Reference: Open Source Agency (OSA) II

About the Idea, Articles & Chapters, Book Lists, Briefings (Core), Defense Science Board, DoD, Hill Letters & Testimony, Legislation, Memoranda, Monographs, Office of Management and Budget
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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.

The simplified public articles are three:  1995 GIQ 13/2 Creating a Smart Nation: Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information; 2002 TIME Magazine The New Craft of Intelligence and 2006 Forbes Blank Slate On Intelligence.

The back-up book, the one intended to help the Department of Defense transform itself, INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time has since been supplemented by two briefings, 2009 DoD OSINT Leadership and Staff Briefings.

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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.

This book had two pre-cursors, 2002 THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political and 2010 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace.

That book has since been supplemented by a chapter, 2010 The Ultimate Hack Re-Inventing Intelligence to Re-Engineer Earth, in the just-published book, Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence; and by two articles and a monograph from the U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, all three found at 2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated.

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.

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Continue reading “Reference: Open Source Agency (OSA) II”

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 and Full-Spectrum HUMINT (Updated)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Balance, Capabilities-Force Structure, Citizen-Centered, Collection, Languages-Translation, Leadership-Integrity, Multinational Plus, Strategy-Holistic Coherence, Threats, Tribes
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This has been updated from an earlier DIA/DH version created by Robert Steele, and is in both the DoD OSINT Staff Briefing and the new Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) monograph on Human Intelligence (HUMINT): All Humans, All Minds, All the Time.

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Search: humint spectrum full spectrum

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
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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