The Importance Of OSINT To The Intelligence Community

This article was written by Garrett Trent, Class of 2015, for Professor Mulligan as part of a series focusing on the importance of the various INTs to the Intelligence Community.

The Importance of OSINT To The Intelligence Community

Introduction

The U.S. government has always been fond of open source intelligence (OSINT) (Johnson, 2010, p. 2). It has been around since the media started spotlighting the whole world. OSINT comes from any and every available source including but not limited to: newspapers, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, T.V. broadcasts, and typical magazine journalism. In this paper I will discuss the four challenges of OSINT and also if OSINT is really considered intelligence.

First Source: Transforming Data Into Decisions: A Framework for Addressing the Open Source Inteligence (OSINT) Challenge

This article discusses the four major challenges of OSINT: volume, variety, veracity, and velocity. These four major topics are what make OSINT an interesting form of intelligence and what makes people doubt its validity sometimes. Volume refers to the sheer vastness of the open source network and that to dig through all of the useless information to find one bit of good information takes a huge amount of man power. Variety involves the types of information, whether it is print, video, audio, or another type. Veracity is the accuracy or truthfulness of all the information collected. Lastly, velocity is the speed at which new open source information is released (Willox, 2006, p. 1). All of these things together add up to one big headache for anyone trying to sift through the information for useful facts.

This was a very useful article and I think it was written by a quality author. The author was published in the Homeland Defense Journal which is a very reputable source making his work from it reliable. I did enjoy this article it was interesting to find out how difficult OSINT can be.er add up to one big headache for anyone trying to sift through the information for useful facts.

Second Source: The Dilemma of Open Source Intelligence: Is OSINT Really Intelligence?

This article focuses a lot on the usefulness of OSINT and its applications. They talk about how after 9/11 the enthusiasm for OSINT skyrocketed and an entire office was created just to study open sources (Johnson, 2010, p. 3). Also, OSINT is a very easy resource to use when learning about a possible threat. The openness of information makes it easy to access and sometimes even fun to research and study. In the private and business sectors of our nation OSINT is a great way to learn about competition through magazine articles and public reviews. Even though all of OSINT is not classified the final end result of analyzed information all put together may become classified. This makes for a highly interesting source.

This article was written for Oxford which is equivalent to a Harvard or Yale in this country. Since it was written for such a prestigious academy it must be a good source and the author must really know what he is talking about. I did enjoy some of the conflicting arguments inside this article and the different aspects it brought to light.

Conclusion

OSINT is a widely accepted and very useful source for intelligence analysts. It utilizes all open sources, finding important facts and figures and creating an easy type of intelligence. It can even be used in private sectors for business and other groups making it the most widespread easy type of intelligence.

References

Johnson, L. K. (2010). The Oxford handbook of national security intelligence. Oxford Handbooks Online.
Willox, N. (2006). Transforming data into decisions: A framework for addressing the open source inteligence (OSINT) challenge. Homeland Defense Journal, 4(7), 42–47.

For questions or comments, please contact the author at gtrent16@lakers.mercyhurst.edu

By Chad Los Schumacher in IIS-MU News, Industry News, News on January 17, 2012