Jeffrey T. Richelson: The Value Of Open Source Intelligence

Human Intelligence (HUMINT) can be more affected by redundancy in combat zones when more than one tactical element working in the same area of operation. “reduce redundancy of effort, and take advantage of positive relations that are built by the secondary HUMINT collectors. It is important to note as each secondary HUMINT asset is examined that some have a secondary mission to collect intelligence.” (Wright, David N 2003). These different echelons working in the same area will collect information about cases and report it to the chain of command, it will process to intelligence. In the operational level, when all these reports gathered and summed together, it will create redundancy, and can be work positively to confirm the data and validate the source or the case. In the other hand, it can be represented a wasting of man power and trained collectors all summing their efforts to the same case or source. These situations created due to tracking of tracking system or a structural issue in the organizations. The structural reformation in the intelligence agency or element it will take a long process, from studying, training, funding, set up communication channels, recognize the rule of the new structure in the process of collecting intelligence, and places its proper spot in the intelligence cycle to agile the whole process. Also, to have a better product than before, less redundant,

Intelligence is all the information gathered by a country regarding political issues, both internal and external. Intelligence is collected through spies, special agents, internet data collection, pictures and many other sources.

The 1776 united States of America Declaration of Independence contain the words that succinctly describe our national objective, strategy, and message, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” In today’s United States of America, the world acknowledges American’s as the preeminent owner of individual freedoms, holding and promoting these three basic principles for some 240 years. During these years, the U.S. has employed the use of intelligence to shape its objectives and strategies, and then in times of war used the same intelligence to shape strategic messages against foreign powers. However, as hostilities decline and give way to the restoration of relative peace, the use of intelligence for strategic messages against foreign powers ceases. Under these circumstances, the void created by secession of U.S. messages, provides a communication opportunity to foreign powers for transmission of anti-U.S. messages. Attempts have been made to reinstate the offices that during war countered these anti-U.S. messages to a comprehensive reorganization of the U.S Government intelligence community. This paper does not support creation of a new agency or department to utilize existing strategic intelligence.

Since 2010, integration has been the vanguard initiative of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). This initiative has been successful in several areas to include: the creation of National Intelligence Managers (NIM) for all primary geographic regions and functional areas; enhanced transparency; and the focus on the negative impacts of over classifying documents. However, not all efforts to integrate the intelligence community (IC) have been successful. For instance, the ODNI did not succeed at creating a comprehensive sharing environment, and has not fully integrated federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies. Although, these failed areas of integration can be mitigated in the future through the appropriate initiatives taken by the ODNI.

As we have seen throughout the entire history of warfare, ancient world terrorism, political intrigue and elitist terrorism of the middle ages, and into modern terrorism, intelligence is of vital importance on both sides. Armed forces have always used intelligence of some form be it sneaking up a hill and scouting what is on the other side to the use of modern platforms such as

Since 9/11, the intelligence community has improved greatly. It is not that they have been reconstructed from the ground up, or that their mission has completely changed, it is, in the community’s eye anyway, that they now all share information, no matter how important or how small. This information sharing now even includes all the way down to local and tribal authorities. The reasoning is that, even if it might be small or seem insignificant to you at your level, it may be the piece someone somewhere else in the country needs.

In today’s modern world of security threats, intelligence and the ability to respond to incidents are the keys to survival. As technology continues to change and advance, we also must change our security procedure and techniques. Dina Evans from LookingGlass has a good definition of threat intelligence, “We define threat intelligence as the combination of technical and contextual information regarding existing or emerging threats from all available sources. It has been evaluated and analyzed for accuracy, timeliness, and relevancy, and implemented among an organization’s tactical, operational, and strategic stakeholders.” (Evans, 2016). The process of threat intelligence feeds into all

Intelligence in this day in age is a vital component of a countries security. The newest proposal increases intelligence spending between 2 and 3 billion dollars, a total adding to nearly $35 billion. In addition to military enhancement, the FBI and other law enforcement/intelligence agencies will also be included in this proposal. A new system has been proposed by President Bush that all information be shared among all agencies. DoD, FBI, and the Department of Counterterrorist Center have drawn closer together to create a Terrorist Threat Integration Center to evaluate information blended from all sources associated with terrorism and to act upon those findings accordingly.

