Within the US Intelligence Community, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) information is, at times, a red-headed step child. Not sexy and high tech like Signals Intelligence, and not at all sexy and cloak-and-dagger-ish like Human Intelligence; OSINT is the “great guy” that lots of women claim they can’t find.
SIGINT and HUMINT may be really, really, really ridiculously good looking and drive fancy sports cars, but OSINT is the guy who will never leave you for another woman… it also won’t rack up a pile of skeletons in the closet.
OSINT makes up eighty to ninety percent of all intelligence information, and it’s really easy to obtain, especially compared to the difficulty of other intelligence disciplines. It consists of information derived from open sources: news and reports from teevee, radio, and other open media; speeches, transcripts, events, blogs, public commercial and government data, and social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
All you need is a computer and an internet connection to begin collecting OSINT. And when we consider Intelligence by category (BESTMAPS), most of our intelligence requirements can likely be satisfied by a handful of online searches.
And just to illustrate the importance of social media, here’s a segment of an article I read last week.
From UK Guardian:
