Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies

Digital Open Source Intelligence and International Security:: A Primer

Author(s): H. Akın Ünver
Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (2018)

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

July 2018

Digital Open Source Intelligence and

International Security: A Primer
H. Akın Ünver | EDAM, Oxford CTGA & Kadir Has University

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

Digital Open Source Intelligence and

International Security: A Primer
H. Akın Ünver | EDAM, Oxford CTGA & Kadir Has Üniversitesi

Intelligence is a key and continually changing practice The traditional understanding of intelligence is the
of statecraft. While this practice has historically been methodical collection of high-value information in a way
dominated by the states, merchants, and the clergy, late-20th that yields comparative advantage to decision makers.2
century has witnessed the privatization of intelligence and Such information can be on a foreign country’s capabilities,
surveillance equipment and broadening of the concept of general global events, or a country’s domestic affairs.
intelligence. Today, Internet, social media, smartphones and While most people tend to equate intelligence with military
data analytics have all contributed to the greater exposure or security affairs, this is a very narrow definition that omits
and dissemination of critical information about emergencies the value of intelligence in trade, finance, culture and
and crisis events, thereby contributing to the faster travelling educational affairs to render longer-term advantage during
of news, secrets and leaks. Broadly speaking, intelligence is peace time. Although this traditional definition of intelligence
the practice of methodical collection and analysis of critical didn’t become obsolete, it was broadened through the
information for the purposes of security, or advantage. advances in technology and more importantly, through the
Although used synonymously with espionage, or covert wide availability of such technology to wider audiences.3
operations, intelligence is mostly focused on the methodical Through history, mastery of intelligence required mastery of
collection, processing and analysis of information that is both technology and the study of human behavior, both of
available and ‘out there’, rather than using clandestine which eventually rendered intelligence as a force multiplier
methods to gain such information through stealing. This drive of other functions (military, political, economic). In addition
towards the collection of more and better information has to its traditional function of enabling less miscalculated
been the founding block of national security, well-evidenced decisions, the audience of modern intelligence is growing
in successive political treatises of statecraft, since the oft- beyond state or corporation leadership, and is expanding
quoted 13 chapter of the Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’ - The Use of
th
to the public. It is no longer a mere warning mechanism, but
Spies: ‘Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good also a know-how reservoir and improvisation pool to resolve
general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond matters in times of unexpected crises.4
the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.’1

1 Sun Tzu, The Art Of War (Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 2005), 92
2 Loch K. Johnson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence (Oxford University Press, 2010), 4.
3 Johnson, 229.
4 Robert Dover, Michael S. Goodman, and Claudia Hillebrand, eds., Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies (Routledge, 2013), 51

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

Despite being one of the most exciting fields of inquiry in delivery of digital intelligence. In intelligence types that deal
diplomacy, security and politics, the study of intelligence with digital data - imagery, audio, text - transmission requires
has consistently been difficult due to the secretive high levels of encryption and decryption to secure storage
nature of the practice. Methodical information collection, and transfers of such data. Third is awareness, which implies
establishment and maintenance of collection networks and the intelligence community’s understanding of the decision-
a reliable ‘information pipeline’ have been some of the most makers’ needs and decision-makers’ understanding of
crucial areas of security, without a matching scientific and the value of intelligence in key decision environments. In
scholarly rigor.5 This was mostly due to the unavailability organizational cultures where the priorities of the intelligence
of historical intelligence records, or study data beyond community and the decision-making cohort are mismatched,
a narrow intelligence community. However, the field has or the political leadership doesn’t trust the intelligence
gradually opened to civilian scholarly expertise mainly in community, the awareness component is jeopardized,
the United States, towards the end of the Cold War. This preventing efficient processing and transmission of key
owed largely to the 1980s declassification of World War 2 intelligence in crisis scenarios. Finally, agencies have to
intelligence files in the US and the UK, the most significant have the ability of ‘selective deception’, where it can reliably
of which belonged to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) mislead competitors into wrong or missing information. This
and British signals intelligence files. Previously only able to
6
is necessary to retain comparative advantage against other
work with a small collection of cleared documents, civilian intelligence competitors, by consistently distracting them
intelligence scholars now had a far larger data pool to into wasting resources and time on the ground.7
work with. With this data availability came some of the first
theories on the changing function of intelligence in national Intelligence also varies across cultures, since countries
security and how it could adapt to changing technologies have different threat perception, information seeking and
and communication methods. secrecy processing dynamics. To that end, intelligence
should not be thought of as a monolithic and standard
Broadly speaking, intelligence implies four main processes. practice; rather, there are politically and culturally contingent
The first is collection; primarily, a state’s capacity to reach, ways of maximising decision-making advantage using a
sort and collect meaningful, high-value information related multitude of information gathering mechanisms. A primary
to security and/or comparative policy advantage. While determinant of intelligence culture is regime type,8 where
historically, intelligence collection capacity overwhelmingly democracies, hybrid states and authoritarian governments
required a wide human reach and physical access process and manage information through different
network, with 20th century, it also began to heavily include bureaucratic mechanisms, as well as legal and legislative
technological capacity and continuous adaptation to oversight mechanisms.9 In addition, democratic intelligence
technical advances in communication and informatics. services tend to have greater autonomy compared to those
The second process is transmission, which involves the of authoritarian states, and also tend to have a more merit-
establishment and diversification of reliable channels of based recruitment and promotion scheme, allowing such
critical information flows from the target area, back to the agencies to act with greater legitimacy and a more diverse
intelligence core and from there, across domestic security skillset against a multitude of threats. Strong oversight
institutions. Intelligence transmission requires both a highly mechanisms also tend to minimize corruption, resource
qualified human trust network that forms an information waste and mismanagement – allowing democratically-
extraction and delivery chain from the ground to the agency, checked intelligence agencies to enjoy greater political
as well as digital transmission structures that enable a fast legitimacy domestically.10 Furthermore, authoritarian

5 Dover, Goodman, and Hillebrand, 71.

6 Dover, Goodman, and Hillebrand, 88.
7 Dover, Goodman, and Hillebrand, 71–83; Johnson, The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence, 113–19.
8 Montgomery McFate, “The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture” (Arlington, VA: DTIC, Office of Naval Research, January 2005),
http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA479862.
9 Philip H. J. Davies, “Intelligence Culture and Intelligence Failure in Britain and the United States,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17, no. 3 (October 1, 2004):
495–520, https://doi.org/10.1080/0955757042000298188.
10 Mikael Wigell, “Mapping ‘Hybrid Regimes’: Regime Types and Concepts in Comparative Politics,” Democratization 15, no. 2 (April 1, 2008): 230–50,
https://doi.org/10.1080/13510340701846319.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

states tend to inflate domestic and foreign threats, forcing across a wider territorial space, usually in the current states
wasteful intelligence agencies to spread too thin across of their former imperial territories.12 Finally, proximity to active
multiple, obscure information fronts. Another determinant is conflict is crucial. States that are fighting, or adjacent to an
institutional history and culture. The intelligence practices
11
active ongoing domestic conflict, operate on a different
and territorial awareness of post-imperial states (i.e. states institutional culture compared to states that don’t. Most
that were once at the core of a former empire) and those that organizational and bureaucratic models of intelligence differ
aren’t, are markedly different. Inheriting a longer tradition according to the country’s engagement with active or frozen
of intelligence, such post-imperial states tend to operate conflicts, and/or participation in foreign peace operations.

Intelligence disciplines are roughly divided into

six primary schools:
HUMINT (human intelligence): As the oldest (and up until ranging (LIDAR) and surveillance aircraft. GEOINT provides
late-19th century, the only) school in intelligence, HUMINT static, or time-frequency image analysis to track and monitor
makes up the bulk of intelligence in history. Roughly, it relies human activity on a selected geographical area, as well as
on verbal and non-verbal communicative relations, networks resources and sub-terrain conditions. Although geospatial
and interactions between, or concerning individuals data was previously at the intersection of MASINT and
of political, military, economic or cultural importance. SIGINT, the availability of dedicated geospatial tools has led
Psychology, cognitive mapping, sociology, anthropology to the creation of the National Geospatial Agency (NGA).
and humanities are some of the key tools of the HUMINT Today, commercially available high-resolution imagery
community to understand, extract and contextualize critical provided by companies such as Planet Labs, Terra Bella,
security events and processes in foreign countries. Not only BlackSky Global, Orthecast or XpressSAR, have all enabled
ambassadors, military attaches or state officials, but also businesses, aid agencies, and a range of non-state actors
traders, tourists and students have also served as a cultural to acquire GEOINT capabilities.14
and national exchange points of HUMINT throughout
history. HUMINT is also by no means at the monopoly of MASINT (measurement and signature intelligence):
states. Private companies, banks, research laboratories and An umbrella term for a wide array of high-technology
technology firms too, engage in regular HUMINT operations detection tools to measure acoustic, radio frequency,
(covert or overt) to achieve financial or scientific/technical radiation, chemical/biological, spectroscopic and infrared
advantage against their rivals. 13
signature, MASINT is focused on collecting metric,
angular, spatial and modular data through remote-sensing
GEOINT (geospatial intelligence): Although aspects methods. Prior to 1991, most MASINT systems contained
of geography (weather, terrain, waterways) have always embedded templates and libraries of signatures to help
been important variables in intelligence analysis, GEOINT human-assisted automated detection. Today, with the help
has specifically benefited from the advent of real-time of artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data
(or close enough) aerial imagery provided by satellites, libraries of signature detection, most MASINT systems have
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), light detection and grown autonomous to conduct live surveillance without the

