How Open Source Intelligence affects, alters, challenges foreign policy
The common sentiment in the American press—even in some academic analysis of international relations—is a variance of the phrase that still seems to be referenced ad-nauseum, that 9/11 changed everything. What was used as perhaps the quickest explanation of why the US was fighting a vague enemy in two wars, one admittedly as a result of faulty or “bad” intelligence, was that “everything changed after 9/11”. Notably, this was the narrative that appeared in ubiquitous fashion in every feverous op-ed or global security analysis well after the attacks.
Many things happened after that infamous day. A refreshed era of American ‘exceptionalism’ ushered in the doctrines of preventative war, a new justification for global military dominance, and an expressed need for a heightened security, exercised by exhaustive measures to gather intelligence via traditional and non-traditional methods.
But what changed, even before the 9/11 attacks ever happened—perhaps even regardless of those attacks—was the exponential growth of digital communication born from the simple computer network.
As access to the internet grew globally, global communication inevitably followed with it. Most fascinating is that this globalization of communication occurred—and is still occurring—in a virtual space. The digital age of information has taken humankind down a fascinating road. Not only can internet users chat with people in remote areas of the planet, manage their finances over interstate networks, or participate in virtual college courses, interested governments and businesses alike can now use this same platform to mine, gather, and obtain various levels of information, or digital intelligence. This type of intelligence is typically referred to as Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), but it is a type of intelligence no longer exclusive to state governments.
A 2008 report by the Congressional Research Service described OSINT as intelligence and information as of which is:
[D]erived from newspapers, journals, radio and television, and the internet. Intelligence analysts have long used such information to supplement classified data, but systematically collecting open source information has not been a priority of the U.S. Intelligence Community. In recent years, given changes in the international environment, there have been calls, from Congress and the 9/11 Commission among others, for a more intense and focused investment in open source collection and analysis. However, some still emphasize that the primary business of intelligence continues to be obtaining and analyzing secrets. A consensus now exists that OSINT must be systematically collected and should constitute an essential component of analytical products.
Private corporations, NGOs, journalists, publishers (see: WikiLeaks), hobbyists, and travelers alike all share a new tap into the stream of information that was once exclusively owned and operated by the state. And that is significant. It means that the state as we have come to know it, insofar as intelligence gathering and analysis is concerned, has weakened and allowed other actors to participate alongside itself, or—and perhaps more plausibly— that because so much information is available now, the state never had a chance to monopolize it in the first place. In other words, as the state was the primary investor into the technology that would create the information super highway, the state unknowingly placed itself into a world in which it was forced to utilize andshare that very platform with a host of other actors in the pursuit intelligence gathering and information consumption. And that means the state is competing, for better or worse, with other non-state actors in the game of intelligence data mining—ultimately digital information management sensitive to national security.
So why is this important? The very existence of OSINT means that any interested government, specifically those that currently hold political and economic influence on a regional or global scale—hegemons—are now forced to get in the game of data management and governance in pursuit of its own regional or global interests.
And this is tricky, especially when non-state actors have the ability to obtain information once exclusively owned by nation-states. WikiLeaks showed the world how easy it is to leak highly sensitive information, the contents of which can be argued as a form of leaked, publicized OSINT. Even at the lowest level, bureaucrats and investors alike can seek out, deduce and extrapolate information found in small circulation newspapers in any country in which an interest exists. In fact, because so much information is so widely available, some argue that the vast majority of the intelligence gathered by mandated state departments like the US Central Intelligence Agency or Britain’s MI5 is done so via OSINT.
Robert David Steele, former clandestine services case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, has stated in various speeches and publications just how widespread open sourced intelligence is:
“The Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today a Command) discovered that 80% or more of what it needed to do policy, acquisition, and operations intelligence support was not secret, not in English, not online, and not known to anyone in Washington, D.C. That is still true today [July 2007]. OSINT changes the rules of the game by making everyone in the audience a player with a legitimate right to collect, produce, and consume public intelligence […] Today, U.S. ‘intelligence’ is upside down and inside out. It is upside down because it relies on satellites in outer space rather than human eyes on the ground. It is inside out because it tries to divine intelligence unilaterally, without first asking anyone else what information they might provide.”
The redistribution of information that occurs online means that the hard data, information, stories, narratives, even rumors become a part of intelligence that is now digital and that must be managed if any entity, public of private, seeks to maintain power, seek an opportunity, or find an advantage. A 2008 report by the Swiss Institute of Technology’s Center for Security Studies described the parallels between OSINT stuffs now available online:
The evolution of the internet and the emergence of the collaborative web have alerted security actors to the potential of new tools and technologies for collecting, analyzing, and distributing knowledge on global affairs. The proliferation of websites, portals, wikis, and blogs has opened a world of information hitherto unavailable to most intelligence professionals. Google Earth provides more geospatial intelligence than was available to most governments less than a decade ago. Even services such as Wikipedia are increasingly cited as intelligence sources. There is also a growing market for commercial intelligence vendors offering products and services previously restricted to the public sector. Thanks to the information revolution, the traditional intelligence community no longer has a monopoly on the skills or information needed to understand, analyze, or address today’s security threats.
The global acknowledgement of OSINT as a resource occurred after the fall the Soviet Union. While typically still used as a resource by governments and some journalists, it was not until the (perception of) the decentralization of an external threat that helped thrust OSINT into much more effective use.
According to the Center for Security Studies, “During the Cold War, intelligence services were pre-occupied with a limited number of largely state-centric challenges. Discovering the intentions and capabilities of the Soviet Union was the primary task of the Western intelligence community. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, these threats have multiplied and become more diverse in terms of their agents and nature.”
So did 9/11 change everything? Indeed, it helped place OSINT on the agenda of many governments around the globe. As more information became available, governments and non-governments the world over used OSINT as a resource to predict or shape policies in terms of where they found themselves influenced (or influencing) regionally.
How OSINT has altered or even challenged the foreign policy of states is much more precarious. When data is leaked or released for public consumption and is perceived by the state as a threat to national security (again, WikiLeaks provides a good example here), unofficial policy has a higher chance of undergoing alteration. Because of OSINT, public relations material and an array of damage control resources are kept close by in case especially damaging information about the state is released, uncovered or leaked.
Now that the global political game is now being played in the Age of (Digital) Information, the state is forced to take on a heightened responsibility to manage data—to manage its secrets, non-secrets, and absorb the shock against damaging classified and secret information that later becomes leaked and published (and thereby corroborating and legitimizing correct OSINT analyses). This is a significant first for humankind, and will undoubtedly spin off several national (even global) debates about information security and protection, digital privacy rights, and the overall interlinking between data management and political governance.
