Arno Reuser is one of the handful of multinational kindred spirits who created the international Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) movement that kicked off in 1992 and is now morphing into Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2).
When InterNET is InterNOT (2008)
Virtual Open Source Agency (2006)
Born and raised in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, roughly ten years prior to the birth of the Internet. After high school examinations he went to study history until he discovcered that finding out about “The Art of Information” was much more interesting than analyzing the same information, especially when suffering from the incurable disease of Curiosity. He switched to the Library Academy to study librarianship and found that being an information professional is indeed the perfect way to handle the disease.
After graduation Arno started his career as scientific librarian at the Central Bureau for Nuclear Measurements (Euratom) in Belgium where he has his first opportunity to put into practice som theories about making scientific information accessible regardless of the information need. he continued with a function as scientific literature searcher at the Scientific and Technical Documentation and Information Centre of for the Armed Forces, where he complied and published an abstract journal on Ordnance.
He was next asked, in 1995, to establish and organize Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) for the Dutch Defense Intelligence and Security Service (DISS), creating a department that is capable of making the most perfect possible match between the supply side of information and the demand side of information in support of analysts. Together with a team of dedicated information professionals and while programming the necessary tools and software for website generation, text manipulation, information retrieval, and metadata extraction himself, the department has grown to be a substantial element of Dutch defense intelligence.
He is the receipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in OSINT (2006) as well as an earlier Golden Candle Award (2004) and won first place in the national database information retrieval contest. Arno teaches at the Dutch Military Intelligence Institute and gives lectures and presentations on OSINT and search strategies for information professionals and analysts, both national and multinational.
He writes columns, articles, and chapters for his profession, and has established a one-man consultancy, “Reuser's Information Services,” to make his knowledge available outside his service. He lives in Leiden, The Netherlands.