11 Jessica L. Weeks, “Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling Resolve,” International Organization 62, no. 1 (January 2008): 35–64,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818308080028.
12 Jeffrey W. Legro, “Culture and Preferences in the International Cooperation Two-Step,” American Political Science Review 90, no. 1 (March 1996): 118–37,
https://doi.org/10.2307/2082802.
13 Jacqueline R. Evans et al., “Criminal versus HUMINT Interrogations: The Importance of Psychological Science to Improving Interrogative Practice,” The Journal of Psychiatry
& Law 38, no. 1–2 (March 1, 2010): 215–49, https://doi.org/10.1177/009318531003800110; Montgomery McFate and Steve Fondacaro, “Cultural Knowledge and Common
Sense,” Anthropology Today 24, no. 1 (February 1, 2008): 27–27, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8322.2008.00562.x.
14 Todd S. Bacastow and Dennis Bellafiore, “Redefining Geospatial Intelligence,” American Intelligence Journal 27, no. 1 (2009): 38–40; Andy Sanchez, “Leveraging Geospatial
Intelligence (GEOINT) in Mission Command” (Arlington, VA: DTIC, Office of Naval Research, March 21, 2009), http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA506270.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

assistance of a human operator. Today, MASINT can be don’t get intercepted by rivals. This includes tapping
used in a wide array of information environments, from the into communication networks and signal transmission
detection of missiles, aircraft, or drones, to disaster relief, channels for the purpose of intercepting enemy electronic
refugee aid monitoring, and natural resource - industrial communications, along with cryptographic work to
output measurement.15 handle the encryption and decryption of messages. As
communication technologies have rapidly evolved through
the 20th century, SIGINT has also expanded its capabilities
FININT (financial intelligence): With its professional to include TECHINT (technical intelligence), CYBINT (cyber-
motto ‘follow the money’, FININT is the discipline of tracking intelligence), and DNINT (digital network intelligence).
financial transactions to infer adversaries’ capabilities, Today, the information that lies in the vast span of the
intentions and networks. Focusing on terrorist financing, Internet, social media platforms and Internet Communication
tax evasion and money laundering, or arms trade, FININT is Technologies, ICTs are also under the jurisdiction of SIGINT.
primarily interested in how adversaries fund their operations It is also at the forefront of current Internet-based information
and assets, as well as mapping the intermediary institutions wars, including bots, trolls, digital spoilers and fake news.17
and/or persons involved in these operations. FININT is one
of the most diverse schools of discipline, serving multiple OSINT (open-source intelligence): Although an
branches of a government, and also one that isn’t necessarily intelligence agency’s capacity is primarily measured by how
tied to security or crisis decision-making. Longer term trends well it can detect and transmit critical information, its ability to
that don’t require a response under time or information understand and contextualize what is important requires the
constraints, and can be accessed through open sources, foreknowledge of what is ‘out there’ and easily available. To
such as economic growth, industrial production, accounting distinguish between important and redundant information,
policy and econometric data, are under the jurisdiction of an agency must first lay the groundwork for its ‘information
FININT.16 environment’. This in turn, has to be done through developing
institutional and organizational skills to cultivate and harvest
SIGINT (signals intelligence): Although smoke, information that is ‘legally available in the public domain’, or
pigeons, light or semaphore signals were used as long-rage intelligence that is ‘hidden in plain sight’. Although historically,
communication tools in history, the emergence of SIGINT OSINT has been driven by news and information agencies,
owes mainly to the invention of telegraphy. Going as far cultural and diplomatic exchanges and socialization, it is
back to 1850s as a dedicated intelligence discipline, SIGINT increasingly being driven by Internet and ICT-based based
is primarily concerned about intercepting and processing technological developments. To that end, classical OSINT
an adversary’s messages transmitted over a distance, as and digital OSINT has to be differentiated.18
well as encrypting friendly communications so that they

15 Jeffrey T. Richelson, “MASINT: The New Kid in Town,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 14, no. 2 (April 1, 2001): 149–92,
https://doi.org/10.1080/088506001300063136; J. Dudczyk, J. Matuszewski, and M. Wnuk, “Applying the Radiated Emission to the Specific Emitter Identification,” in
15th International Conference on Microwaves, Radar and Wireless Communications (IEEE Cat. No.04EX824), vol. 2, 2004, 431–434 Vol.2, https://doi.org/10.1109/
MIKON.2004.1357058.

16 Donato Masciandaro, “Financial Supervisory Unification and Financial Intelligence Units,” Journal of Money Laundering Control 8, no. 4 (October 1, 2005): 354–70,
https://doi.org/10.1108/13685200510620858; John Frank Thony, “Processing Financial Information in Money Laundering Matters: The Financial Intelligence Units,” European
Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice 4 (1996): 257.

17 Matthew M. Aid, “All Glory Is Fleeting: Sigint and the Fight Against International Terrorism,” Intelligence and National Security 18, no. 4 (December 1, 2003): 72–120,
https://doi.org/10.1080/02684520310001688880; Martin Rudner, “Britain Betwixt and Between: Uk SIGINT Alliance Strategy’s Transatlantic and European Connections,”
Intelligence and National Security 19, no. 4 (December 1, 2004): 571–609, https://doi.org/10.1080/0268452042000327528.

18 Michael Glassman and Min Ju Kang, “Intelligence in the Internet Age: The Emergence and Evolution of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT),” Computers in Human Behavior 28,
no. 2 (March 1, 2012): 673–82, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2011.11.014; Robert W. Pringle, “The Limits of OSINT: Diagnosing the Soviet Media, 1985-1989,” International
Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 16, no. 2 (April 1, 2003): 280–89, https://doi.org/10.1080/08850600390198706.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

Digital OSINT
In the words of Allen Dulles, ‘A proper analysis of the use other functions (especially more aggressive extraction
intelligence obtainable by these overt, normal and mechanisms such as espionage or stealing) more sparingly,
aboveboard means would supply us with over 80 percent, I reducing the likelihood of miscalculation and escalation of
should estimate, of the information required for the guidance tensions with another country. OSINT also decreases the
of our national policy’. 19
Indeed, Dulles emphasizes that costs of other intelligence functions by eliminating much of
‘Because of its glamour and mystery, overemphasis is the guesswork.23
generally placed on what is called secret intelligence’,20
whereas the bulk of intelligence collection and processing OSINT grew more important in influence and impact with the
is usually done through ‘normal methods’ such as explicit advances in communication and encryption technologies.
diplomatic interaction, personal relationships, radio, press The invention of the alphabet and diplomatic writing brought
and a country’s Diaspora abroad. The same ‘80% rule’ is about the need for seals and cipher mechanisms; printing
also laid down in NATO 2002 and Hulnick 2004, although for press, for officiation and modern bureaucracy; telegraph,
EUROPOL (European Union Agency for Law Enforcement for code-makers and code-breakers; radio, for signals
Cooperation), the British, Swedish and Dutch ministries interceptors (SIGINT) and computers, for high-volume
of defense, as well as DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) encryption and decryption. The advent of the Internet, digital
OSINT constitutes ‘at least 90%’ of all intelligence activities.21 interconnectedness and social media platforms have all led
This means that rather than the popularized and mystified to the growing importance of OSINT and the emergence of
practice of espionage and spying, the overwhelming majority overlapping jurisdictional areas between other schools of
of intelligence activities focus exclusively on harvesting intelligence, but also brought about problems of verification
open sources and finding connections and nuances where regarding content and news. The explosion of information
others can’t. and data has made life both easier and more difficult for
OSINT; easier, because of the widening of the channels of
OSINT determines the relevance and groundwork of an communication, and hard because of a similar proliferation
agency’s wider functions. To that end, a proper conduct of junk, or misleading information. This renders OSINT’s
of OSINT provides two key advantages to an agency. The task not just collection and processing of digital data, but
first is context: namely, the spectrum of events, actors also developing verification and attribution mechanisms,
and roles that determine strategic relativity (i.e. how to and understanding what constitutes as junk content and
define a country’s interests in relation to ongoing events), what doesn’t. In order for agencies to know which digital
as well as which assets to deploy to achieve them. Without information or data type is important, they need technical
an understanding of world events, causal mechanisms infrastructure and high-quality manpower (or ability to
between processes and explicit interests of major actors, outsource all of these functions) to grasp the Internet and
agencies can only deal with problems reactively, without its ever-changing patterns of dissemination and storage.
any ability to stop or manage them before they reach the To that end, most digital OSINT agencies have started to
nation’s borders; or worse, off beyond them. 22
Second, develop Internet studies units.24 Furthermore, agencies
OSINT renders other intelligence functions efficient by not only have to compete among themselves as they
giving an agency an accurate understanding of what types historically did, but thanks to the democratization and wide
of information are available and which ones aren’t and availability of Internet sources to the mass public, they also
needs dedicated focus to extract. This way, agencies can have to compete with citizen analysts and private OSINT

