COSPO and Open Source Intelligence - Part 1

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http://www.defensedaily.com/reports/osintmyths.htn

world had begun to change. Not only was information technology beginning to improve by geometric bounds, but the amount of information actually available through open source was growing as well. COSPO, the Community Open Source Program Office, was the IC's attempt to arrive at a more coherent approach to the open source issues, both technology and content.

The view here, and one that is admittedly not shared by all, is that COSPO was unable to fulfill its mission. At least three factors were to blame. First, despite all of the lip service given to the importance of OSINT, there remains an in-grained IC prejudice -- sometimes no more than a subliminal one, but a prejudice nonetheless -- against open sources. There will always be IC officials, and some of the their policy customers, who believe that the greater the difficulty involved in collecting the intelligence, the better the intelligence has to be. It remains difficult but imperative to convey the message that I tried to convey to a Deputy Director for Operations during my tenure as Staff Director of the House Intelligence Committee: "We don't give you brownie points for collecting intelligence by the hardest means

available." The IC remains unable to appreciate the view expressed by former Deputy DCI Richard Kerr: "The IC has to learn that it no longer controls most of its own sources." Nor, for that matter, has the IC been willing to act upon the findings of the Aspin-Brown

Commission on Intelligence, which held that IC access to open sources is "severely deficient" and that this should be a "top priority"

for funding.

The second reason that COSPO failed to achieve its mission was a very American failing. COSPO became seduced by the sometimes chimerical lure of technology. Too much of its emphasis went to finding an ever elusive technology that would solve the open source problem of multiple and diverse sources. As good as information technology has become, it has not provided the types of answers that COSPO sought. Moreover, in chasing the chimera of technology, COSPO tended to lose sight of its real goal: content. If the technology does not produce intelligence that analysts can use, it is pointless.

Technology for the sake of technology is a waste.

Finally, COSPO hit a wall -- the firewall of security. COSPO presumed that it could select several important open sources, bring them inside the firewall and satisfy the majority of IC needs. Nothing could be more dangerous, for at one stroke it guides the all-source analysts to a single, very limited "safe" site for some open sources, while failing to establish organizational, security, procurement and training protocols for assuring IC access to the full range of open sources and services, most of which change so frequently as to make a neat "importation" solution both impossible to achieve or to fund.

COSPO became little more than a venue for the various open source managers in each of the intelligence agencies to meet. But that very role underscores the futility of IC open source policy. For no other

collection discipline do we have separate programs in separate

agencies. Indeed, it would be ludicrous to suggest CIA, DIA and INR each have their own imagery or signals programs. For OSINT, however, this sort of duplicative frittering of resources was deemed acceptable. Moreover, with each agency left to its own open source devices, there has been little accountability for failing to collect,

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process and exploit open sources.

New Myths, New Realities

Half-a-year's production of open source intelligence for a variety of clients has led us to face a series of new myths and new realities.

Myth 1: OSINT as a Threat and a Savior. One of the prejudices of the IC towards OSINT is their view that some OSINT advocates believe that open source can provide most of what the IC needs.

Anyone foolish enough to believe this clearly would have no knowledge of the realities of intelligence. As long as there is vital information that needs to be obtained and is being denied us, there will always be a significant role for clandestine collection of all sorts.

Moreover, we are not talking just about information on rogue states, major threats, etc. Sometimes our allies and partners are also our problems, in such areas as trade, international pollution, etc.

At the same time, some OSINT advocates, like all true believers, see and tout promises they cannot fulfill. Some of these advocates are the people described above, who have little understanding or appreciation of the IC. Others, interestingly, are IC veterans who find themselves turned off by any number of problems: the large gap between

collection and processing/exploitation, that leaves so much collection unused; the continuing problem of over-classification -- much of it imposed by the Directorate of Operations -- that impedes useful and necessary sharing of information; or their own sense of the proper balance between open and clandestine sources.

There is a middle ground that few seem willing to occupy: OSINT as a significant collection discipline in its own right, properly balanced with the other collection sources in a true all-source plan. The reality, however, is that the conceit of the IC and the frustration of open

source advocates makes this middle ground untenable as yet.

Myth 2: The Technology Silver Bullet. The COSPO experience notwithstanding, the IC continues to hunt for that technology silver bullet. As noted above, this is a typical American response to a host of problems. Moreover, the IC has thrived on pushing the technology envelope farther and farther. Right now for example, the IC is spending money to find some search engine that will make Internet searches easier, while spending even more money to make the Internet available to each analyst. Although the IC has come to appreciate that the private sector in information technology is now outpacing the IC, there seems to be some lingering nostalgia for the

"good old days" when the IC was the leading edge.

Our private sector open source experience has taught us that there is no silver bullet out there. There are many technologies available:

faster computers, better search engines. But what is lost in these technology hunts is the fact that technology is no more than a means to an end; it is not the end in itself. Moreover, technology only facilitates collection at some very raw level. It cannot replace skilled analysts who make difficult choices about what to collect and what to analyze. As with all other intelligence, OSINT collection is only the beginning. Even OSINT needs to be processed and exploited.

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and coherence of which they speak. Instead of an OSINT policy, the IC has a bunch of disparate OSINT operations that are likely to be

somewhat duplicative and are unlikely to achieve the bang for the buck of a coherent OSINT approach: IC wide, looking at both technology and content, but remembering that content is the ultimate

goal.

At the same time, the consumers of intelligence receive huge quantities of unsolicited OSINT and find that they can achieve information sharing goals themselves, using OSINT, without IC support. The creation of the Virtual Information Center in the Pacific Command, by the J-5, rather than the J-2, stands as a case in point. If the IC does not develop a policy and a concept of operations for dealing with OSINT, it will finds its consumers turning more and more to home-grown OSINT solutions that are not solutions at all, but rather make-shift alternatives to the IC.

Conclusion -- Some Final Observations

Despite the attention that has been given to OSINT, especially in the joint revolutions of the personal computer and the fall of the Soviet

empire, it remains an under-appreciated and underutilized source. The commercial OSINT world itself has its own problems in terms of efficiency, economies of scale and consistently user friendly products.

But there is no silver bullet out there that will automatically solve those problems and create a human-free OSINT chain that has much value.

The myths currently surrounding OSINT warp some of the realities.

Addressing those realities and debunking those myths would go a long way toward helping OSINT be the INT it should be and the INT that could be of much greater assistance to the all-source intelligence process.

Mark M. Lowenthal is President of OSS USA. He was Staff Director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the 104th Congress (1995-97) and a Deputy Assistant Secretary of

State for Intelligence (1988-89).

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