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Authors: Mark M. Lowenthal

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The major advantage of OSINT is its accessibility, although it still requires collection. OSINT needs less processing and exploitation than the technical INTs or HUMINT, but it still requires some P&E. Given the diversity of OSINT, it may be more difficult to manipulate for the purpose of deception than are other INTs. OSINT is also useful for helping put the secret information into a wider context, which can be extremely valuable. DNI McConnell has referred to OSINT as the starting point for collection, as have others before him—in other words, looking for the needed intelligence in open sources first before tasking classified collection sources, either technical or human. Putting this seemingly obvious plan into practice has proven difficult over the years for a number of reasons, including preferences within the intelligence community and among policy makers for classified sources and the difficulty that the intelligence community’s open source activity has had in keeping pace with the explosion of open sources.
The main disadvantage of OSINT is its volume. In many ways, it represents the worst wheat and chaff problem. Some argue that the so-called information revolution has made OSINT more difficult without a corresponding increase in usable intelligence. Computers have increased the ability to manipulate information; however, the amount of derived intelligence has not increased apace.
The OSINT phenomenon
echo
is the effect of a single media story being picked up and repeated by other media sources until the story takes on a much larger life of its own, appearing more important than it actually is. Echo is difficult to deal with unless one is aware of the original story and can therefore knowingly discount its effect.
Popular misconceptions about OSINT persist, even within the intelligence community. OSINT is not free. Buying print media costs the intelligence community money, as do various other services that are useful—if not essential—in helping analysts manage, sort, and sift large amounts of data more efficiently. Another misconception is that the Internet or, more properly, the Worldwide Web, is the main fount of OSINT. Experienced intelligence practitioners have discovered that the Internet—meaning searches among various sites—yields no more than 3 to 5 percent of the total OSINT take. That is why practitioners spend much time on what is called the “Deep Web,” meaning that much larger portion of the Web that has not been indexed by search engines. Some experts estimate that the Deep Web is roughly some 500 times bigger than the easily accessible Web.
Even though OSINT has always been used, it remains undervalued by significant segments of the intelligence community. This attitude derives from the fact that the intelligence community was created to discover secrets. If OSINT could largely meet the United States’ national security needs, the intelligence community would look very different. Some intelligence professionals have mistakenly equated the degree of difficulty involved in obtaining information with its ultimate value to analysts and policy makers. Contributing to this pervasive bias is that OSINT has always been handled differently by the intelligence community. All of the other INTs have dedicated collectors, processors, and exploiters. With the exception of the DNI’s Open Source Center (formerly the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, FBIS), which monitors foreign media broadcasts, OSINT does not have dedicated collectors, processors, and exploiters. Instead, analysts are largely expected to act as their own OSINT collectors, a concept that other INTs would consider ludicrous. This is unfortunate, because OSINT is the perfect place to start any intelligence collection. By first determining what material is available from open sources, intelligence managers could focus their clandestine collectors on those issues for which such means were needed. Properly used, OSINT could be a good intelligence collection resource manager. The 2004 intelligence law mandates that the DNI must decide how he or she wishes to deal with OSINT, either by creating a dedicated OSINT center or by some other means. The WMD Commission (the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction) recommended that the CIA create an Open Source Directorate. President George W. Bush endorsed this recommendation and left its implementation to the DNI. DNI Negroponte designated FBIS as the Open Source Center and made the CIA his executive agent (i.e., operating office) to run it. Some felt that little had changed other than renaming FBIS, which had been a CIA office. Its designation as a DNI office did not result in added leverage. The situation was further confused by the creation of an assistant deputy DNI (ADDNI) for open source under the deputy DNI for collection. This ADDNI is responsible for open-source policy but does not control any open-source assets or agencies, including the Open Source Center. The ADDNI/Open Source seeks to create a National Open Source Enterprise that will, among other things, emphasize professional training and certification in the skills required to conduct open-source intelligence, which would be a major step forward.
The 1999 Kosovo air war produced a new OSINT stream. Individuals in Serbia who said they were opposed to the Slobodan Milosevic government sent e-mails to intelligence firms in the United States, giving reports on the relative success of NATO air strikes, the mood in Belgrade, and related matters. Dealing with such reports is problematic as no assured means exists of authenticating them. The most reliable reports would come from known and trusted sources, probably based on past reporting. Establishing an independent capability to accomplish this may not be possible during hostilities. Some sources may prove to be reliable over time. But one has to be on guard for the possibility, if not the likelihood, of at least some level of disinformation from the targeted regime. In the case of Kosovo, at least some of the sources proved to be reliable, thus establishing a new OSINT stream.
CONCLUSION
 