19 Dover, Goodman, and Hillebrand, Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies, 125.

20 Dover, Goodman, and Hillebrand, 125.

21 Johnson, The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence, 221.

22 Johnson, 45.

23 Dover, Goodman, and Hillebrand, Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies, 14.

24 Edward J. Appel, Cybervetting: Internet Searches for Vetting, Investigations, and Open-Source Intelligence, Second Edition (CRC Press, 2014), 157.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

companies. These two new emerging intelligence actors – appliances, this largest ever pool of social and personal data
citizens and private analysts – are unbound by the heavy becomes enormous, yet detailed enough to profile nations in
bureaucratic weight of formal intelligence agencies, and high-definition.26 For any analyst – state or private – working
thus, can adapt to changing technicalities faster and can on public morale, political interests, electoral choice and
undertake collection, storage and analysis functions on their social forces in an adversary’s society, such proliferation of
own initiative, for which agencies require degrees of legal data is a historically significant turn in intelligence capacity.
legitimacy and formal authority. From counterterrorism to Yet, not all states can harvest such data efficiently. For such
cybersecurity, and from WMD monitoring to protest analysis, data to be meaningfully distilled into valuable intelligence,
technology companies and civilians alike tap into the same an analyst has to possess a diverse set of competencies
data and information types that most state OSINT agencies including computer science and data science, which is
do. Although non-state analysts lack in financial resources where states usually fail to catch up.
of states, they make up for this shortcoming through their
autonomy, speed and improvisation ability. The first of many problems for state agencies is the issue of
talent attraction. With Facebook, Google, Amazon and other
On top of this widening, add in the popularized variable - tech companies enabling a vastly freer working environment,
‘Big Data’. There are two main novelties brought about by few (visible) hierarchies and better pay, most of the highly-
the oft-prophesized ‘Big Data Revolution’: first, data storage qualified data analysts turn away from state service.27 This
and transmission technologies, the availability of 3G/4G generates a shift in the centre of gravity of digital intelligence
data networks, mass proliferation of Wi-Fi access and cloud power, from states to private companies. Second is the
technologies, we are now able to produce, store and share issue of infrastructure development, adaptation and
historically unprecedented volumes of information. This both upgrading which is problematic for the highly bureaucratic
makes a given unit of data (byte) increasingly cheaper to structure of the states. New hardware is always expensive
produce, store or transmit, and also enable highly-granular and smart solutions like technology recycling (refurbishing
social (especially personal) data to be produced and old equipment at lower costs) or upgrade streamlining
harvested. Eventually, our social and personal data has require smaller quantities and a nimbler decision-making
become multi-purpose; our tax and employment data for system. The very business model of technology renders
example, can be used to profile our purchasing behaviour, states as the trailers behind (and dependent) on technology
healthcare options, residency choice and electoral companies.28 Third, the growing civilianization of OSINT has
behaviour.25 This multi-purpose social and personal data created an ‘information-as-resistance’ movement in which
then gets even more granular through our digital behavior, digital activism implies the exposure and dissemination
in the form of Facebook friends, likes, Twitter retweets, of state mismanagement, corruption and repression.29
Instagram posts, geo-located photo uploads and Snapchat This resistance culture assumed an increasingly better-
videos. This allows both state and private OSINT analysts organized digital identity following with the exposure of
to tap into the largest, continuously-growing and extremely state surveillance abuses with the Snowden revelations,
detailed behavioural information pool of millions of people. Wikileaks and Chelsea Manning exposures. Although states
Finally, when considering the proliferation of ‘Internet of can theoretically tap into this civilian OSINT pool, the current
things’ (IOT) data types, from fitness watches to home culture and identity of this community is mostly anti-state.30

25 Westin Alan F., “Social and Political Dimensions of Privacy,” Journal of Social Issues 59, no. 2 (April 29, 2003): 431–53, https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-4560.00072.

26 Feng Chen et al., “Data Mining for the Internet of Things: Literature Review and Challenges,” International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks 11, no. 8 (August 18, 2015):
431047, https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/431047.

27 Valerio De Stefano, “The Rise of the Just-in-Time Workforce: On-Demand Work, Crowdwork, and Labor Protection in the Gig-Economy,” Comparative Labor Law & Policy
Journal 37 (2016 2015): 471.

28 Stefan Tongur and Mats Engwall, “The Business Model Dilemma of Technology Shifts,” Technovation 34, no. 9 (September 1, 2014): 525–35,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2014.02.006.

29 Moonsun Choi, Michael Glassman, and Dean Cristol, “What It Means to Be a Citizen in the Internet Age: Development of a Reliable and Valid Digital Citizenship Scale,”
Computers & Education 107 (April 1, 2017): 100–112, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2017.01.002.

30 Zeynep Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2017).

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

Finally, states can potentially get hurt by OSINT, as much digital power parity compared to civilians (unless targeted
as they benefit from it, as OSINT is by nature, a double specifically) and alters the relative power balance between
edged sword. A state can suffer from audience costs and the state and the society. This shift generates a security
public shaming from the exposure of its mismanagement dilemma between state actors as well, as this renewed state-
and corruption, just as it tries to tap into the OSINT realm to society power balance enables external actors to exploit
hurt other states, or domestic opposition groups. Although and interfere with the domestic machinations of a nation.
civilian data leaks (voter, healthcare, purchasing history This interference can hurt powerful and weak states alike,
data etc.) hurt individuals, state-level data leaks hurt the best example being the Russian involvement in the US
governments and agencies more, due to the secretive nature elections via fake news and other publicly available news
of most leaks.31 This renders states larger sitting ducks in and information sources.

31 S. Landau, “Making Sense from Snowden: What’s Significant in the NSA Surveillance Revelations,” IEEE Security Privacy 11, no. 4 (July 2013): 54–63,
https://doi.org/10.1109/MSP.2013.90.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

Types and Examples of OSINT

Although OSINT tools are rapidly evolving, most popular methods can be clustered under four main categories: linguistic/
text-based methods, geographic information systems (GIS) - remote sensing, network science, and visual forensics.

a. Linguistic and Text-Based Methods

Glossary

Natural Language Processing (NLP): Tracing its origins back to Alan Turing’s 1950 article ‘ ‘Computing Machinery
and Intelligence’ (from which the ‘Turing test’ is born), NLP is primarily interested in the interaction between human
and machine language. Originally focusing on automated machine translations between human languages, NLP
today is focused on the discovery of patterns within structured and unstructured, multi-linguistic and large-volumes
of text, through entities, keywords, word/phrase relations and semantic/syntactic roles. NLP has paved way to more
contemporary text-based methods such as automatic text summarization, machine-based sentiment analysis, entity
and topic extraction and forms the foundation of modern text-mining tools.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI): LSI is a machine learning-based text analytics method, which learns from a sample
text to identify the ‘latent’ concepts in multiple documents. For example, if ‘artillery’, ‘shell’ and ‘bombardement’
texts appear frequently in multiple documents, the system indexes these words into the same semantic context,
simultaneously separating the word ‘shell’ from documents that contain phrases ‘beach’, ‘sand’, or ‘crab’. LSI works
best in large volumes of text, such as archival documents, legislation or judicial documents.

Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA): LDA is a text-based machine-learning method similar to LSI, although LDA clusters
words into topic models by itself, rather than into folders determined by the user. LDA checks the frequency and
relation of words in a text based on how frequently they are used together, and in which context.

Entity recognition-extraction: Named Entity Recognition is a process where an algorithm takes a string of text (sentence
or paragraph) as input and identifies relevant nouns (people, places, and organizations) that are mentioned in that string.
News and publishing houses generate large amounts of online content on a daily basis and managing them correctly is
very important to get the most use of each article. Named Entity Recognition can automatically scan entire articles and
reveal which are the major people, organizations, and places discussed in them. Knowing the relevant tags for each
article help in automatically categorizing the articles in defined hierarchies and enable smooth content discovery.

Text corpus: A corpus is usually the main data pool for text-based OSINT methods. It is a collection of words and
keywords from which statistical analyses are made. n order to make the corpora more useful for doing linguistic
research, they are often subjected to a process known as annotation. An example of annotating a corpus is part-of-
speech tagging, or POS-tagging, in which information about each word’s part of speech (verb, noun, adjective, etc.)
is added to the corpus in the form of tags.

N-Gram: In language processing, an n-gram determines the unit of analysis for the query to be searched in the corpus.
If two words are searched together (i.e. ‘conventional’ + ‘warfare’, or ‘terrorist’ + ‘attack’, this query is called a bi-
gram. A tri-gram on the other hand is a 3-word query that specifically searches for the combination of ‘conventional’ +
‘submarine’ + ‘warfare’, or ‘terrorist’ + ‘suicide’ + ‘attack’.

