Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Policy, Real Time, Reform, Searches, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools
COIN20 Trip Report
Paradise Found

The future of OSINT is M4IS2.

The future of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is Multinational, Multifunctional, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing & Sense-Making (M4IS2).

The following, subject to the approval of Executive and Congressional leadership, are suggested hueristics (rules of thumb):

Rule 1: All Open Source Information (OSIF) goes directly to the high side (multinational top secret) the instant it is received at any level by any civilian or military element responsive to global OSINT grid.  This includes all of the contextual agency and mission specific information from the civilian elements previously stove-piped or disgarded, not only within the US, but ultimately within all 90+ participating nations.

Rule 2: In return for Rule 1, the US IC agrees that the Department of State (and within DoD, Civil Affairs) is the proponent outside the wire, and the sharing of all OSIF originating outside the US IC is at the discretion of State/Civil Affairs without secret world caveat or constraint.  OSIF collected by US IC elements is NOT included in this warrant.

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1988-2009 OSINT-M4IS2 TECHINT Chronology

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats
Rock ON, Dude
Steele as Wild Card Speaker

Phi Beta Iota: This started as a short list for the various college and university engineering students that have dialed in, but as we got into it, it became more of a “situational awareness” inventory pulling together both technical “solutions” none of which have been integrated yet, and analytic “requirements” none of which have been satisfied yet.

$75 billion a year for secret intelligence, and we still do not have an analytic desktop toolkit, all-source geospatially and historically and cultural astute back office processing, or global reach to all humans, all minds, all the time.  Sucks for us.  Let's see what the Smart Mob can do….

We specifically invite suggestions in the Comments for removing items from this list, or for adding items from within this website or from any other website.  This is now a work zone.  Steele is available to visit any engineering workshop and especially those working on bottom-up clouds like Swarm DPL (transparently scalable distributed programming language).

See also About the Idea, Articles, Briefs, Handbooks, and Historic Contributions. Use the Menu–everything on this stie responds to “OSINT” that is not a good search term.  Rock on!

TOTALLY TECH:

2009 Arnold Google: The Digital Gutenberg

2008 Memoranda: Policy-Budget Outreach Tool

2006  USSOCOM Software List and STRONG ANGEL TOOZL

2006 Morville (UK) Ambient Findability Massive Scale Beyond Your Imagination A Recommedned Approach to Creating the World Brain with Instant Recall

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Monograph: The U.S. Intelligence Community and Foreign Policy Getting Analysis Right

Analysis, Monographs
Free Online
Free Online

This monograph by Dr. Kenneth Lieberthal, a PDF of 81 pages, is just out (September 2009) from the China Center of the Brookings Institute.  In its area of specific focus, getting analysis right, it is a solid B+, short of an A because it continues the unilateralist mind-set that eschews both full engagement with the other seven tribes of intelligence, and with multinational governments, corporations, and non-profit organizations that do not wish to share secrets but are willing to share substantive knowledge.

Continue reading “Monograph: The U.S. Intelligence Community and Foreign Policy Getting Analysis Right”

Review: Assessing the Tradecraft of Intelligence Analysis

3 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public)

TradecraftDisappointing, Some Value, October 22, 2008

Gregory F. Treverton

There are six (6) pages in this work that held my attention: pages 11-12 (Table 2.2 Analytic Concerns, by Frequency of Mention); page 14 (Figure 3.1, A Pyramid of Analytic Tasks); page 20 (Table 3.1, Wide Range of Analytical Tools and Skills Required); page 34 (Figure 5.1, Intelligence Analysis and Information Types), and page 35 (Table 5.1, Changing Tradecraft Characteristics). Print them off from the free PDF copy online (search for title).

My first review allotted two stars, on the second complete reading I decided that was a tad harsh because I *did* go through it twice, so I now raise it to three stars largely because pages 11-12 were interesting enough to warrant an hour of my time (see below). This work reinvents the wheel from 1986, 1988, 1992, etcetera, but the primary author is clearly ignorant of all that has happened before, and the senior author did not bother to bring him up to speed (I know Greg Treverton knows this stuff).

Among many other flaws, this light once over failed to do even the most cursory of either literature or unclassified agency publication (not even the party line rag, Studies in Intelligence). Any book on this topic that is clueless about Jack Davis and his collected memoranda on analytic tradecraft, or Diane Webb and her utterly brilliant definition of Computer Aided Tools for the Analysis of Science and Technology (CATALYST), is not worthy of being read by an all-source professional. I would also have expected Ruth Davis and Carol Dumaine to be mentioned here, but the lack of attribution is clearly a lack of awareness that I find very disturbing.

