Open Source Intelligence in the Twenty-First Century

The twenty-first century has seen a revolution in how publicly accès sib le, or ‘open source’, information is created, stored and disseminated. Driven by the rapid growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web, as well as the widespread adoption and advancement of mobile communication technol. ogy, the use of open sources has permeated the fields of intelligence, politics and business, to name but a few. This revolution has impacted significantly on how people acquire information, express ideas and interact with each other, both socially and professionally. Crucially, while traditional sources and channels of information have made great efforts to adapt to this new vir. tual environment and retain their presence as gatekeepers of information . many established media sources, for example, now publish large amounts of content exclusively online — the rise of user-generated content, particularly social media, has drastically transformed the information landscape. From the 500 million ‘tweets’ per day on Twitter, to the 98 million daily blog posts on Tumblr, we are now only a few keystrokes away from a potentially global audience.¹ Moreover, as these tools increase global connectivity, people seem increasingly willing to project their thoughts, opinions and observations into cyberspace. The process of information generation has been opened up to the masses and the sheer quantity of open source information now available online is staggering.

A proper analysis of the intelligence obtainable by these overt, normal and aboveboard means would supply us with over 80 percent, I should estimate, of the information required for the guid. ance of our national policy.

We are living through a revolution in how we communicate. Every month, 1.2 billion of us now use Internet sites, apps, blogs and fora to post, share and view content.¹ Loosely grouped as new, ‘social’ media, these platforms provide the means by which the Internet is increasingly being used: to par. ticipate, to create and to share information about ourselves and our friends, our likes and dislikes, movements, thoughts and transactions. The largest, Facebook, has over a billion regular users, but the linguistic, cultural and functional reach of social media is much broader, from social bookmarking to niche networks, video aggregation and social curation.² Linkedln, a spe. cialist business network, has 200 million users, the Russian-language VK net. work 190 million users and the Chinese QQ network 700 million users.³

The way that organisations use information technology (IT) has changed significantly in the past two decades. The emergence of new trends, such as social media, cloud computing (in its various guises) and the consumerisa. tion of IT, have all had profound impacts on the way in which organisations seeking greater efficiency, cost savings and new business opportunities share, manipulate and exploit information. Critically, from a cybersecurity perspec. tive, this nexus of forces has caused organisations and their employees to ]expose more information online than ever before.¹ Although much of this information is benign, some of it may constitute sensitive data which can then be exploited by increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals who use it to support their efforts to penetrate organisations’ IT systems and steal valu. able data or disrupt services. This chapter starts by summarising the recent merging of different forms of IT and how this has left organisations sus. ceptible to OSINT-supported cyber attacks. It then goes on to dissect these new threats, outlining organisational strategies for risk mitigation, before discussing emerging challenges.

Since the late 1960s, interest in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons has taken shape in ‘an international regime based on commitment to the presumption of non-proliferation’.¹ Underpinned by the 1968 Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), this collection of prin. ciples, norms, rules and processes has framed international action in the nuclear arena and nuclear proliferation has been characterised as ‘deviant behaviour’.² Consequently, determining whether a state has engaged in pro. liferation in the past, is currently engaged in proliferation or has a propensity to proliferate in the future is intrinsically challenging due to a multitude of factors. These include the high levels of secrecy and compartmentali. sation that surround nuclear weapons programmes and the difficulty in gauging the veracity of political statements regarding nuclear intentions. The ‘dual-use’ nature of much sensitive nuclear technology is also prob. lematic, providing aspiring proliférants with a means of cloaking a weapons programme with a credible civil rationale, for a time at least.³

The proliferation of unconventional weapons — nuclear, chemical and biological, and their means of delivery. to countries such as Iran and North Korea is recognised as one of most pressing international security issues today. Historically, states pursuing such programmes have benefitted from technology or assistance from outside their jurisdictions. The US nuclear programme, for example, benefitted from the expertise of émigré scientists from Europe and uranium from the Belgian Congo. In the present day, aspi. rant states do not have the advanced manufacturing or knowledge base to produce all of the required technology in sufficient quantities and qualities. Consequentially, these states have been seeking these technologies from the international marketplace.

Social networking has for the most part been greeted as a transformational breakthrough in the world of humanitarian action. Faced with a growing number of humanitarian threats and their ever more complex dimensions and dynamics, those with humanitarian roles and responsibilities increas. ingly rely on the Internet and its multiple by-products to deal not only with humanitarian crisis response but also with prevention and preparedness. Ushahidi, Twitter, Facebook, open source software and radio-in-a-box tech. nology are just some of the myriad innovations that are transforming what since the early days of the Cold War has been called open source intelligence. In the humanitarian sector, these new forms of open source communications provide hitherto unimagined opportunities to anticipate actual and poten. tial crises, to determine needs and the impact of assistance, and to identify and support creative measures for a range of humanitarian activities.

Humanitarian crises may arise from natural disasters, such as droughts, floods and earthquakes, or they may be caused or exacerbated by human beings through armed conflict. The latter are often referred to as ‘complex emergencies’. These emergencies call for holistic international responses that need to be coordinated across the variety of humanitarian and military actors. The responses require a great deal of information, situational aware. ness and occasionally secret intelligence. But the information contained in open sources usually provides ample basis for those organisations seeking to respond positively to these crises.

‘Helicopter hovering over Abbottabad at lam (is a rare event)’, tweeted Sohaib Athar on 2 May 2011. Other tweets quickly followed: the helicopters (he quickly realised there were more than one) were non-Pakistani, there was a window-shaking explosion, a ‘gun fight’, a crash and an army cor. don.¹ Athar was live tweeting an operation that had been planned and executed in the darkest depths of secrecy: the US SEAL raid on the home of Osama bin Laden. It was Twitter’s CNN moment — the emergence of a new and significant channel for people to report on, and learn about, important events.²

In 2012, 11,098 people were killed in terrorist attacks worldwide.² In 2011, terrorist violence left 12,533 dead.³ Since 2008, nearly 70,000 have died as victims of terrorism, and more than twice that many have been wounded.⁴ To be sure, it is not the sole threat to global security, but terrorism remains among the most intransigent of such challenges, in part because of the mag. nitude of these casualty figures, but equally because of the secretive nature of its perpetrators and its consequent unpredictability. While the ideological motivations underpinning acts of terrorism are diverse, jihadists pose the most visible and most geographically extensive threat. As such, and despite the emergence and evolution of other challenges, jihadist terrorism remains a top priority of government security institutions.⁵

In the Introduction we used the example of the recent chemical weapons attacks in Syria to illustrate the uses and value of OSINT. We found the reliance of major world powers on open sources — video, social media and journalistic reports, among others — to support their intelligence assessments in Syria striking, if not particularly surprising. For as the various chapters making up this volume have shown, the expansion of the Internet and the information revolution that this has provoked, combined with the emer. gence of new approaches and methodologies, mean that there are now relatively few areas that open source research cannot penetrate.