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Language and sentiment analysis has been one of the text-based interactions are now searchable, sortable and
oldest practices of OSINT. Inferring leadership psychology, measurable - some of them in real-time.
policy intent and organizational cohesion through speech
and writing have been a core practice of historical versions Although text-based OSINT can be done through
of OSINT, enabling diplomats and other intermediaries to programming standards such as Python, R, MatLab and
synthesize crucial information. Indeed, through the Cold Ruby, there are dedicated text-based OSINT applications
War, the harvesting of newspapers, leadership statements as well. Some of the popular ones are WordStat, RapidMiner,
and even scientific journals has been commonplace in KHCoder and NVivo that allow users to detect and visualize
countries on both sides of the conflict. Furthermore, since
32
connections, patterns and themes in large volumes of text. In
World War I, linguistics, anthropology and area studies have addition, natural language processing applications based on
grown significantly popular from an intelligence point of view, statistical topic modelling, such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation
evidenced by the establishment of dedicated departments (LDA), text segmentation, Latent Semantic Analysis and
in top universities and their receipt of significant government Pachinko Allocation, enable a machine-learning approach
funding. 33
for pattern detection, and sentiment analysis. Furthermore,
entity-recognition and extraction applications make it far
Digitization of text and the popularization of text-as-data easier to catalogue, sort and process large volume of social
methods in social sciences had a direct impact on linguistic media text data in order to do retrospective or real-time
OSINT analysis. Although quantitative linguistics became a analysis.
popular field as far back as 1960s, mass digitization and
standardization of text files through computer-based word Several promising applications of OSINT include behavioural
processors, have all contributed to the significant advances prediction/detection, evidenced by Asghar (et. al.) work on
in open-source harvesting such as text categorization, pattern detection on Youtube comment videos to measure
text clustering, entity extraction and computational their level of radicalization,34 or Hsinchun Chen’s seminal
summarization. Thanks to such mass digitization, entire work on text mining of the Dark Web,35 and extremism
national historical archives, political texts and memoirs networks that lie within. Singh et. al. have took this a step
have become digitized for word-processing purposes, further and harvested Indian diplomats tweets to analyse
providing linguists and content/discourse analysts with an popularity dynamics between Indian Foreign Service and
unprecedented data size and fast processing tools. These Narenda Modi, giving a clear idea on diplomatic capital and
tools have been especially valuable for Internet-based text- support for leadership.36 On prediction on the other hand
mining, such as websites, blogs and social media posts. In Mueller and Rauch have used newspaper text mining to
addition to the existence of 644 million websites in existence, forecast imminent protests and conflicts, coming up with
vast volumes of social media data pour in on a daily basis, a clear model in using large amounts of text-as-data for
which means that an overwhelming majority of the world’s forecasting purposes.37

32 Johnson, The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence, 144.

33 Osamah F. Khalil, America’s Dream Palace: Middle East Expertise and the Rise of the National Security State (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016).

34 Muhammad Zubair Asghar et al., “Sentiment Analysis on YouTube: A Brief Survey,” ArXiv 1511.09142 (November 29, 2015), http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.09142.

35 Hsinchun Chen, Dark Web: Exploring and Data Mining the Dark Side of the Web, Integrated Series in Information Systems (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2012),
//www.springer.com/gp/book/9781461415565.

36 V. K. Singh, D. Mahata, and R. Adhikari, “Mining the Blogosphere from a Socio-Political Perspective,” in 2010 International Conference on Computer Information Systems and
Industrial Management Applications (CISIM), 2010, 365–70, https://doi.org/10.1109/CISIM.2010.5643634.

37 Hannes Mueller and Christopher Rauh, “Reading Between the Lines: Prediction of Political Violence Using Newspaper Text,” American Political Science Review, December
2017, 1–18, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055417000570.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

b. Geospatial Intelligence and Remote Sensing Tools

Glossary

Vector and raster data: In GIS software, geographical information is stored into two main types of data. Vector data
is a representation of the world using points, lines, and polygons. Vector models are useful for storing data that
has discrete boundaries, such as country borders, land parcels, and streets. Raster data on the other hand, is a
representation of the world as a surface divided into a regular grid of cells. Raster models are useful for storing data
that varies continuously, as in an aerial photograph, a satellite image, a surface of chemical concentrations, or an
elevation surface.

Basemap: A basemap provides a user with context for a map. Vector or raster data can be added to a basemap by
overlaying on top of it. Basemaps contain reference information that may provide different geospatial information
based on what the cartographer is trying to communicate.

Geocoding-geofencing: Geocoding is the process of transforming a description of a location—such as a pair of

coordinates, an address, or a name of a place—to a location on the earth’s surface. An analyst can geocode by entering
one location description at a time or by providing many of them at once in a table. The resulting locations are output as
geographic features with attributes, which can be used for mapping or spatial analysis. Geofencing on the other hand,
is a location-based service in which an app or other software uses GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi or cellular data to trigger a pre-
programmed action when a mobile device or RFID tag enters or exits a virtual boundary set up around a geographical
location, known as a geofence. Depending on how a geofence is configured it can prompt mobile push notifications,
trigger text messages or alerts, send targeted advertisements on social media, allow tracking on vehicle fleets, disable
certain technology or deliver location-based marketing data.

GIS: A geographic information system (GIS) is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and
present all types of geographical data. The key word to this technology is Geography – this means that some portion of
the data is spatial. In other words, data that is in some way referenced to locations on the earth. Coupled with this data
is usually tabular data known as attribute data. Attribute data can be generally defined as additional information about
each of the spatial features.

LIDAR: LIDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a
pulsed laser to measure ranges (variable distances) to the Earth. These light pulses—combined with other data recorded
by the airborne system— generate precise, three-dimensional information about the shape of the Earth and its surface
characteristics. A LIDAR instrument principally consists of a laser, a scanner, and a specialized GPS receiver. Airplanes
and helicopters are the most commonly used platforms for acquiring LIDAR data over broad areas.

Landsat: The LANDSAT program is the oldest, functional satellite imagery program, which consists of a series of optical/
infrared remote sensing satellites for land observation. The program was first started by The National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA) in 1972, then turned over to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
after it became operational.

Remote sensing: Remote sensing is the science of obtaining information without physically being there. For example,
the 3 most common remote sensing methods is by airplane, satellite and drone. Remote sensing instruments are of two
primary types—active and passive. Active sensors, provide their own source of energy to illuminate the objects they
observe. An active sensor emits radiation in the direction of the target to be investigated. The sensor then detects and
measures the radiation that is reflected or backscattered from the target. Passive sensors, on the other hand, detect
natural energy (radiation) that is emitted or reflected by the object or scene being observed. Reflected sunlight is the
most common source of radiation measured by passive sensors.

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Like language, cartography too, is an old school of intelligence more geospatial databases on the Internet. These datasets
and strategic analysis, working primarily on geopolitical are also supplemented by LiDAR (Light Detection and
and geographical variables, as well as the political impact Ranging), UAVs, GPS and satellites to increase the
of borders and terrain. The combination of geographic granularity and size of geographic datasets. Regardless
information systems – or GIS – and Internet-based location of technique, some of the best applications of GEOINT,
data (check-ins, location designations) has allowed analysts not only supply and visualize spatial data, but also tell a
to harness a wider range of social and spatial dynamics of policy story or see a strategic gap where other methods
human behaviour, including mobilization, mass movement can’t. Harvard Humanitarian Initiative for example, is one of
and conflicts. 38
With the additional variables of altitude, the earlier examples of a university-led GEOINT approach.
topography, elevation, resources, transportation and Having been established in 1999, HHI has partnered with
infrastructure, small and large-scale human behaviour can NGOs, UN relief agencies and refugee aid organizations to
be analysed and mapped into meaningful patterns through map crises and conflicts in Darfur, Sudan, Chad and Congo
the use of geospatial intelligence – or GEOINT.39 Although in close partnership with ground assets.40 During Hurricane
there are dedicated GIS platforms for this kind of analysis – Katrina on the other hand, both US government and non-
ArcGis, QGis – programming platforms such as Python and governmental analysts have adopted different GIS methods
R (even Excel) also have GIS packages, or extensions to for relief and disaster response.41 Ushahidi - a non-profit
integrate mapping, geostatistics and proximity analysis. With technology company - is another notable non-state OSINT
the additional imagery power of Planet Labs, Terra Bella, initiative, which focuses on election monitoring, disaster
BlackSky Global and XpressSAR, a multitude of layers, time- relief and humanitarian aid in Haiti, Chile, Kenya and Italy.
frames and granularity of geographical information can now Ushahidi used a ‘crowdmap’ - a crowdsourced map event
be utilized by citizen GEOINT analysts. data platform in order to crowdsource crisis events.42
Crowdmap was deployed in a number of protests around the
In GEOINT, there are two main types of data: vector and world, including Occupy movements, 2011 London protests,
raster. Vector data is the combination of the set of polygons in addition to the company’s famous event monitoring of
and coordinates to designate a specific location or area the 2007-2008 Kenyan crisis. Later on, Ushahidi provided
on a map. Raster data on the other hand, include imagery, the infrastructure for crisis event data collection based on
elevation models and map renders to make 3D analysis. witness accounts and was deployed to monitor the elections
With the increasing popularity of GIS, there are significantly in Italy and India.43

38 Thomas Zeitzoff, “How Social Media Is Changing Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 61, no. 9 (October 1, 2017): 1970–91,
https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002717721392; Seva Gunitsky, “Corrupting the Cyber-Commons: Social Media as a Tool of Autocratic Stability,” Perspectives on Politics 13,
no. 1 (March 2015): 42–54, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714003120.

