Search: definition of osint

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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 It combines direct access to indigenous humans, gray literature, and the deliberate exploitation of both published and unpublished (field) human experts, advanced multi-disciplinary and multi-domain processing and integration or deconfliction, and advanced visualization and other methods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.

See Also:

Search: osint vs humint

Official Definitions:

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Reference: USDI Open Source Intelligence Instruction

DoD
Full 12 Pages Online

Phi Beta Iota: Also known as dodi 3115.12, august 24, 2010.  While the document displays some tiny hints that someone somewhere is thinking, it is largely bureaucratic pap that sanctifies the existing dysfunctional status quo, to include an SES as a branch chief rather than as the head of a new Department, DO, co-equal to DH and DI and DX. The only glimmer of progress is in requiring a consolidated defense program, but even this will be mangled and prolonged. This is a bean-counter instruction, not a real-world instruction intent on providing OSINT support to policy, acquisition, and operations.

See Also:

2008 IJIC 21/3 The Open Source Program: Missing in Action

Graphic: Herring Triangle of Four Levels Need & Cost

2009 DoD OSINT Leadership and Staff Briefings

2009: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

Journal: MILNET Selected Headlines 28 Jan 10

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Policies, Threats, Topics (All Other)

CIA Finds a Productive Employee

Capabilities Of U.S. Intelligence Agencies Questioned

Congressional critics have singled out the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), established as part of a sweeping intelligence overhaul after the September 11 attacks.

“I do not (have), nor do I believe the DNI as currently constructed has, all of the authorities to move all of the information in a way that will maximize the likelihood of detecting these plots,” NCTC Director Michael Leiter told the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee.

Phi Beta Iota: Of course the DNI does not have the authorities he needs.  That's the plan.  If intelligence were as effective as it is capable of being, we could cut the budget back to $25 billion or so, and redirect the savings to education and research, ultimately creating a Smart Nation and a World Brain.  See the last item, Fact Check: How State of Union Compares With Reality, and our comment there.

Indonesia Pulling Down Statue?

Obama in Free Fall

After Van Jones, Anita Dunn, the Skip Gates mess, the “tea-bagger” slurs, the attacks on Fox News, the Copenhagen dashes, the bowing, the apologizing, the reordering of creditors, the NEA obsequiousness, the lackluster overseas-contingency-operation front, the deer-in-the-headlights pause on Afghanistan, the pseudo-deadlines on Iran, Guantanamo, and healthcare, the transparency and bipartisanship fraud, and dozens of other things, Obama simply does not have the popularity to carry unpopular legislation forward. Indeed, he is reaching a point where he may poll more negatively than his agenda does. “Let me be perfectly clear” and “make no mistake about it” are now caricatures.

Phi Beta Iota: We are not in favor of bashing the President.  This paragraph is a tiny manifestation of the enormous anger across America as the 30% of the voters that elected Obama join with the 70% of the voters that did not vote for him (half of those did not vote at all) to realize that Dick Cheney was not the end of the line, Obama is.  The two-party system is not working.  It is not representative, it remains corrupt.  We coiuld free Obama, but like the lightbulb in the shrink joke, he has to want to be free.  Obama could be the George Washington of the 21st Century if he would pass Electoral Reform and lead the entire Nation

Reality in 2002--Little Change Since

Cut The Pentagon, Too: Why Obama's spending freeze should apply to (most of) the military

Like the budgets of all bureaucracies, but much more so, the Pentagon is stuffed with entrenched interests, parochial barons, and internecine rivalries.

There is no good reason to exempt the Pentagon's budget from this discipline.  Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to exempt parts of the defense budget from a strict spending freeze.

Continue reading “Journal: MILNET Selected Headlines 28 Jan 10”

Journal: LEXIS-NEXIS OSINT Kiss to CIA/OSC

Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency

 

Full Story Online

More Than Espionage: Open-source intelligence should be part of solution

 

Washington Times   January 27, 2010    Pg. B3

By Andrew M. Borene

Here's some food for thought: White House policymakers and Congress can help develop an increasingly robust national intelligence capacity by investing new money in the pursuit of a centralized open-source intelligence (OSINT) infrastructure.

