Open Source Intelligence (OSINT): merged thread

[Jedburgh]

...The growing military appreciation of open source intelligence arises from the ever-increasing quality of public sources and the evident limitations of traditional classified approaches...

The new OSINT FM is only the latest in the evolution of the military approach to OSINT. Within the US Army we've had the INSCOM OSINT Handbook, published in May 03, and the Joint Military Intelligence Training Center Open Source Exploitation: A Guide for Intelligence Analysts, published in Apr 04 (this is the second edition, I never saw the first). Both had relatively limited distribution.

As far as I know, NATO was ahead of the game with a formal manual published in Nov 01, the NATO OSINT Handbook and the NATO OSINT Reader, published in Feb 02.

For those with AKO access, the OSINT Knowledge Center contains copies of the presentations from a number of intelligence assets and their approaches to OSINT as put out during a series of OSINT conferences held in 05 and 06.