39 Bacastow and Bellafiore, “Redefining Geospatial Intelligence.”

40 Steve Lohr, “In Relief Work, Online Mapping Yet to Attain Full Potential,” The New York Times, March 28, 2011, sec. Business Day,
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/business/28map.html.

41 Jeffrey Gettleman, “Congo: Rapes by Civilians Rise Sharply, Study Says,” The New York Times, April 14, 2010, sec. Africa,
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/world/africa/15briefs-congo.html.

42 Anand Giridharadas, “Ushahidi - Africa’s Gift to Silicon Valley: How to Track a Crisis,” The New York Times, March 13, 2010, sec. Week in Review,
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/weekinreview/14giridharadas.html.

43 Sarah Wheaton, “New Technology Generates Database on Spill Damage,” The New York Times, May 4, 2010, sec. U.S.,
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/us/05brigade.html.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

c. Connections and Networks

Glossary

Network nodes: In a communications network, a network node is a connection point that can receive, create, store
or send data along distributed network routes. Each network node -- whether it’s an endpoint for data transmissions
or a redistribution point -- has either a programmed or engineered capability to recognize, process and forward
transmissions to other network nodes.

Density: The density statistic represents the proportion of possible relationships in the network that are actually present.
The value ranges from 0 to 1, with the lower limit corresponding to networks with no relationships and the upper limit
representing networks with all possible relationships. The closer the value is to 1, the denser is the network and the
more cohesive are the nodes in the network. Information in dense networks can flow more easily than information in
sparse networks.

Centrality (betweenness): In network analysis, centrality designates the most important nodes in a graph, with regard
to the number of connection to other nodes. In OSINT, network centrality studies usually focus on the most important,
or best-connected members of a large group. In social network analysis, high-centrality figures are those that assume
influencer status.

Homophily: Network homophily is a theory, which argues that similar nodes are more likely to attach to each other than
dissimilar ones. In dense and large social networks, homophily measure enables an analyst to identify a community
or a group within a larger population pool easily. Homophily is a key topic in network science as it can determine the
speed of the diffusion of information and ideas.

Relations, groups and networks have always been popular as Gephi, NetMiner and iGraph have made it easier to work
for OSINT. Organizational leadership, political decision- with larger networks and measure them by betweenness,
making circles, terrorist inner circles have been central topics homophilly and centrality using quantitative methods. This
of inquiry for intelligence analysis. Classical network theory enables extremism and radicalization networks easier to
focuses on social networks among individuals (friendships, visualize and contextualize the role of hierarchies and
advice-seeking..) and formal contractual relationships influencers much clearer compared to traditional methods.45
(alliances, trade, security community). What makes network Computational network analysis on the other hand, expands
theory important to social science, politics and IR is its classical network theory to far larger size and complexity
ability to conceptualize and theorize relations at the micro, levels, not only designating relations between them, but
meso and macro-levels of analysis in political processes, also use artificial intelligence, machine learning and neural
offering a structure to seemingly complex interactions. networks approaches to automatically generate real-time
Accordingly, network theory stipulates that relations and changes in these relations. Today, one of the most popular
internal-external pressures on those relations have the uses of network analysis in digital OSINT is social media
ability to affect beliefs and behaviors. Instead of adopting analysis; namely, follow, like and share relations between
IR’s mainstream levels of analysis approach, network very large groups.46 Compared to older methods, social
theory focuses on the interactions between these levels of network analysis enabled influencers and hierarchies in
analyses, aiming to conceptualize how these interactions these systems more successfully.
lead to policy and behavior. A variety of applications such
44

44 Johnson, The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence, 26.

45 Matt Apuzzo, “Who Will Become a Terrorist? Research Yields Few Clues,” The New York Times, December 21, 2017, sec. World,
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/world/europe/mystery-about-who-will-become-a-terrorist-defies-clear-answers.html.

46 Jytte Klausen, “Tweeting the Jihad: Social Media Networks of Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 38, no. 1 (January 2, 2015): 1–22,
https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2014.974948.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

d. Image and Video Forensics

Glossary

Artefact: An artefact is a visible distortion and visual error in a media (video, audio or image). Artefact homogeneity
is a media forensics tool that measures whether a media type is manipulated by measuring the extent to which these
distortions are even throughout the media. Artefact unevenness is usually associated with manipulation and doctoring,
and can be noticed through machine-learning-based media forensics tools.

Digital Forensics: The area of digital media forensics is both the vocation of finding deleted or hidden data and also
the mastery of the underlying technologies behind the various tools used and the ability to present scientifically valid
information. Digital media forensics is a growing science that allows governments and corporations to assess the
genuineness of digital evidence.

Photographic Comparison: As an image forensics tool, photographic comparison tests the genuineness or alterations
across multiple versions of the same image. On the Internet, photographic comparison is required to sort through large
quantities of similar images to find the original version. Especially in images related to crisis events, or photographs that
have high political value, automated comparison software can be used to detect unevenness that can’t be measured
by the human eye.

Metadata: Media files contain properties that describe the contents of the file. These properties can be categorized
as follows:
a) Media-type attributes that specify the encoding parameters, such as the encoding algorithm (media subtype), video
frame size, video frame rate, audio bit rate, and audio sample rate.
b) Metadata contains descriptive information for the media content, such as title, artist, photographer, and genre.
Metadata can also describe encoding parameters. It can be faster to access this information through metadata than
through media-type attributes.
c) DRM properties, which contain information on usage restrictions. Currently Media Foundation does not support
DRM properties through metadata, with the exception of the PKEY_DRM_IsProtected property.

Photogrammetric Analysis: Originally a tool for MASINT, photogrammetry is the science of extracting measurements
from photographs. Such measurements can be exact coordinates, or distance between images on the media. Currently,
OSINT analysts can conduct digital photogrammetric analysis through 2-D and 3-D images collected through satellite,
drone or LIDAR imagery. Algorithms for photogrammetry typically attempt to minimize the sum of the squares of errors
over the coordinates and relative displacements of the reference points.

As wifi and phone data network services became faster and a post-World War 2h endavor. Today, such visual media
cheaper, online human communication has rapidly evolved can be digitally analysed, interpreted and used to extract
from text-based to media-based. We usually find it easier key information from the ground - especially in conflict,
to send a voice message on Whatsapp instead of texting, protest or disaster areas where physical access is limited.
or to send a photo or a video to express longer sentences Images and videos can be used for verification, statement,
and paragraphs. The same logic works for crises and propaganda and counter-propaganda purposes on the
emergencies. Under stress, people tend to share images battlefield, or in crisis episodes; they can be shared as an
and videos to document, or call for help, instead of texting evidence of relations, interests and capabilities. Due to the
and typing long messages online. To that end, although we value of emergency media for OSINT, this is also one of the
tweet, share and blog, the increasing majority of our digital most vulnerable areas for manipulation and forgery. Images
communication (especially during crises) has become and videos alike can be faked, doctored, and old media can
media-based. While studying photographs for strategic gain be shared as new. This in turn allows state and non-state
or emergency communication goes back to the late-19 th
actors to mislead, distract and intimidate their rivals during
century, ‘video intelligence’ as a common practice, is mostly emergencies.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

Several private initiatives have embarked on a dedicated reconstruct poorly documented incidents that contain political
study of web-based images and videos to form a importance.48 Both Bellingcat and Forensic Architecture aim
crowdsourced OSINT network, the most famous being to verify critical events through a methodical study of media,
Bellingcat – the online investigation platform. Bellingcat as well as stitching scattered visual evidence together
has published several tutorials on how to conduct media- through diverse sources in order to create evidence. Initially
based OSINT, and some of its famous investigations include viewed as an enthusiast’s hobby, media forensics OSINT
Russian troop movements, Syrian chemical weapons use initiatives have grown more relevant and efficient compared
verification and protestor-riot police dynamics in a number to state intelligence agencies, evidenced by the fact that
of incidents. Another example is Forensic Architecture - an
47
both Bellingcat and Forensic Architecture initiatives have
academic-activist platform headquartered at the University provided court evidence, as well as data for UN and state-
of London - which uses photos, videos and aerial imagery to led human rights reports.49

Crowdsourced OSINT
With so many plentiful and publicly accessible critical counter state narratives. In fact, it was the United States
data types, it is quite tempting to make the case that the (DARPA) that had first tried to use crowdsourcing for
‘secrets are over’, or that we are entering a ‘post-secret’ intelligence analysis, through its 2009 digital exercise
world order. Indeed, when Sean P. Larkin heralded the titled ‘Network Challenged’.51 During this crowdsourcing
‘Age of Transparency’ in his famous Foreign Affairs piece, exercise, a multitude of challenges faced by state-led
he was adamant that the proliferation of commercially- efforts in OSINT (such as fast verification, event data
available satellite imagery, drone sensing, automated crisis generation, measurement) could be better managed by a
reports, citizen journalists and open source bloggers would semi-autonomous network of users, working through social
render secrets meaningless.50 His point was that due to networking tools. This exercise has demonstrated that
the decreasing costs of publicly available surveillance, the ‘amateurs’ (meaning civilians that had little or no formal
costs of acquiring and protecting secrets were increasing. background in intelligence and policy planning) were
States’ ability to create and sustain frames and narratives both useful and not so useful from different perspectives.
(ontological security) during crises, diplomatic escalations Crowdsourced OSINT was definitely fast, unbound by the
and protests has been substantially hampered by technology. constraints of bureaucracy and strict policy. On the other
Especially since the global discovery of the power of social hand, most of these OSINT enthusiasts lacked sufficient
media during key events, states had to compete with new intelligence training, policy organization and coherence
sources of narratives and framing beyond the conventional in preparing policy options for decision-makers. In other
news sources. words, crowdsourced OSINT was deemed to be good at
challenging state narratives during a focused incident (like
Global interconnectedness and the emergence of ‘citizen- a crisis), but lacked capacity to monitor and harvest regular,
led reporting’ has brought about a new analyst caste: daily Internet data to designate political patterns and come
crowdsourced intelligence network, aiming to harness up with policy suggestions.52
the labor of like-minded digital activists to challenge and

47 Pablo Gutierrez and Paul Torpey, “How Digital Detectives Say They Proved Ukraine Attacks Came from Russia,” The Guardian, February 17, 2015, sec. World news,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/17/ukraine-russia-crossborder-attacks-satellite-evidence.

