SIr,
1-Is there any comprehensive OSINT report publicly available which may help to know what the sources are?
2- How can OSINT help in generating high-grade intelligence?
1-Is there any comprehensive OSINT report publicly available which may help to know what the sources are?
The short answer is no. You should avoid like the plague the “industry” reports that pupport to identify high-value OSINT enterprises. The truth-teller is that any report that includes Palantir as a high-value offering is absolute crap. All existing OSINT providers are time and materials shops that are lazy and unprofessional. They don't do foreign languages, they generally have to conform to client requirements in relation to clearances or citizenship, and they simply do not know what they do not know.
In 1997 via InfoSphere, one of the best of the actualy analog-foreign language capable firms, we did something CIA could not do — we identified and evaluated 364 terrorist, insurgent, and opposition websites in 29 languages. Today we do 33 languages and 12 dialects of Arabic. There is no one in Washington DC that can do that — they don't know how to go about it.
There are three levels of source access:
01 Know who knows locally — this includes Gray Literature — openly available but little known, locally manufactured. I also coined the term Black OSINT — OSINT so precious that if the enemy knew you were deriving value the source would be closed down.
02 Citation analytics in all languages. The Information Science Institute (ISI) was instrumental in my beating the crap out of CIA for the Burundi Exercise before the Aspin-Brown Commission. They can identify the top published and cited experts in the English language on anything. You can then go to the experts and their leading graduate students and be ahead of the publication curve. There are similar offerings in Chinese and Russian. For other countries you survey the Chairmen of the relevant departments at the top universities. India, for example, should have an OSINT Council in which a top academic is assigned to stay current with the top people — both published and cited in the media and identified by word of mouth — for each of the threats, each of the policies, each of the challengers — a National OSINT Council.
03 The Web including the Deep or Dark Web is such shit I would limit attention there to cyber and counterintelligence, and make that a SIGINT function. The old women at CIA responsible for OSINT cannot do cyber, and what we have that is called cyber now in the USA cannot do intelligence or counterintelligence. NSA is processing less than 1% of what it has, and does not do SIGINT support to clandestine operations overseas or counterintelligence operations at home. There is an opportunity for creating a hybrid cyber unit that does both OSINT and SIGINT counterintelligence inclusive of the near-real-time identification of traitors, elite pedophiles, and white collar criminals, as well as all Mossad and MI-5 and MI-6 and CIA and FBI people across the country doing bribery and blackmail. We've never been serious about assuring data integrity in cyber or about using cyber/SIGINT for counterintelligence and white collar crime.
1994 Sounding the Alarm on Cyber-Security
At the end of the day OSINT comes down to knowing who knows, and OSINT is HUMINT. Anyone who does not “get” that is an obstacle to progress.
2- How can OSINT help in generating high-grade intelligence?
Start here:
Steele, Robert. “Augmented Intelligence with Human-Machine Integrity: Future-Oriented Hybrid Governance Integrating Holistic Analytics, True Cost Economics, and Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE),” in Daniel Araya. Augmented Intelligence: Smart Systems and the Future of Work and Learning. Bern, CH: Peter Lang Publishing., 2018.
Steele, Robert. “Foreword,” in Stephen E. Arnold, CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access, Harrods Creek, KY: Arnold Information Technology, 2015.
Steele, Robert. “The Evolving Craft of Intelligence,” in Robert Dover, Michael Goodman, and Claudia Hillebrand (eds.). Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies, Oxford, UK: Routledge, July 31, 2013.
Steele, Robert. “Creating a Smart Nation” in Mark Tovey (ed.), Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, Oakton, VA: Earth Intelligence Network, 2008, pp 107-130.
Steele, Robert. “World Brain as Earth Game,” in Mark Tovey (ed.), Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, Oakton, VA: Earth Intelligence Network, 2008, pp 389-398
Steele, Robert. “Open Source Intelligence (Strategic),” in Loch Johnson (ed.), Strategic Intelligence: The Intelligence Cycle, Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, Chapter 6, pp. 96-122.
Steele, Robert. “New Rules for the New Craft of Intelligence,” in Robert David Steele, The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen’s Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption, Oakton, VA: Open Source Solutions, Inc., 2002, Chapter 15, pp. 147-161.
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