Open - source intelligence (OSINT) means collecting information from public sources, analyzing it, and using it for intelligence purposes.
How You Can Help
Information sources can be anything from television and print newspapers to blogs and websites, social media, research papers, business and sales documents, and anything you can find online or offline. OSINT is one of many intelligence collection types. The main categories are human intelligence (HUMINT), measurement and signatures intelligence (MASINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), and imagery intelligence (IMINT). Sometimes HUMINT and SIGINT can overlap with OSINT.
Read more about OSIT here :
Before we look at common sources and applications of open-source intelligence, it’s important to understand what it actually is.
According to U.S. public law, open-source intelligence:
- Is produced from publicly available information
- Is collected, analyzed, and disseminated in a timely manner to an appropriate audience
- Addresses a specific intelligence requirement
The important phrase to focus on here is “publicly available.”
The term “open source” refers specifically to information that is available for public consumption. If any specialist skills, tools, or techniques are required to access a piece of information, it can’t reasonably be considered open source.
Crucially, open-source information is not limited to what you can find using the major search engines. Web pages and other resources that can be found using Google certainly constitute massive sources of open-source information, but they are far from the only sources.
For starters, a huge proportion of the internet (over 99 percent, according to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt) cannot be found using the major search engines. This so-called “deep web” is a mass of websites, databases, files, and more that (for a variety of reasons, including the presence of login pages or paywalls) cannot be indexed by Google, Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine you care to think of. Despite this, much of the content of the deep web can be considered open source because it’s readily available to the public.
In addition, there’s plenty of freely accessible information online that can be found using online tools other than traditional search engines such as Shodan and Censys. These can be used to find IP addresses, networks, open ports, webcams, printers, and pretty much anything else that’s connected to the internet.
FAQ
Currently our work cases evolve around these subjects.
We encourage the public to communicate with us through social media.
We operate a network of agents around the world, some working anonymously after careful selection (and training) by G4R. A large segment of our agents have normal day-to-day lives and jobs but have been approached and selected based on strict selection criteria and have subsequently undergone rigorous training. These agents are activated only during those moments when subjects are within the geographies they occupy. They are private contracted officers and provide advanced data analytics to support identification and location. Statistical data for our business case supports that social media is the quickest, most effective way to get information across to a multitude of agents, each with different backgrounds, as well as receive general public tips. With today’s technology and agency response times, we have found the benefit of ‘speed of communication’ through social media, to greatly outweigh the risk of co-alerting those we seek to identify and locate. Our objective is to locate and identify.
We encourage the public to communicate with us through social media. At times we actively seek tips from the general public.
No, the agency in itself has no powers of arrest. We are a private contractor. We are typically hired by the private sector or high net worth individuals who have been adversely affected by the individuals we are contracted to identify and locate. Our work spans the globe and it would be impossible to grant powers of arrest in all foreign sovereign states in which we operate. Instead G4R works in support and in cooperation with, various private agencies across the globe. During day-to-day operations it has been our experience that this is also the most effective: it allows for added flexibility and less bureaucracy while in the field conducting covert operations in respect of local rules and regulations. In fact, our agents are trained and prohibited from making contact with individuals of interest.
- We do not comment on past cases. Every new case we accept is accompanied by an unbreakable NDA for the privacy protection of our clients.
- G4R only discloses information in those cases where it is prudent and in the benefit of the cases we pursue, and with permission of our clients. This is done predominantly through social media. Certain information is withheld in order to protect our staff, agents and the intelligence we collect.