48 Rowan Moore, “Forensic Architecture: The Detail behind the Devilry,” The Observer, February 25, 2018, sec. Art and design,
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/feb/25/forensic-architects-eyal-weizman.

49 Dylan Collins, “A US Airstrike Which Killed 38 People Allegedly Hit a Peaceful Mosque in a Syrian Village,” Business Insider, April 18, 2017,
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-airstrike-allegedly-hit-a-peaceful-mosque-in-a-syrian-village-2017-4.

50 Sean P. Larkin, “The Age of Transparency,” Foreign Affairs, April 18, 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2016-04-18/age-transparency.

51 Mark Harris, “How A Lone Hacker Shredded the Myth of Crowdsourcing,” WIRED, September 2, 2015,
https://www.wired.com/2015/02/how-a-lone-hacker-shredded-the-myth-of-crowdsourcing/.

52 Larry Greenemeier, “DARPA Verigames Crowdsourced Formal Verification (CSFV) Project,” Scientific American, June 9, 2015,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/darpa-verigames-crowdsourced-formal-verification-csfv-project/.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

In addition, it is also politically hard for states to harness civilian-led relief and aid OSINT platforms could be exploited
the power of crowdsourcing in OSINT during crisis events. by state actors, some NATO air assets used this aid map to
Given how most digital OSINT tools became globally refine ground targets and schedule aerial bombardments.56
commonplace with 2011 following the Occupy and Arab
Spring movements, the overall tone of the practice became Bellingcat and LiveUAMap are two of the newer additions
anti-hegemonic and oppositional. 53
Most earlier forms of to crowdsourced intelligence. Bellingcat appeared from
crowdsourced OSINT focused on steering protest crowds, its humble beginnings in 2012 as a blog and LiveUAMap
organizing protest logistics and circumventing the police, during the earlier phases of the Russian military involvement
or state intelligence agencies. To that end, a wide chasm in Ukraine in 2014. Bellingcat rose to fame in 2014, when
emerged between state intelligence agencies that mistrust its crowdsourced analysts used open-source tools to
OSINT, and citizen-led analytics that mistrust the motives discover which Russian unit shot down the MH17 flight in
of the state. This mutual mistrust has so far prevented Ukraine.57 This investigation was a turning point in OSINT, as
a workable model for state-led efforts in cultivating a its use of publicly available information generated stronger
crowdsourced OSINT environment. Since such a model evidence against Russian involvement in the MH17 shooting
unforthcoming, states and citizen-led efforts use their own compared to all other state-produced evidence reports.
tools and networks during emergencies. Ultimately, it was Bellingcat’s report that was incorporated
into the indictment at the Dutch court that was handling
Crowdsourcing involves ground-based event data the investigation.58 Later in 2014, Bellingcat would publish
producers, near-ground-based data curators and off- successive online reports on the use of cluster munitions
site, remote location data analyzers. One the earlier good and other internationally banned area-of-effect weapons,
examples is the Ushahidi (means ‘witness’ in Swahili) demonstrating how the Syrian Army was producing,
platform that mapped election-related violent activities in transporting and deploying these banned weapons.59
Kenya between 2007-2008. Ushahidi’s event data detection Then in 2015, Bellingcat became the first OSINT outlet
performance did a better job than state intelligence actors that discovered the shifting drone tactics of ISIS and their
in monitoring the conflict there, as it still is the primary data invention of the grenade-dropping UAVs.60 The initiative has
source on Kenyan election violence as of today. Ushahidi 54
since grown considerably in fame and volunteers, building
later switched to a GeoCommons mapping platform to up a network of crowdsourced event data producers, video
mobilize and crowdsource event data on the 2010 Haiti and image analysts and GIS mappers around the world.
earthquake, considerably helping aid and relief agencies in The group has also begun teaching their OSINT methods to
their efforts to respond to as many incidents as possible. enable more citizen-led intelligence production.
Ushahidi would later grow to a level of importance that the
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian LiveUAMap works slightly differently than Bellingcat.
Affairs (OCHA) partnered with the platform to create a Libya LiveUAMap harvests social media data in near-real-time in
Crisis Map, to gather ground data in war-stricken areas that order to display and map conflict events on their interactive
need aid drop.55 In one of the earlier examples of how such world map. Although the group initially started as an outlet

53 Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas.

54 Giridharadas, “Ushahidi - Africa’s Gift to Silicon Valley.”

55 John D. Sutter, “Ushahidi: How to ‘crowdmap’ a Disaster,” CNN Labs, October 25, 2010, http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/10/25/crowdmap.disaster.internet/index.html.

56 Ian Traynor, “Libya: Nato Bombing of Gaddafi Forces ‘Relying on Information from Rebels,’” The Guardian, May 18, 2011, sec. World news,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/18/libya-nato-bombing-benghazi-rebel-leaders.

57 Max Fisher, “Did Ukraine Rebels Take Credit for Downing MH17?,” Vox.com, July 17, 2014,
https://www.vox.com/2014/7/17/5913089/did-this-ukrainian-rebel-commander-take-credit-for-shooting-down-the.

58 Mark Gibney, “The Downing of MH17: Russian Responsibility?,” Human Rights Law Review 15, no. 1 (March 1, 2015): 17, https://doi.org/10.1093/hrlr/ngu036.

59 Martin Chulov, “Syria Attack: Nerve Agent Experts Race to Smuggle Bodies out of Douma,” The Guardian, April 12, 2018, sec. World news,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/12/syria-attack-experts-check-signs-nerve-agent.

60 Ben Sullivan, “The Islamic State Conducted Hundreds of Drone Strikes in Less Than a Month,” Motherboard, February 21, 2017,
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vvxbp9/the-islamic-state-conducted-hundreds-of-drone-strikes-in-less-than-a-month.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

to monitor specifically Russian activities in Ukraine in 2014, and destination of commercial, as well as government
it has grown in scope to include Syria, Iraq, and then, rest flights, TankerTracker, which tracks oil and natural gas
of the world. LiveUAMap is a truly crowdsourced conflict tankers across the world’s main ports, and DroneDeploy,
monitoring platform that uses social media data in multiple which provides a real-time visualization of major combat
languages to create real-time alerts, as well as a database and reconnaissance drones deployed by militaries and non-
of events that go as far back to 2013. Similar initiatives are state actors across the world.
FlightTracker, which maps and displays the code information

International Political Implications of OSINT:

Democracy and Security Dilemma
In November 2017, the fitness-tracking app and gadget to Aleksandr Kogan, a senior Analytica data scientist,
maker Strava, has released its users’ dataset containing 13 who had close contacts with Steve Bannon, who was a
trillion GPS location data points.61 Initially thought of as a way major leader within the Trump campaign. Kogan had built
to help people socialize through their fitness performance ‘thisismydigitallife’ – a quiz app on Facebook – which pro
(i.e. how much, or fast they ran) by sharing personal scores led an initial 270,000 Facebook users who took the quiz,
on social media, the release turned out to be an operations without the knowledge of this data to be used in a political
security disaster. While these individual location data points campaign.64 Through network analysis methods (friends,
revealed popular running routes in major cities, they also interests, likes) Kogan was able to access 50 million users’
revealed unidentified military bases via soldiers’ Strava data through this initial 270,000. More recently, a group of
tracker use. While the commercialization of drone and political scientists have used text-based machine learning
satellite imagery have already led to the discovery of most methods to analyze classification patterns of US State
major military installations in the world, Strava data took this Department cables since 1971.65 These cables contained
one step further: exposure of secret military installations correspondence between the State Department and a US
(especially those in combat zones) and the time, date diplomatic mission in a foreign country. By studying the
and trajectory of runners in those military bases. Although content of millions of cables, the researchers have identified
unintended, this was such a major security breach that which word combinations are likely to be in cables that
Colonel John Thomas, a spokesperson for the US Central are flagged as ‘secret’, ‘confidential’, ‘limited official use’,
Command gave a statement to the Washington Post that the or ‘unclassified’. The study has revealed that human error
military was ‘looking into the implications of the map’. 62
plays a considerable role in the misclassification of secrets,
leading to the declassification of a large number of secret
Then in mid-March 2018 the data analytics company documents. Most critically, the study has discovered that
Cambridge Analytica’s extra-judicial dealings with the there are uneven rules that govern whether a document is
Trump campaign were exposed, revealing how 50 million ‘secret’. This, researchers argue, can both allow other states
Facebook profiles were harvested without consent. 63
to use machine learning tools to extract secret information
Facebook was directly involved as an active actor in the through declassified US archives, and also for civilian
scandal, by willingly exposing 50 million profile raw data analysts to tap into the same reservoir to leak secrets to

61 Alex Hern, “Fitness Tracking App Strava Gives Away Location of Secret US Army Bases,” The Guardian, January 28, 2018, sec. Technology,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracking-app-gives-away-location-of-secret-us-army-bases.

