General Comment: as presented to non-governmental groups including Amazon, Gnomedex Bloggers, Hackers on Planet Earth, etcetera, the Open Source Agency (OSA) would be the proponent for everything open beginning with the four central opens necessary for Open Government: Open Source Software, Open Spectrum, Open Data Access, and Open Source Intelligence. Within the Department of State, an Office for Information-Sharing Treaties and Agreements would be central to the endeavor, and could reasonably also do outreach to all eight tribes across the USA (academic, civil society, commerce, government at all levels, law enforcement, media, military, and non-governments/non-profit).
This book remains the single definitive reference on the Smart Nation Act as developed by Robert Steele in support of Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02). As pointed out in Hamilton Bean's recently published book, No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of US Intelligence the Open Source Agency (OSA) has become the subject of competing visions–on one side, those who favor accountability, effectiveness, transparency, and respect for the public…..on the other, those who favor corruption, profitable waste, secrecy, and the exclusion of the public.
Most recently, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability provides the strategic, operational, tactical, and technical contexts for leveraging both Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2) in order to create a prosperous world at peace–and at one third the cost of what the USA spends on war today.
If an OSA is created–it can only be a success under diplomatic auspices as OMB has twice agreed (provided the Secretary of State asks for it as a sister agency to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), it could–it should–host the Multinational Decision Support Centre (MDSC) as proposed to DoD and implicitly called for in several Defense Science Board (DSB) reports. The MDSC could be located in Tampa, Florida, as the Coalition Coordination Centre has been, but staffed by intelligence professionals instead of logistics professionals.
Put most simply, an OSA restores intelligence and integrity to the entirety of the US Government, and changes everything about how we do policy, acquisitions, and operations. It restores the Republic.
The Open Source Agency (OSA) was first proposed by Robert Steele to the Open Source Council in 1992, as an Open Source Center outside the wire. The rationale was that best in class sources would change constantly, and access was needed to all information in all languages all the time. CIA and MITRE conspired to substitute instead the Open Source Information System (OSIS), a still-anemic unproductive system with limited sources and no analytic tool-kit worthy of the name.
Despite the history of opposition, and the fact that the CIA's Open Source Center (OSC) today only deals with eleven countries on a more or less regular basis, while going through the motions with others, a robust multinational network has been developed over time that includes at least 90 countries, some of which have made gains in harnessing the eight tribes of intelligence, some not. The Nordics, and especially Sweden, have been especially effective, at furthering the concept of M4IS2 (multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information-sharing and sense-making).
There remains a need for an Open Source Agency (OSA) that is under diplomatic auspices as suggested by Dr. Joe Markowitz and endorsed by Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02) and Robert Steele, both writing and speaking on this over the years. Below are some references that bear directly on the need for and the means by which an OSA might be created.
The existing US definitions of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) are severely deficient at multiple levels. See the official definitions below the line. Here is a proper definition devised with Joe Markowitz and others who actually know something about the discipline.
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is decision-support (an output not an input) that integrates open sources and methods including all forms of direct human knowledge elicited by intermediaries without subterfuge. It combines direct access to indigenous humans, gray literature, and the deliberate exploitation of both published and unpublished (field) human experts, advanced multi-disciplinary and multi-domain processing and integration or deconfliction, and advanced visualization and other methods for communicating context and insight to the supported decision-maker(s). OSINT is not the same as Open Source Information (OSIF), which is where the official definitions are now–publicly available information, nor is it the same as Open Source Data (OSD) or Validated Open Source Intelligence (OSINT-V), which can only be produced by an all-source analyst generally not a contractor. OSINT is a human intelligence function, not a technical intelligence function.
OSINT has been superceeded as the center of gravity for the future of intelligence by M4IS2: Multinational, Multiagency, Multidimensional, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making. 90% of M4IS2 is not secret, not expensive, and not federal or controlled by any government. Outside the wire both OSINT and M4IS should be controlled by the J-3 via Civil Affairs (Human) and Information Operations (IO). Secret bureacracies (including “cyber-commands”) do not have the knowledge, mind-set, or reliability to manage OSINT and M4IS2 interactions with all manner of humans in every clime and place. Inside the wire, the J-2 becomes the integrator of all-source information, and Civil Affairs and IO become advisory functions to the J-3 on non-kinetic options.
1995 “Fiche sur le Renseignement Ouverte,” in l’Admiral Pierre Lacoste, Defense et Renseignement (Paris, FR: Editions L’Harmattan, 1995).In French, “On Open Source Intelligence.”
Secret intelligence is ten percent of all-source intelligence; all-source intelligence is ten percent of Information Operations (IO). IO is the foundation for Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2), which in turn makes it possible to create a world that works for all.
Note: most YouTubes taken by others are not listed below, particularly the many SPY IMPROV sessions. Below is one means of accessing the wealth of material that is free online in multimedia but not indexed here:
