Media, print , magazines, radio, and television from across and between countries.

newspapers

, online publications, blogs, discussion groups, citizen media (i.e. – cell phone videos, and user created content), YouTube, and other social media websites (i.e. – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.). This source also outpaces a variety of other sources due to its timeliness and ease of access.

Internet

Public government data, public government reports, budgets, hearings, , press conferences, websites, and speeches. Although this source comes from an official source they are publicly accessible and may be used openly and freely.

telephone directories

Professional and academic publications, information acquired from , conferences, symposia, academic papers, dissertations, and theses.

journals

Commercial data, , financial and industrial assessments, and databases.

commercial imagery

, technical reports, preprints, patents, working papers, business documents, unpublished works, and newsletters.

Grey literature

Open-source intelligence

Open source intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of data gathered from open sources (covert sources and publicly available information; PAI) to produce actionable intelligence. OSINT is primarily used in national security, law enforcement, and business intelligence functions and is of value to analysts who use non-sensitive intelligence in answering classified, unclassified, or proprietary intelligence requirements across the previous intelligence disciplines.^[1]

OSINT sources can be divided up into six different categories of information flow:^[2]

OSINT is distinguished from research in that it applies the process of intelligence to create tailored knowledge supportive of a specific decision by a specific individual or group.^[3]

Definition[edit]

OSINT is defined in the United States of America by Public Law 109-163 as cited by both the U.S. Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), as intelligence "produced from publicly available information that is collected, exploited, and disseminated in a timely manner to an appropriate audience for the purpose of addressing a specific intelligence requirement."^[5] As defined by NATO, OSINT is intelligence "derived from publicly available information, as well as other unclassified information that has limited public distribution or access."^[6]

According to political scientist Jeffrey T. Richelson, “open source acquisition involves procuring verbal, written, or electronically transmitted material that can be obtained legally. In addition to documents and videos available via the Internet or provided by a human source, others are obtained after U.S. or allied forces have taken control of a facility or site formerly operated by a foreign government or terrorist group.”^[7]

Former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis Mark M. Lowenthal defines OSINT as “any and all information that can be derived from overt collection: all types of media, government reports and other documents, scientific research and reports, commercial vendors of information, the Internet, and so on. The main qualifiers to open-source information are that it does not require any type of clandestine collection techniques to obtain it and that it must be obtained through means that entirely meet the copyright and commercial requirements of the vendors where applicable."^[8]

Risks for practitioners[edit]

A main hindrance to practical OSINT is the volume of information it has to deal with ("information explosion"). The amount of data being distributed increases at a rate that it becomes difficult to evaluate sources in intelligence analysis. To a small degree the work has sometimes been done by amateur crowd-sourcing.^[23]

Accredited journalists have some protection in asking questions, and researching for recognized media outlets. Even so, they can be imprisoned, even executed, for seeking out OSINT. Private individuals illegally collecting data for a foreign military or intelligence agency is considered espionage in most countries. Of course, espionage that is not treason (e.g. betraying one's country of citizenship) has been a tool of statecraft since ancient times.^[24]

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Intelligence, which is acquired from viewing or observing a subjects online social profile activity.

Social Media

data mining or scraping.

Search engine

checking.

Public records

Information matching and verification from services.

data broker

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Professional association[edit]

The OSINT Foundation is a professional association for OSINT practitioners in the United States Intelligence Community.^[25] It is open to U.S. Citizens and seeks to raise the prominence of the open-source intelligence discipline.^[26]

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Collecting open-source intelligence is achieved in a variety of different ways,^[4] such as:

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Washington Times – CIA mines 'rich' content from blogs, 19 April 2006

WashTimes.com

Government Computer News – Intelligence units mine the benefits of public sources 20 March 2006

GCN.com

Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin October–December, 2005 by Barbara G. Fast

FindAcricles.com

Congressional Testimony on OSINT and Homeland Security 21 June 2005

FAS.org

When Everyone Can Mine Your Data by Taylor Buley, 11.21.08]

Forbes.com

Thompson, Clive (2006-12-03). . The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-05-29.

"Open-Source Spying"

. RIS Open Source Intelligence. 2018-05-29. Retrieved 2018-05-29.

"Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)"

. intellnet.org. 2008-05-09. Archived from the original on 2008-05-09. Retrieved 2018-05-29.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)

"The Intelligence Network : I n t r o d u c t i o n"

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Florian Schaurer, Jan Störger: 'The Evolution of Open Source Intelligence', OSINT Report 3/2010, ISN, ETH Zürich, October 2010

Abdelrahman Rashdan: 'The Social Media OSINT Challenge to US Intelligence: Culture Not Gigabytes', in New Media Politics Rethinking Activism and National Security in Cyberspace. Ed. Banu Baybars-Hawks. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015

Hassan, Nihad A. (30 June 2018). . Hijazi, Rami. [United States]. ISBN 978-1-4842-3213-2. OCLC 1043830928.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

Open source intelligence methods and tools : a practical guide to online intelligence

Kamal, Mohamed, ( 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4672751

Legal Implications of AI-Driven OSINT: Insider Threats and Data Leaks in Egypt and the European Union

The Open Source Intelligence Resource Discovery Toolkit

The New Craft of Intelligence: Making the Most of Open Private Sector Knowledge

Actual Intelligence Case Studies Leveraging Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)

Sailing the Sea of OSINT in the Information Age

Congressional Research Service, December 5, 2007

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT): Issues for Congress

Congressional Research Service, January 28, 2008

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT): Issues for Congress

FMSO-JRIC and Open Source Intelligence: speaking prose in a world of verse, Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, Oct–Dec, 2005 by Jacob W. Kipp

The Free Library

Deneuville, A., Hernández López, G. & Rasmi, J. (Eds.) 'Contre-enquêtes en sources ouvertes'. Multitudes, 89, 2022.

Arthur S. Hulnick: '', pages 229–241, The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence, 2010

The Dilemma of Open Source Intelligence: Is OSINT Really Intelligence?

Archived 2016-08-17 at the Wayback Machine

Cody Burke: 'Freeing knowledge, telling secrets: Open source intelligence and development', Bond University, May 2007

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