Each collection discipline is made up of several distinct types of sources (see Figure 5-1) and each offers unique advantages that are well suited to some types of intelligence requirements but brings with it certain disadvantages as well (see Table 5-1). By deploying a broad and varied array of collection techniques, the United States derives two advantages. First, it is able to exploit the advantages of each type of INT, which, ideally, will compensate for the shortcomings of the others. Second, it is able to apply more than one collection INT to an issue, which enhances the likelihood of meeting the collection requirements for that issue. However, the intelligence community cannot provide answers to every question that is asked, nor does it have the capability to meet all possible requirements at any given time. The collection system is simultaneously powerful and limited.
 
Figure 5-1
Intelligence Collection: The Composition of the INTs
 
 
Table 5-1
A Comparison of the Collection Disciplines
 
The cost of collection was rarely an issue during the cold war because of the broad political agreement on the need to stay informed about the Soviet threat. In the post-cold war world, prior to the September 2001 attacks, the absence of any overwhelming strategic threat made the cost of collection systems more difficult to justify. As a result, some people questioned whether a need existed for the level of collection capability that the United States maintained during the cold war. Prior to the terrorist attacks, the United States experienced greatly diminished threats to its national security but faced ongoing concerns that are more diverse and diffuse than was the largely unitary Soviet problem, raising new collection challenges. As horrific as the September 2001 attacks were, terrorism still does not pose the same potentially overwhelming threat to the existence of the United States as did a hostile nuclear-armed Soviet missile force. Ultimately, no yardstick can measure national security problems against a collection array to determine how much collection is enough. For the near future, collection requirements likely will continue to outrun collection capabilities.
KEY TERMS
 
agent acquisition cycle
all-source intelligence
ASAT (antisatellite)
asset validation system
automatic change extraction
collection disciplines
content analysis
cryptographers
dangles
deception
denial
denied areas
denied targets
developmental
echo
encrypt
espionage
foreign liaison
geosynchronous orbit
indication and warning
key-word search
negation search
noise versus signals
non-official cover
official cover
pitch
resolution
risk versus take
shutter control
source
sources and methods
spies
sub-sources
sun-synchronous orbits
swarm ball
traffic analysis
walk-ins
wheat versus chaff
FURTHER READINGS
 
For ease of use, these readings are grouped by activity. Although there are numerous books by spies and about spying, few of them have good discussions of the craft of espionage and the role it plays, as opposed to its supposed derring-do aspects.
General Sources on Collection
 
Best, Richard A., Jr.
Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Programs: Issues for Congress.
Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, updated August 24, 2004.
Burrows, William.
Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security.
New York: Random House, 1986. Wohlstetter, Roberta.
Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962.
Espionage
 
Burgstaller, Eugen F. “Human Collection Requirements in the 1980’s.” In
Intelligence Requirements for the 1980’s: Clandestine Collection.
Ed. Roy F. Godson. Washington, D.C.: National Strategy Information Center. 1982.
Hitz, Frederick P. “The Future of American Espionage.”
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
13 (spring 2000): 1-20.
—. The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage.
New York: Alfred Knopf, 2004.
Hulnick, Arthur S. “Intelligence Cooperation in the Post-Cold War Era: A New Game Plan?”
International Journal of lntelligence and Counterintelligence
5 (winter 1991-1992): 455-465.
Phillips, David Atlee.
Careers in Secret Operations: How to Be a Federal Intelligence Officer.
Frederick, Md.: Stone Trail Press, 1984.
Wirtz. James J. “Constraints on Intelligence Collaboration: The Domestic Dimension.”
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence,
6 (spring 1993): 85-89.
Imagery
 
Baker, John C., Kevin O’Connell, and Ray A. Williamson, eds.
Commercial Observation Satellites: At
the
Leading Edge of Transparency.
Washington, D.C.: RAND Corporation, 2001.
BOOK: Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy
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