62 Andrew Liptak, “Strava’s Fitness Tracker Heat Map Reveals the Location of Military Bases,” The Verge, January 28, 2018,
https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/28/16942626/strava-fitness-tracker-heat-map-military-base-internet-of-things-geolocation.

63 Alvin Chang, “The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica Scandal, Explained with a Simple Diagram,” Vox, March 23, 2018,
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-diagram.

64 Carole Cadwalladr, “‘I Made Steve Bannon’s Psychological Warfare Tool’: Meet the Data War Whistleblower,” The Guardian, March 18, 2018, sec. News,
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump.

65 Renato Rocha Souza et al., “Using Artificial Intelligence to Identify State Secrets,” ArXiv 1611.00356 (November 1, 2016), http://arxiv.org/abs/1611.00356.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

the public. All three incidents demonstrate how states and is that intelligence is not a ‘regular’ policy area that can be
civilians alike can be the victims of OSINT and neither ‘side’ restrained through normal judicial and legislative means.69
has the real upper hand in the vast analytic ocean. By rendering intelligence activities subject to lengthy legal
and parliamentary fact-finding and supervision, countries
Following the Weberian logic that states are the sole may a) miss a critical intelligence interception, b) lose
legitimate wielders of organized violence, the same the comparative advantage of sensitive information to the
can be applied to the field of secrecy. States are usually intelligence services of authoritarian countries, and c) fail to
thought of as the sole legitimate wielders of organized, prevent an attack, which will generate far more significant
institutional secrecy. Most voters in democracies and public backlash compared to intelligence abuse.70 An
authoritarian systems alike, think that states should be authoritarian government that has none (or few) of these
capable of collecting and reliably processing large troves democratic constraints can become nimbler and faster over
of intelligence concerning national security, as well as be the short-term to meet the requirements of global intelligence
able to protect those secrets from rival access. Yet, what rivalry and score an advantage against democracies – or so
separates democracies from authoritarian systems is the the primary argument goes. There are two main problems
issue of intelligence oversight and safeguards against with this argument. First, as Desch,71 and Reiter (et. al.)72
abuses of such secrecy. 66
Citizens and domestic targets have demonstrated, democracies too, can keep large
are often the most vulnerable and easiest targets against amounts of information hidden from the public eye and can
such abuse, since the very counterintelligence and secrecy- also successfully avoid oversight mechanisms. As recurring
accumulation tools that states use to achieve security can examples show, democracies are as likely as autocracies
be used to track and suppress domestic dissent.67 On the to go to unilateral or diversionary wars by misleading public
other hand, greater transparency and accountability saps opinion.73 Secondly, there is no evidence to support the
intelligence agencies’ speed and operational range of claim that oversight mechanisms or safeguards against
intelligence agencies, having a negative effect on national intelligence abuse render democracies strategically
security. This produces an inherent dilemma for those less advantageous than autocracies. The general trend
seeking to achieve a middle ground between privacy and established in the literature (with few outliers) still remains
security: on the one hand, unchecked intelligence agencies robust: due to open information and a wider ‘marketplace of
do and will impair a country’s democratic functioning by ideas’, democracies tend to miscalculate and misperceive
abusing the vast surveillance apparatus. Most policies that less, don’t fight with each other, tend to suffer less from civil
successfully render intelligence activities more transparent wars and domestic disturbances, and end up winning most
end up disabling intelligence services’ effectiveness, scope of the wars they get into.74 So, what’s the problem?
and deterrence capability. 68

The causal mechanism between intelligence oversight and

The prevalent argument against oversight in democracies strategic disadvantage is weak at best, due to fact that it is

66 Michael P. Colaresi, Democracy Declassified: The Secrecy Dilemma in National Security (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014).

67 Zachary K. Goldman and Samuel J. Rascoff, Global Intelligence Oversight: Governing Security in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 14.

68 Goldman and Rascoff, 72.

69 Daniel Baldino, ed., Democratic Oversight of Intelligence Services (Sydney: Federation Press, 2010), 3.

70 Johnson, The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence, 80.

71 Michael C. Desch, “Democracy and Victory: Why Regime Type Hardly Matters,” International Security 27, no. 2 (October 1, 2002): 5–47,
https://doi.org/10.1162/016228802760987815.

72 Dan Reiter, Allan C. Stam, and Alexander B. Downes, “Another Skirmish in the Battle over Democracies and War,” International Security 34, no. 2 (September 30, 2009):
194–204, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.2009.34.2.194.

73 Erich Weede, “Democracy and War Involvement,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 28, no. 4 (December 1, 1984): 649–64, https://doi.org/10.1177/002200278402800400;
Kenneth A. Schultz, “Do Democratic Institutions Constrain or Inform? Contrasting Two Institutional Perspectives on Democracy and War,” International Organization 53,
no. 2 (ed 1999): 233–66, https://doi.org/10.1162/002081899550878.

74 Johnson, The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence, 167; Baldino, Democratic Oversight of Intelligence Services, 45; David Lyon, Kirstie Ball, and Kevin D. Haggerty,
Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies (New York: Routledge, 2012), 51.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

rarely safeguards that render intelligence ineffective.75 Fast end up becoming unable to protect them against foreign
and good intelligence are two different things, as well as spying. To that end, states are secrecy-optimizing actors
the fact that fast intelligence doesn’t always lead to good that have to prioritize the type of information they spend their
policy. Although democracies may lose time and range infrastructure on, so that they can process them meaningfully
with their intelligence operations through the constraints for decision-making and to protect such secrets at a pareto-
set by safeguards, they more than make up for this short- optimal cost against foreign prying.
coming in two areas. First, due to intelligence safeguards
and oversight mechanisms, agencies have to pass through OSINT has changed this equation substantially. High-quality
a review system that tests the rationale, reasoning and intelligence is no longer in the hands of a small monopoly
strategic utility of surveillance practices.76 This additional of states and powerful corporations. Journalists, NGOs, and
layer of oversight has a likelihood of spotting mistakes or citizens too, now have the tools access, harvest, process
misjudgements early on, preventing agencies to get sucked and disseminate previously classified information. The
up into a costly mistake or an international incident that will marketization of intelligence - surveillance equipment, social
lead to diplomatic escalation with another country. Second, media analytics services and the programming revolution -
democracies tend to be less concerned with the ideological led to the emergence of new power sources in international
purity of the intelligence community and more with its intelligence competition. Hackers are old news - these non-
technical level of skill and capacity. In most authoritarian state actors have already grown into a regular variable in
regimes, influential positions in intelligence are filled with strategic competition, be it independent, or state-supported.
commissar-type appointees, or relatives that have little, or Emerging power sources in OSINT don’t have to possess
insufficient operational/technical expertise.77 In ideologically- the coding ingenuity of hackers. Availability of commercial
driven intelligence agencies, where capability is a secondary satellite imagery, over-the-counter drones, social media
consideration in appointments, fast decision-making usually analytics platforms and a bit of free time have all contributed
ends up in costly miscalculations, offsetting the speed to the advent of the global OSINT caste, with disproportionate
and range benefits of not having oversight mechanisms or influence over information politics. Today, enthusiasts with
safeguards. Therefore, although democracies may make modest levels of technical knowledge, less-than-basic
slower intelligence decisions, these are usually made by programming ability and a keen eye for exploring digital
a more technocratically-oriented community, with better media data can become a part of the global crowdsourced
interaction between the decision-making, judicial organs OSINT network.
and technocrats, ultimately leading to better-formulated
and less crisis-prone policies. This eventually renders Now states not only have to think of other states, or big
democratic intelligence practices more likely to lead to good corporations as intelligence competitors, nor hackers,
national security policy, compared to authoritarian systems. but also this global network of citizen journalists, OSINT
enthusiasts and civilian data analytics initiatives. This network
In the same capacity, the ‘intelligence dilemma’ – namely, is becoming increasingly more influential on challenging or
the notion that states are ‘secrecy maximizing’ actors that supporting state-led information operations, propaganda
operate in a zero-sum information environment – may be less and political communication warfare, often yielding major
important than argued. First of all, states collect, process international evidence, as illustrated by the Bellingcat’s
and store intelligence commensurate with their technical, MH17 flight forensics work.79 How states should respond
human and bureaucratic infrastructure.78 States cannot be to the advent of digital crowdsourced OSINT is largely a
intelligence-maximizing actors, simply because once they regime-type question, due to the role of secrecy in state-
accumulate secrets beyond their infrastructure limits, they society relations. Normally, it is expected that authoritarian

75 Hans Born and Ms Marina Caparini, Democratic Control of Intelligence Services: Containing Rogue Elephants (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2013), 4.

