Quote Originally Posted by Abu Suleyman View Post
But plenty of people seem to believe that while two wrongs don't make a right, enough UNCLASS data compiled together can make a SECRET document, and that just strikes me as crazy.
It depends very much on who is doing it, for whom. Obviously, a private citizen pulling together an analysis from unclassified material and OSINT doesn't justify the subsequent classification of that material. If they are a former government employee it doesn't either, unless perhaps their open source analysis reveals awareness of something very sensitive (through its framing or assumptions) that they were exposed to in classified form before.

If open source collection and analysis is done in official capacity, or under contract, it is a very different thing--even if the material is open source, the fact that the government is interested in having it compiled, the conclusions that were drawn, the apparent purposes to which it might be put, and the political/foreign policy implications of disclosure might all be enormously sensitive.

I've often had contract work based on OSINT classified, and for good reason.