret data became a long-lasting, expensive and complex process,
intelligence services began creating open source intelligence knowledge.
Besides that, this collecting discipline also proved to be an invaluable source of
knowledge apart from state activity and has, therefore, been fully assimilated
into other spheres of public life. Moreover, the intelligence activity, including
open source intelligence information, is no longer only a feature belonging to
the state itself. Gathering, analytical processing and the production of relevant
and actionable intelligence knowledge are now typical for both the state and
non-state actors. However, it is envisaged that in the future, OSINT will be
faced with great challenges caused by immense quantities of unstructured data,
because in order to collect them and sort them out appropriately, an ever-
increasing development of sophisticated software will be required. Since we are
here dealing with the greatest source of information of all intelligence
disciplines, great effort will be necessary to extract quality and timely
information from a considerable number of sources, in order to attain usable
actionable knowledge. At the same time, it needs to be pointed out that public
space is an area for spreading influence, propaganda and a variety of interests,
which is why the checking of information has to be the main feature of work
when dealing with the publicly available content.

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