Romanian Intelligence Studies Review (Jun 2024)
WHAT IS REALLY “OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE”? A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE DIFFERENT NOTIONS OF OSINT
Abstract
The recent Ukrainian conflict has spurred innovative uses of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and nurtured several academic articles on the topic. It is just the last example of an overall rapid evolution of OSINT since the emergence of the Internet in the ‘90s, the arrival of smartphones, and the flourishing of social media and other openly available sources online in the early 21st century. This fast evolvement has encouraged researchers and practitioners to study the validity, significance and legitimacy of this type of intelligence (OSINT) coming from openly accessible sources. However, in spite of the increased use and investigation of OSINT, its rapid evolution has hindered any universal definition of it. While practitioners and scholars have tried to conceptualise it since the beginning of its institutionalisation, different definitions shaped over the course of OSINT’s expansion are ambiguous at times, vague, or incomplete. The latter has an impact on the creation of procedures for practitioners, recruitment needs, development of regulations and research. This article studies those nuances in terminology and extracts the main conceptual differences present in some of the most prominent definitions offered by practitioners, oversight bodies and academics on OSINT. It does so through a comparative analysis of the definitions presented, which are not limited to one jurisdiction or body. Offering a structured taxonomy of the different shades of OSINT is the novelty of this article, which is a necessary first step towards a potential universal definition of the term.
