By Dee Smith
The most common, and probably most important, type of intelligence is known as OSINT (Open Source Intelligence). It involves collecting information in the public domain and in “gray” sources that can be exploited legally but might not have been intended, by the originators of the information, for public access: subscriber-only databases with address and legal-action histories, for example; alumni websites; social media accounts; PDFs on personal websites; websites like Glass Door or RateMyProfessor; conference schedules, or materials on the dark web.
OSINT has always been important. Probably the single most significant intelligence-collection activity in World War I was acquiring, reading, and analyzing newspapers in enemy and neutral countries. After World War II, the new CIA took over the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS, pronounced “fibbis”), offering invaluable digests of radio and eventually television broadcasts around the world. The Internet transformed the OSINT world: CIA folded FBIS into a new Open Source Center in 2005, recognizing that the channels for OSINT were proliferating. OSINT has become more crucial than ever for both private intelligence agencies like SIG and for government intelligence services. It requires skill and knowledge to find and filter the most important data — “Googling” is only a start — and then know how to put the pieces together to reveal hidden patterns and indicators, the things people do not expect you to know or want you to know.
There are many other types of intelligence collection: IMINT (Imagery Intelligence), which includes airborne and space-borne imagery; ELINT (Electronic Intelligence): SIGINT (Signals Intelligence), including interception of electronic signals during transmissions; and MASINT (Measurement and Signature Intelligence), which analyzes “signatures,” such as the thermal signatures of particular weapons, or the distinctive electronic signals sent by particular technologies. At SIG, we employ any of these techniques that are needed for a specific project that can be legally deployed. SIGINT, for example, is generally not legally permitted in the private sector.
There is one important collection method I have left out, which is HUMINT, or Human Intelligence. Essentially, this means collecting information from people. Sometimes it is also called active intelligence, because it often involves interacting with people, as opposed to passive methods like OSINT or IMINT. Broadly speaking, HUMINT is another way to discover the information environment around a subject and also what is sometimes called their “pattern of life”. It is most useful in combination with OSINT and other intelligence techniques.
HUMINT practices range from discussions, interviews, and interrogations (not necessarily what that word implies in the Hollywood sense, but structured questioning of subjects of investigation using specific methods and techniques), to clandestine elicitation and observation. The latter includes everything from “secret shoppers” to private-eye-type surveillance on the ground to what is sometimes called “cloaked elicitation” — such as discovering and calling “off-sheet” references for a potential employee (that is, finding people they have worked with whom they did not volunteer as references). Surveillance intersects with HUMINT, ELINT, and other means, and is sometimes considered a separate technique, although many people categorically include it under HUMINT, as do I.
HUMINT is the oldest intelligence practice. It is becoming more important, but also more difficult. The reason it is becoming more important is that electronic information is becoming more and more sequestered — for reasons of privacy, security, and state concern for “data sovereignty” — and less and less dependable, due to data pollution.
The reader may wonder why such invasive techniques as HUMINT are used in private business contexts. The primary reason is to avoid costly or otherwise damaging mistakes. A pension plan, for example — investing, say, $100 million of other pensioners’ money into an operating company or fund — wants to know if the principals of that prospective investment have histories of deceptive business dealings, bankruptcies, litigation, or other negative indicators, as well as to understand their general operating characteristics (how they do business). HUMINT is one tool that can provide intelligence on these questions that cannot be obtained in any other way.
There are debates in the industry about what is and is not permissible, even if it is legal. For example, opinion and practice regarding intelligence on competitors can be divided into two camps: “competitive intelligence” and “competitor intelligence”. The latter uses any legal techniques to obtain information. The former places ethical guidelines around certain practices. Imagine that you happen to be sitting on a plane next to someone who works for a direct competitor. If you ask probing questions about their work without disclosing that you are working for one of their competitors, that would not be allowed under the generally accepted rules of competitive intelligence. However, those rules would generally allow some such questions, if you had disclosed your association before asking the questions.
The most confusing challenge is that laws, regulations, and policies and best practices surrounding intelligence vary widely from place to place and are constantly changing. A well-run private intelligence agency has to have one or more employees dedicated primarily to keeping up with these changes as well as other security and best-practices-related matters. Government intelligence operations, as arms of a sovereign state, are typically not so constrained, although in democratic societies there is usually legislative oversight.
HUMINT also includes espionage techniques, for example cultivating contacts (“assets” or confidential informants). These are individuals who knowingly provide information of various kinds for various reasons, including payment, personal beliefs and allegiances, blackmail, and coercion. They have inspired numberless fanciful novels and movies, but have played important roles throughout history.
Such clandestine operations are becoming much more difficult, however, because of electronic surveillance and tracking. Recruiting and protecting assets is increasingly difficult to do. They have very limited roles in private intelligence, primarily in fraud investigations and when doing fraud prevention through deep dives on the reputations and practices of individuals and companies.
But however challenging HUMINT collection is, increased state control of data, among other factors, is fragmenting and siloing the OSINT data array, leaving HUMINT to rise once again in importance.