PDF Ebook Freeing Knowledge, Telling Secrets: Open Source Intelligence and Development
There are two key areas under constant pressure as the information revolution accelerates that must be addressed; knowledge and knowledge management, or in other words, collection and production. In relation to security matters, the question is how to find the best information to produce relevant and useful intelligence, and then what is the best method to understand that information and develop the appropriate responses. This task has traditionally been the domain of the varying intelligence agencies, who have cultivated an air of mystery and secrecy that is ill fitted to meet the demands of modern counter-terrorism, or even the level of information sharing that is required in the network-centric warfare championed by many in the Pentagon. As the information revolution continues and more individuals have more access to more and more information, it becomes clear that attempting to restrict and control information flows becomes an exercise in futility. It also is apparent that while society at large, and particularly the business community, have begun to embrace the potential offered by information technology advances, the intelligence community lags behind. This research paper will introduce two constructs for dealing with information flows that take full advantage of technological gains, while challenging traditional methods and assumptions about knowledge and knowledge management. For collection, open source intelligence; for production, open source development.
Intelligence is defined as the product resulting from the collection, processing, integration, analysis, evaluation, and interpretation of available information concerning foreign countries or areas, also information and knowledge about an adversary obtained through observation, investigation, analysis, or understanding. The crucial component of this definition is that intelligence is a product that must be created, it is not simply enough to know something; if it is not packaged, analyzed, and filtered, than it has no value to policy makers. The role of the intelligence product itself is to give decision makers relevant information about the outside world so that informed choices can be made, or put succinctly, "intelligence defines reality for those whose actions could alter it".1 Increasingly, the focus of intelligence agencies has been to move away from strategic intelligence towards an emphasis on tactical information, or in the words of the Tim Weiner in the New York Times; "The big picture has been bumped by spot news. Strategic intelligence in the power to know your enemies intentions, spot news is what happened last night in Waziristan"
The root of the inability of the intelligence community to effectively counter modern asymmetric threats in the form of netwar and 4GW [fourth generation war] is the culture of secrecy that is the legacy of the Cold War. The obsession with secrecy is the most damaging effect of the intense competition between the two Superpowers, and despite the end of the Cold War, the culture of secrecy still permeates that intelligence community.3 There is an assumption in the intelligence community that information becomes more valuable as it rises in classification, creating a closed system that values keeping secrets more than accumulating general knowledge that is publicly available.4 Combined with excessive bureaucracies and competitiveness among agencies, the result is information hoarding, technological ignorance, unaccountability, distrust of public information, and a culture where personal power radiates from the ability to know things that know one else does.
This phenomenon was described by Air Force Lt. General Mike Hayden, speaking as director of the NSA in 2002, as the "stovepipe mentality" that only allows information to move vertically, but not horizontally to the areas where it is actually needed.6 In addition, the information that is developed is often either unusable, or of limited use due to the classified nature of the sources.7 In one instance, the US detected North Korea breaching safeguard agreements made with the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) using satellite imagery, but to protect the sources and methods used would not provide the raw data to the IAEA, limiting the ability of the IAEA to hold the North Koreans accountable.8 Classification also creates huge methodological problems for academics attempting to conduct studies on sensitive areas, findings often can not be shared for peer-review, limiting the open discussion that is essential to sound research and undermining the results.9 For policy makers, intelligence bills that deal with classified material often go unread; due to the legal requirements that they not discuss the contents all debate is stifled and bills dealing with important issues of covert operations and funding are voted on blind.
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PDF Ebook Freeing Knowledge, Telling Secrets: Open Source Intelligence and Development
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