I looked over the bibliography carefully, and it confirmed my evaluation. This is another indication that RAND (a “think tank”) is getting very lazy and losing its analytic edge. In this day and age of online bibliography citation, the paucity of serious references in this work is troubling (I wax diplomatic).

Here are ten books–only one of mine (and all seven of mine are free online as well as at Amazon):

Informing Statecraft
Bombs, Bugs, Drugs, and Thugs: Intelligence and America's Quest for Security
Best Truth: Intelligence in the Information Age
Early Warning: Using Competitive Intelligence to Anticipate Market Shifts, Control Risk, and Create Powerful Strategies
The Art and Science of Business Intelligence Analysis (Advances in Applied Business Strategy,)
Analysis Without Paralysis: 10 Tools to Make Better Strategic Decisions
Strategic and Competitive Analysis: Methods and Techniques for Analyzing Business Competition
Lost Promise
Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption.

On the latter, look for “New Rules for the New Craft of Intelligence” that is free online as a separate document. Both Davis and Webb can be found online because I put them there in PDF form.

The one thing in this book that was useful, but badly presented, was the table of analyst concerns across nine issues that did not include tangible resources, multinational sense-making, or access to NSA OSINT.

Below is my “remix” of the table to put it into more useful form:

54% Quality of Intelligence
54% Tools of intelligence/analysis
43% Staffing
43% Intra-Community collaboration and data sharing
41% Collection Issues
38% Evaluation
32% Targeting Analysis
30% Value

Above are the categories with totals (first initial below connects to above). The top four validate the DNI's priorities and clearly need work.

32% T Targeting Analysis is important
30% V Redefine intelligence
30% Q Analysis too captive to current
30% To Directed R&D for analytic technology needed
27% T Targeting needs prioritization
27% S Analyst training important and insufficient
22% V Uniqueness
22% E PDB problematic as metric
22% To “Tools” of intelligence analysis are poor
22% To “Tools” limit analysis and limited by culture

The line items above are for me very significant. We still do priority based collection rather than gap-driven collection, something I raised on the FIRCAP and with Rick Shackleford in 1992. Our analysts (most of them less than 5 years in service) are clearly concerned about both a misdirection of collection and of analysis, and a lack of tools–this 22 years after Diane Webb identified the 18 needed functionalities and the Advanced Information Processing and Analysis Steering Group (AIPASG) found over 20 different *compartmented* projects, all with their own sweetheart vendor, trying to create “the” all-source fusion workstation.

19% C S&T underused, needs understanding
16% E Critical and needs improvement
14% E Assess performance qualitatively
14% Q Quality of analysis is a concern
14% Q Intelligence focus too narrow
14% S Language, culture, regional are big weaknesses
11% A Leadership
11% L Must be improved
11% Q Problem centric vice regional
11% Q Global coverage is important
11% C Open source critical, need new sources
11% I Lack of leadership and critical mass impair IC-wide
11% I IC information technology infrastructure needed
11% I Non-traditional source agencies need more input
8% V Unclear goals prevail
8% T Targetting analysis needs attn+
8% C Collection strategies/methods outdated
8% S Concern over lack of staff or surge capability
8% S Intelligence Community-wide curriculum desireable
8% I Should NOT pursue virtual wired network
8% I Security is a concern for virtual and sharing
5% E Evaluation not critical
5% Q Depth versus breadth an issue
5% Q Greater client context needed
5% C Law enforcement has high potential
5% S Analytic corps is highly trained better than ever
5% S Career track needs building
5% I Stovepiping is a problem, need more X-community
5% I Should pursue virtual organization and wired network
3% V Newsworthy not intelligence
3% L Radical transformation needed
3% E Metrics are not needed
3% E Evaluation is negative
3% E Audits are difficult
3% Q Long term shortfalls overstated
3% Q Global coverage too difficult
3% T Targeting can be left to collectors
3% C All source materially lacking
3% C Need to guard against evidence addiction
3% C Need to take into account “feedback”
3% S Should train stovepipe analysts not IC analysts
3% S Language and cultural a strength

For the rest, not now, but three at the bottom trouble me: the analysts do not have the appreciation for feedback; they do not understand how lacking they are in sources; and they don't know enough to realize that radical transformation is needed.

On balance, I found this book annoying, but two pages ultimately provocative.

