Journalism sounds worthy and old-fashioned. But relabel it Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and it holds a new fascination for governments.
There’s an excellent report (available here) by Richard A.Best Jr and Alfred Cumming, about how intelligence agencies over-value secret intelligence and sometimes miss OSINT – or what journalists would call “the bleedin’ obvious.”
But the big flashing headline for me was contained in this bit. Prepare to pick your jaw off the floor:
…driven by deadlines and confronted by large volumes of open source and classified information, analysts often choose to focus their limited time and resources on analyzing clandestine-collected intelligence. Moreover, they often receive further encouragement to do so from managers who establish priorities that favour the analysis of clandestinely-collected secrets.
Other obstacles include:
- Training. Analysts often lack the training necessary to make the most effective use of open sources.
- Internet on the desktop. An unknown number of analysts and collectors still are unable to access the Internet from their desktops. That any analyst or collector lacks Internet access leads some observers to question the Intelligence Community’s commitment to more fully developing open source capabilities.
Yes, you did read that right. Google Reader would be a start.
Perhaps if they wrapped the keyboard in cellophane and poured water over it they might be more inclined to value the information coming out.
2 responses to “How journalism could save the CIA…”
I have had a cursory interest in this from past stories e.g. interviewing fomer CIA boss James Woolsey and attending Chatham House talks.
Regular TV pundit and Intel Analyst Glenmore S. Trenear-Harvey alerted me to a news piece concerning the CIA’s recent findings on Iran.
The copy read the it’d come by its intel through pics of a couple of journalists, on assignment shooting away probably unaware of the significance of what they had.
Some years back I met Robert D Steele, a veteran Intel officer and founder of Open Source Solutions.
He made the point that some huge percent of what intel gathers is in the public domain; a significant waste of public finance he quiped for those using elaborate intel gathering means when the infos all there in the open.
The Net offered a solution, a sort of secretless society – I’m over simplifying, but here’s the vid and write up that went with that.
Journlists showing intelligence gatherers a thing or two?
In Norway at there annual gathering for investigative journalists a couple of journos cracked the home address and location of the chief of police in minutes – all using open source stuff.
Of course, some journalists do end up in that line of business, and some people in that line of business pass themselves off as journalists…