Phi Beta Iota: In 1992 it was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and The MITRE Corporation that destroyed the emergent Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) movement.  CIA refused to deal with OSINT unless everyone associated with it was a U.S. citizen with a SECRET clearance (we do not make this stuff up), and MITRE misled the US Government in such a way as to promote their Open Source Information System (OSIS) that ended up providing analysts mediocre high-side access to six open sources (LEXIS-NEXIS, Oxford Analytics, Jane's Information Group, Predicast and two other non-memorable sources).  The US Marine Corps, which was the proponent for OSINT based on the lessons learned in creating the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (MCIC), argued for an outside the wire center of excellence that would have access to all sources in all languages (in part because the “experts” flogged by contracting firms may have been expert once, but are not “the” expert on any given topic for any given day–for that we prize European and Chinese and Latin American graduate students about to receive their PhD).

During his tenure as Director of the Community Open Source Program Office (COSPO), Dr. Joe Markowitz, the only person ever to actually understand OSINT within CIA, closely followed by Carol Dumaine, founder of the Global Futures Partership, tried four years in a row, with the support of Charlie Allen, then Deputy Director for Collection (DDCI/C), to get an OSINT program line established.  Four years in a row, Joan Dempsey, then Deputy Director for Community Management (DDCI/CM) refused.  The secret IC is incapable of creating an Open Source Agency (OSA) as called for by the 9-11 Commission, and any money it puts in that direction will be wasted unless the Simmons-Steele-Markowitz recommendations briefed to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) are respected.

Dr. Markowitz is also the author of the OSINT portions of vital Defense Science Board reports such as Transitions to and from Hostilities, and is unique within the CIA alumni for understanding both the needs of defense and the possibilities of OSINT.  COSPO was an honest effort–CIA/OSC is not.

CIA and LEXIS-NEXIS still do not get it–they both want a monopoly on a discicpline they do not understand and cannot monopolize.  The US Government is a BENEFICIARY of OSINT, not its patron, and any endeavor that is not outside the wire, transparent, and under diplomatic and civil affairs auspices, is destined to fail, just as CIA/OSC has failed all these years, just as LEXIS-NEXIS, Oxford Analytica, and Jane's Information Group have failed on substance all these years.    They profit from government ignorance, they do not profit from actually connecting the government to sources that are largely free, not online, and not in English.

Continue reading “Journal: LEXIS-NEXIS OSINT Kiss to CIA/OSC”

Graphic: OSINT & Universal Coverage at Local Level

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collection, Geospatial, ICT-IT, Innovation, Languages-Translation, Leadership-Integrity, Multinational Plus, Strategy-Holistic Coherence, Threats, Tribes

The “New Craft of Intelligence” was defined by Robert Steele in 2002 and ratified by Dr. Stephen Cambone in 2004 when he called for the urgency of universal coverage at a neighborhood level of granularity.  The US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) refused a new defense Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) program offer from USD (I), with the result that today DoD has between $1 billion and $3 billion a year in incoherent Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) program elements, none of which perform to full potential at the same time that perhaps 70% of what we need to know and can know from OSINT is going unrealized.

Graphic: Whole of Government Intelligence

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Balance, Capabilities-Force Structure, Earth Orientation, Innovation, Leadership-Integrity, Multinational Plus, Policies-Harmonization, Political, Processing, Reform, Strategy-Holistic Coherence, Threats, Tribes
Click to Enlarge

Somebody somewhere has to do this, and do it with over 90 nations, all NGOs, and global reach into all academic and private sector organizations desiring to share information and do multilateral sense-making.

References:

2009 DoD OSINT Leadership and Staff Briefings

2009: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

Search: Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield