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Open Source Intelligence
Artifice_Eternity writes: "Time magazine is running a story highlighting the US government's neglect of open source intelligence, or OSINT. OSINT includes stuff on the Internet and in various newspapers and periodicals, as well as "gray literature" (limited-availability publications like dissertations, local phone directories, etc.). It also includes foreign-language experts, and commercial data (satellite maps, news archives, scientific research). The mass of data to be crunched indicates how intelligence is an information processing problem in today's world."
If it dosen'tome from a reputable source, why bother. We all know reputable sources are only in it for the money. Otherwise they'd be godless heathens only out for the common good. Damn communists.
Shift happens. Fire it up.
I think this is carrying the "open source" moniker a bit too far.
What we're talking about is simply publicly available information.
This guy is advocating gathering it and sifting it for useful nuggets of intelligence, a goal with which I agree."We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Remember May 7, 1999? Chinese embassy in Belgrade accidentally bombed because it was down on old maps used by US military planners as a Yugoslav government agency.
To a point I can understand that the CIA and such may not think that open public information isn't usefull but for some reason I just don't completely believe this article. As we continuously find out all the stuff our government was doing 20 or 30 years ago that no one though they were doing or was even possible the more I think we should doubt people who put such strong numbers on our govertments secret practices. Most people accept that the CIA is probably at least 10 years ahead of the times technology wise (mail for cryptographic reasons I'd assume). If these are the same people that are gathering intelegence I doubt they would be so hard nosed as to ignore anything but "relevent sources of information"
Um, you guys realize that the term "Open Source" here has absolutly nothing to do with Open Source Software, right?
I mean, it's kind of intresting, I guess. But it dosn't really have anything to do with the OSS "movement" or anything. It certanly isn't some fallout from the "revolution".
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I'm not saying that Open Source Intelligence is a bad thing; just that the gullibility index of interpreters will be a major fact into how useful it becomes.
And the intelligence agencies ignored them.
That may be because intelligence agencies have been in the business of collecting intelligence for a few hundred years. And the congressional committee has never been in the business of collecting intelligence. So maybe, and I may be grasping at straws here, but, maybe, the cia knows more about collecting intelligence than a reporter for time magazine. (audience gasps)
Before you discard my opinion, what do you think about congressional committees when they discuss the Harmful Effects of Video Games? Or the horrors of Pirated Music? Just because a few congresspersons decide the spooks don't know what they're doing doesn't mean that the congresspersons were right.
I should also note that I met somebody once whose job was to work for the CIA and search the internet. I'm sure they are using osi to the degree they feel necessary.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Robert D. Steele has been to many hacking conferences over the years. He has been a force in the movement to reform the US Intelligence Community and presents many fresh ideas.
Unlike most of the rest of the Intelligence Community, he is open to us and our views.
The term "Open Source" has had a meaning in the Intelligence field long before it came into vogue as a software development movement - RDS makes an analogy - that open intelligence sources and methods are more trustworthy (than closed sources) for the same reasons that open source programs are.
I first read the article on Sunday afternoon. It caught my attention because, like many on /., I made the right associations and tried to match "intelligence" with "open source" in the espionage sense. I was disappointed after reading 2/3 of the article, and didn't finish it. This was written by someone mostly grandstanding. The author focused too much on gathering data from all sources without giving enough thought to interpretation of those data.
I had the privilege (misfortune?) to work with a few intelligence types. When you talk to the people in the field, not to the public figures, public affairs wags, or the pundits, you will almost universally get the same two answers, rated in order of importance:
The open intelligence article advocates only points 2 and 3, and barely touches on 1. Just like in coding, where the problem is not writing code but writing code that does something useful, intelligence is all about interpreting the data so that policy and actions may be appropriately channeled.
Dr. Ray S. Cline (former deputy director, CIA; look him up) once said that the world needed fewer spies and more critical thinking (I'm paraphrasing here a bit). Everyday disasters and attacks that could have been prevented still happen because there are too many toys and budgets and bureacratic fiefdoms to protect and there aren't enough ears who understand the bad guys' language, not enough cooperation between three-letter agencies, and not enough brains focused on making sense of the data gathered through various channels.
Thus, while part of the problem is gathering data, making sense of it is what will prevent another catastrophe like the terrorist attacks last September.
Ehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
And while I agree that it's US centric, I think you are blowing that issue out of proportion. It's written for an American audience, and like I said, it makes no pretense that such projects have high-minded philisophical goals, beyond perhaps sharing some of the agglomeration of "open source intelligence" with the public or other friendly nations.
This is clearly an example of some hyper-patriot using buzzwords and buzzconcepts to expand his country's control over scant international resources (intelligence analyses) without really understanding the international environment, or indeed without really understanding the terms he's using. Open source? Not likely. Open (to him) intelligence sources, closed (to everyone else) information.
This is why US intelligence gathering has failed, obviously it is a lot easier to penetrate the US with guerrilla tactics then it is for the US to penetrate 3rd world countries with billion dollar budgets.
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est
It's rather depressing actually, to think that so many people, including prominant politicians, could believe that Canada works on a 20 hour clock, or that we're going to change the country's name to Chicago.
And raise your hand if you ever saw Jay Leno do his 'man on the street' skits? Not all of us are as daft as the media would have you think. Granted there are plenty of luddites among us, but how much footage DONT you see in that 22 minute special? My guess is they went for the dopes just like Jay does. It's more entertaining and you're more likely to watch to see just how silly some people are. (Unfortunately, that can include politicians who don't have to be smart, just charismatic.)
I was about to say "pretty fucking cool" when I realized that anyone using /. to communicate covertly would likely troll, get automodded to -1, and then communicate at low bandwidth using various ASCII penis birds as steganography.
The poor bastard probably has to read at -2 all the time.
On the other hand, it's probably a great incentive to develop steganography-detection tools and pattern-recognition software. There'd be no other way to read /. at -2 and remain sane.