Once upon a time, being a spy was all about secrets.Increasingly, the question is what is hidden in plain sight. [non-paywalled link] . From the report: From Facebook posts and YouTube clips to location pings from cell phones and car apps, vast amounts of data exist on the open internet for anyone to see. U.S. intelligence agencies have long struggled to leverage this data, known as open source intelligence (OSINT). But that's starting to change. In October, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the nation's intelligence agencies, brought in Jason Barrett, a longtime analyst and cyber expert, to help the U.S. intelligence community's OSINT efforts. His immediate role is to assist the intelligence community in developing a national OSINT strategy, which will focus on coordination, data collection, and tool development to improve approaches to this type of intelligence activity. I will put it there. A spokesperson said ODNI plans to implement the plan in the coming months.
Barrett's appointment, not previously publicly reported, comes after more than a year of work on a strategy led by the Central Intelligence Agency, which has long led the government's efforts on OSINT. The challenge with other forms of intelligence gathering, such as electronic surveillance and human intelligence, can be to collect enough information covertly in the first place. For OSINT, the challenge is sifting useful insights from the incredible amount of information available digitally. “Our biggest weakness in OSINT is the sheer volume of data we collect,” says Randy Nixon, director of the CIA's Open Source Enterprise Division. President Nixon's office has developed a tool similar to ChatGPT that uses AI to sift through the ever-growing flood of data. Currently available to thousands of users across the federal government, the tool shows analysts the most important information and automatically summarizes content. Government task forces have been warning since the 1990s that the United States risks falling behind in OSINT. But federal intelligence agencies generally prioritize the information they collect themselves, hindering progress.