Intelligence is the knowledge that provides security for our country; experience comes from our analysts and ability is derived from our freedoms. Over many decades all of this has been accomplished without the use of advanced technology, mainly through highly trained operatives who have infiltrated and obtained information from both foreign and homeland enemies. The current advancements have provided options that ensure the safety and efficiency of intelligence operations, surveillance being a

Production of intelligence has change drastically since the Cold War. During the Cold War, the main intelligence gathering methods were mainly organized on the collection side, using SIGINT, IMINT, and HUMINT. Today we face a new enemy, where we must change our typical intelligence gathering methods. As we changed our methods,

Military intelligence extensions have been greatly successful while operating in different nations with the utilization of various types of intelligence: Human Intelligence (HUMINT), Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT), Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT), Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), Strategic Intelligence (STRATINT), Signals Intelligence (SIG- INT), and Technical Intelligence (TECHINT). Essentially expressed, and diminished to the most reduced shared element, intelligence is data of the world about

The intelligence community has still not adapted to the non-traditional problem set. Threats evolve much faster than bureaucracies can ever hope to adapt. Doctrine is a mire and tradition clogs the wheels of the machine. Groundbreaking ideas are shouted down; intelligence operations are run “by the numbers.” On a personal note, as a senior intelligence NCO and acting intelligence officer with multiple tours in Special Operations, I have made a career out of breaking training exercises in garrison, with our troops meeting all commander’s requirements and desired end-states several days early, by re-tooling doctrine and reconfiguring intelligence products and procedures to meet idiosyncratic and “unsolvable” problem sets. In so doing,

The United States Intelligence community draws on advanced technology and analytical techniques. An intelligence process that sets objectives, collects, analyzes, and report findings, with feedback loops integrated throughout. Explicitly, the intelligence community advantages technology and tradecraft within a proscribed process. However, estimation of threats and decision-making are outcomes of human thinking. Analysts and policymakers create mental models, or short cuts to manage complex, changing environments. In other words, to make sense of ambiguous or uncertain situations, humans form cognitive biases. Informed because of personal experience, education, and specifically applied to intelligence analysis, Davis

Intelligence is one of the first lines of defense used by the United States to protect the Country against both foreign and domestic threats (Johnson, 2010). There are many ways and methods of intelligence collections employed by the intelligence community such as “spies, eavesdropping, technical sources, and openly available materials” etc (Clark, 2013). Method used also depends on many factors such as available resources, time, agency involved, and intelligence collection source. U.S Intelligence agencies use different collection and analytical method that suit their collection function, structure and pro¬cess. For example, DNI/OSC relies on open source (OSINT), CIA uses human intelligence (HUMINT) tactic, DIA uses measurements and signatures intelligence (MASINT), NSA employs signals intelligence (SIGINT), and NGA utilizes imagery intelligence (IMINT) techniques for their intelligence collections (Clark, 2013).

Counterintelligence (CI) involves actions aimed at protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage from penetration and disruption by hostile nations or their intelligence services (Lowenthal, 2014). Three main components of Counterintelligence include collection, defensive and offensive. The collection is the ability to gather intelligence information about rivalry capabilities against own nation; defensive part of CI involves measures to prevent and thwart other nations ' attempts to penetrate into own nation 's intelligence system; while an offensive aspect deal with running double agents to penetrate, manipulate, exploit, and control targeted adversaries. CI is said to be the most essential aspect of the intelligence disciplines, in the sense that it helps in collecting vast quantities of secret information and produce an excellent analysis of intelligence, although, ineffective counterintelligence measures may diminish confidence in the final results (Van Cleave, 2013).