76 Baldino, Democratic Oversight of Intelligence Services, 89.

77 Johnson, The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence, 243.

78 Colaresi;, Democracy Declassified, 51.

79 “MH17 - The Open Source Investigation, Three Years Later,” Bellingcat, July 17, 2017,
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2017/07/17/mh17-open-source-investigation-three-years-later/.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

regimes should be the most vulnerable to the effects of government support, compared to autocracies. Regardless
growing democratization of critical information. After all, of their loss, authoritarian states are more likely to rely on
such regimes withhold the most amount of information from brute-force tactics of imprisoning and intimidating potential
public eye, have little state-society interaction in sharing blowback effects against exposure.82 Although criticism and
political information, and have virtually no oversight against public reaction against exposures of mismanagement and
intelligence abuse. These regimes frequently spy on their own miscalculations are similar across regime types, their ability
citizens with the explicit purpose of suppressing dissent and to turn into political pressure and shake up a government
opposition, and due to the absence of safeguards, checks are structurally different.
and balances, they suffer from structural mismanagement
and corruption in national security and intelligence affairs. How about, then, the relationship between regime type
In contrast, although democracies will also suffer from and foreign policy effectiveness in the age of OSINT? The
drawbacks of exposure and leaks, such damage is thought mainstream argument goes that the advent of OSINT makes
to be minimal due to the existing democratic structures, it difficult for states to deceive the public or the international
including free and fair elections, a functioning parliament audience, given the availability of alternative information.
and public oversight and shaming mechanisms. Ideally, OSINT should enable a better flow of accurate
information and proper fact-checking across the Internet,
The biggest criticism of intelligence oversight and offsetting any propaganda effects of state-led misinformation
safeguard mechanisms is that they lack the technical attempts. This turn, is thought to make foreign policy more
knowledge and background to properly evaluate what carefully-crafted and less likely to be based on deliberate
their intelligence agencies are doing with technology.80 misinformation, given their ultimate exposure through
This was best evidenced by some of the archaic and OSINT. However, this doesn’t always turn out to be the
tone-deaf questions posed against Mark Zuckerberg case. One reason for this is the ‘rallying effect’; an electoral
during the Facebook testimony.81 One major way OSINT reflex that translates into greater support and mobilization
can contribute to oversight is to provide readily-available in support of the government and leadership during times
analysis that most oversight mechanisms cannot conduct of crisis and escalation. The rallying effect minimizes
by themselves. Through a methodical analysis of open- public reaction or resistance against lack of oversight and
source tools, a technically proficient networked crowd can increases short-term tolerance against miscalculations.83
aid more established, but slower safeguard institutions with This enables democracies and autocracies alike to make
data, evidence and monitoring metrics on the abuses of fast and potentially miscalculated decisions over the short-
secrecy. But will OSINT expedite, or enable democratization term; since most crises are inherently short-term, all regime
of authoritarian regimes? This is unlikely, as there are more types become more likely to make misjudgements, despite
variables in this equation in real life. Although authoritarian the fact that they operate in an OSINT-driven information
states lose more substantial amounts of policy secrets to environment. Evidenced by the empirical studies,
OSINT, this doesn’t necessarily lead to a call to replace authoritarian states too, suffer from audience costs in foreign
the regime, or government, or mobilize sufficiently to policy, and democratic foreign policies are not necessarily
enable this transition. Most of the time, democratic leaks more effective under information constraints compared to
and exposures - as small as they can be - are more likely autocracies.84
to lead in government resignations or substantial drop in

80 Amy B. Zegart, “The Domestic Politics of Irrational Intelligence Oversight,” Political Science Quarterly 126, no. 1 (March 1, 2011): 1–25,
https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2011.tb00692.x.

81 Emily Stewart, “Lawmakers Seem Confused about What Facebook Does — and How to Fix It,” Vox, April 10, 2018,
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/10/17222062/mark-zuckerberg-testimony-graham-facebook-regulations.

82 Michael M. Andregg and Peter Gill, “Comparing the Democratization of Intelligence,” Intelligence and National Security 29, no. 4 (July 4, 2014): 487–97,
https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2014.915174.

83 John R. Oneal and Anna Lillian Bryan, “The Rally ’round the Flag Effect in U.S. Foreign Policy Crises, 1950–1985,” Political Behavior 17, no. 4 (December 1, 1995): 379–401,
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01498516.

84 Weeks, “Autocratic Audience Costs”; Branislav L. Slantchev, “Politicians, the Media, and Domestic Audience Costs,” International Studies Quarterly 50, no. 2 (June 1, 2006):
445–77, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2006.00409.x; Jessica Chen Weiss, “Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China,” International
Organization 67, no. 1 (January 2013): 1–35, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818312000380.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

Conclusion: Implications for International Security

The wider digital OSINT debate concerns how technology is be offset through domestic tools of repression; arrest, jailing
changing the nature of state secrets and role of secrecy in and censorship. Democracies on the other hand, will have
statecraft. Until an equilibrium is established, communication to follow a different trajectory. This trajectory consists of
technologies remain a battleground between states and alternative policy options that have to do with;
their respective societies, as well as among states. As
with past technological advances in communication – - Reforming public diplomacy agencies from a
printing press, radio, television, satellites – Internet-based unidirectional posture (i.e. delivery of state position to
communication too, will enable significant social forces the wider audience) to a multi-directional one, which
to push for greater liberties, and states, to repress such involves disseminating public view and sentiment to
forces. From the state point of view, OSINT will lead to two government agencies, driving their adaptation to the
outcomes. The short-term outcome will be a review of military digital open-source environment.
and intelligence policies to prevent leaks and exposures - Co-opting a degree of civilian crowdsourced OSINT
through new communication tools. This will include simple into state intelligence efforts. This is less risky for more
behavioural adjustments, from smart phone use, to social representative and freer political systems, where the
media presence, including changing the way important amount of secrets that aren’t already public knowledge
political secrets are encrypted and stored. Over the long- is low. In contrast, this is hard for authoritarian
term however, citizen-led crowdsourced OSINT initiatives governments that tend to be ‘secrecy hoarders’ and
will continue to expose government secrets and especially have much to lose (leak) through cooperating with
prevent states to dominate the narrative during crises and public OSINT platforms
emergencies. Democracies and authoritarian governments - Yield to greater judicial and legislative oversight
alike will try to assert their own version of events, but will in intelligence practice. By rendering intelligence
find it increasingly hard to establish a monopoly over operations more open to, and cooperative with
the framing and narrative of important events. This will safeguards, agencies can suffer less from audience
force governments either to suppress and block public costs in case some of their secrets are exposed
mechanisms of alternative information, or change the way through OSINT tools.
they utilize secrecy in statecraft. One example is how the
press, internal leaks and public pressure combined have Over the long-term, the Internet and social media platforms
forced Bush-era detention facilities to be closed down under will settle into a business equilibrium where the states will
the Obama administration, resulting in the 2015 outlawing reassert their dominance over the flow of information, either
of the US Congress of all such facilities. However, similar through controlling the big technology companies, or reaching
pressures over the exposure of the Russian downing of the a power-sharing agreement that clearly defines jurisdictional
MAS17 airline in 2014 hasn’t changed Russian behaviour areas to minimize leaks and exposures. Until then, such
– with the exception of restricting soldiers’ cell phone use leaks and exposures will continue and will render states at
in combat zones. Similarly, the exposure of Russian soldier a disadvantage against civilian-led analytics initiatives, and
selfies in Crimea in 2014 had no effect on Russia’s wider also create a new layer of security dilemma that will fuel
ambitions and operational course in Ukraine. international security competition and intelligence agencies’
‘secrecy wars’. However, even in democracies, audience
Therefore, it is unlikely that the advent of mass open-source costs must not be exaggerated given the fact that online
analytics will have the same effect on all states. Nor is audience attention span is always limited and not directly
there evidence that OSINT will force all states to rely less linked to policy engagement. Social media engagement
on secrecy. Most likely, digital OSINT will create a ‘secrecy very rarely translates into actual political mobilization, and
asymmetry’ between states – between those that have high it is only when such social media engagement ends up
tolerance to audience costs (i.e. autocracies) and those that creating a political, judicial or legislative momentum that
are more responsive to them (democracies). Autocracies OSINT efforts lead to real change. To that end, OSINT will
will find digital crowdsourced OSINT increasingly irrelevant increasingly find it more useful to pick its fights sparingly
in the wider scheme of things (except perhaps in critical and focus its efforts on issues that are likely to generate
operations) as leaks, exposure and citizen-led efforts can wider public attention and policy momentum.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

Ultimately, secrecy is not ending, but how we understand hide and what to disclose on the Internet, along with how
and think about it is rapidly changing due to open- to contain damage once these secrets are out. Until states
information platforms. Events and facts that the states and and citizens adapt to new communication and information-
societies used to think as secrets, are no longer secrets. extraction platforms, secrecy will remain a highly-blurred
This naturally brings about the necessity to rethink what to concept and will affect all sides of the state-society debate.

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

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 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/8

July 2018

Digital Open Source Intelligence and

International Security: A Primer
H. Akın Ünver | EDAM, Oxford CTGA & Kadir Has University

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