History of Bureaucratic War on Public Intelligence (1992-2006)

History
Lipstick on the Pig
Lipstick on the Pig

2004

US

History Steele The OSINT Story 2.1 in RTF

2004

US

History Steele The OSINT Story 2.1 in Word Doc

1995

US

History Los Alamos Los Alamos Lab on OSINT

1995

US

History Simmons Congressman Simmons (then Major) on OSINT and DIA

1993

US

History Steele God, Man, and Information: Invited Rant to INTERVAL

1992

US

History IC IC Task Force Vision for OSINT

1992

US

History Steele CIM and Transformation (to Paul Strassman, DirInfo DoD)

1992

US

History Steele & USMC Derogatory Comments, Line by Line, on Decrepit IC Vision for OSINT

1992

US

History STIC STIC on OSINT

1992

US

History USMC USMC on OSINT

1992

US

History USMC USMC on IC  Survey re OSINT

1992

US

History USMC USMC Comments on IC Task Forces

1992

US

History USMC USMC Comment on IC OSINT

1992

US

History Wallner OSINT Requirements Memorandum

1991

US

History Harvard JFK Panel US Intelligence and American Enterprise

1989

US

History CIA/OSWR, Webb CATALYST (Computer Aided Tools for the Analysis of S&T)

1989

US

History Steele Operationalization Portion of Steele Thesis on Revolution

1989

US

History USMC USMC Response to IC Data Call on OSINT

1989

US

History USMC Core Documents on OSINT (186 Pages)

2001 Porter (US) Tools of the Trade: A Long Way to Go

Historic Contributions, Methods & Process, Technologies, Tools
1985 CATALYST Concept
1985 CATALYST Concept

In 1985-1986 an utterly brilliant woman, Diane Webb, working with Dennis McCormich and under the oversight of Gordon Oehler, established the definitive requirements statement for an all-source analytic workstation.  We still do not have such a workstation, and the lack of integrity among intelligence community leaders and vendors is the reason.  No one is willing to sponsor a generic Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) solution that can be used by both all-source analysts and all external analysts.  DARPA STRONG ANGEL TOOZL is a start, but inadequate to the needs of all-source analysts dealing with multiple complex challenges.  Below is the best slide from a presentation to OSS '01 by Claudia Porter from Austin Information Systems, who totally impressed the audience because unlike all other vendors trying desperately to propose “single-point technology solutions” that are nothing more than a deep hook that shuts the customer off from all other solutions, she examined where specific tools fit on a matrix of need.   Click on the slide to see the entire briefing. Click on Frog Right to see the list of softwares that the US Special Oprations Command J-23 (Open Source Branch) uses today, none of them integrated because the US Government refuses to cooperate with the OMB/GSA efforts–mandated by the White House–to find “common solutions.”  One day, Claudia Porter may get to direct a skunkworks with an anti-turst waiver from the Department of Commerce that achieves what we knew we needed in 1985.

Porter Slide Enhanced
Porter Slide Enhanced
SOCOM SW Cluster and TOOZL
SOCOM SW Cluster and TOOZL

2000 PRIMER on Open Sources & Methods

Methods & Process, OSINT Generic

2000

SE

Training Bjore PRIMER: How InfoSphere Uses the Internet

2000

US

Training CSM PRIMER: Top Secret Kodak Moments in Space

2000

US

Training David PRIMER: Intelligence Analysis in a New Century

2000

US

Training Davis PRIMER: Compendium of Analytic Tradecraft Notes

2000

NL

Training Farace PRIMER: Gray Literature 2: Finding the Not Easily Found

2000

US

Training Klein PRIMER: Gray Literature 1: Finding the Needle in the Haystack

2000

US

Training Lanza PRIMER: Beyond the Internet (Slides)

2000

US

Training Lanza PRIMER: Beyond the Internet (Text)

2000

US

Training Rodriguez PRIMER: Briefing on DIALOG

2000

US

Training Rodriguez PRIMER: Chart Comparing DIALOG to Internet (At the Time)

2000

US

Training Sacks PRIMER: Primary Research

2000

US

Training Sandman PRIMER  Applied Human Intelligence

2000

US

Training Snowden PRIMER: Geospatial Intelligence Options

2000

US

Training Soule & Ryan PRIMER: Gray Literature 3: Technical Briefing

2000

US

Training Steele PRIMER: A Few Thoughts on the Internet (At the Time)

2000

US

Training Webb & Steele PRIMER: Integrated Analytic Toolkit Requirements