YOU did OSINT for 12 years
thank you santa: You are the most rare "OSINTithus" very rare breed of suspect authenticity. We really have OSINT guys? Ok that is both scary and hopeful at the same time. Hopeful because we maynot be as far behind as I thought. Scary concept! You read OSINT and did what? Our OSINT CAPABILITIES are awesome, impresses me continually. We have been active for 1 1/2 yrs. But we treat the "Trooper" like an infant baby. We outline his areas of Interest, names, concepts, an open feed he can change/adjust at will. We feed him a steady diet 24/7 of things of INTEREST to him. A big steady vacuume of the Internet, sites, RSS, news, blogs, forums, docs, pdfs, etc. We make him the expert on real time OSINT intel, in his area, on a very pragmatic level. And they chose and run the ops etc. The end user directs the feed, amount, quality, targets, definitions, etc. We have developed a new concept, "Paradigm Intelligence", a very fancy inductive reasoning system. We have found we can pull data from a closed cell with it, it is anthropology based, as it looks more at actions and less at words. I hope to get some sense of what you DID. Thanks Bill
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Stan
Humint, we used to call it globally. That included OSINT, but only a tinny part of HUMINT....can't hardly wait for Tom to log-on with his two cents.
OSINT, more or less what the more than 250 ARMY NCOs and Officers did for years (that would be 12 for me). Some were freebies at the local cocktail curcuits, others you had to work for.
Without a suitable background and language, you're up against a difficult task. Written press has its own slang, and context can get way outta hand if you have no idea what they are saying.
45 weeks in California does not get you there. Reading open source materials is one thing, but did you understand the overall context from say, an African's point of view ?
Regards, Stan
DHS OSINT Sources for 2010 Olympics Security
Mod Squad: If this belongs elsewhere, feel free to move w/my thanks for your patience.
DHS has issued a Privacy Impact Assessment (PDF at DHS site - PDF at Scribd.com) highlighting some of the web sites they'll be monitoring to assess threats to the 2010 Olympics.
In spite of my bitterness at not making it into the Appendix ;), I've developed a page with their selected list o' links here.
OPSEC, Open Source & the Black Budget
An excellent example of how astute observers can take the innocuous and start piecing together puzzles.
Quote:
It is, according to a new book, part of the hidden reality behind the Pentagon’s classified, or “black,” budget that delivers billions of dollars to stealthy armies of high-tech warriors. The book offers a glimpse of this dark world through a revealing lens — patches — the kind worn on military uniforms.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/sc...prod=permalink
Then again, when the media gets it wrong, they really get it wrong -
http://trekmovie.com/2011/05/06/gema...laden-mission/
Exploiting open sources: an example
Leah Farrell's blog consistently provides insight, aided by being Australian too and from a police background:http://allthingscounterterrorism.com/
A few weeks ago she posted a series of photos, obtained from a jihadi website, on an IMU training camp in Pakistan:http://allthingscounterterrorism.com...an-apparently/
After some input and open source research she's posted an update:http://allthingscounterterrorism.com...ing-camp-pics/
The IMU crop up irregularly, especially due to their German links and maybe there is nothing of note here. It is IMHO an example of what can be done from open sources.
OSINT: To Defeat Terrorists, Start Using the Library
To Defeat Terrorists, Start Using the Library, by Scott Helfstein. Bloomberg, Aug 30, 2011.
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The information glut that marks the 21st century is evidenced in some unexpected places. Last month, my organization, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point,
released a report that sharply disputed conventional wisdom about terrorism along the Afghanistan-Pakistani frontier.
The report argued that the Haqqani Network, a border- spanning tribal group with deep ties to Pakistan’s government, had been more influential than the Taliban in aiding al-Qaeda’s rise.
How did we support this thesis, which has vast implications for reconciliation efforts in the region as well as for the distribution of U.S. military aid? Not with data culled from clandestine operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas or from Osama bin Laden’s computer hard drive. The report was based on the public statements and writings of individual extremists over the past 30 years. Rather than ferreting out secret information, researchers merely took extremists at their voluminous word.
It seems terrorists, too, are susceptible to the syndrome known as Too Much Information.