Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [77]
SOME INTELLIGENCE HUMOR
In addition to GEOINT, SIGINT, HUMINT, OSINT, and MASINT, intelligence officers, in their lighter moments, speak of other INTs (collection disciplines). One of the most famous is PIZZINT—pizza intelligence. This refers to the belief that Soviet officials based in Washington, D.C., would keep watch for large numbers of pizza delivery trucks going late in the evening to the CIA, DOD, the State Department, and the White House as an indication that a crisis was brewing somewhere The notion was that, after seeing many trucks making deliveries, the officials would hurry back to the Soviet embassy to alert Moscow that something must be going on somewhere in the world.
Some other INTs that intelligence officers talk about are
LAVINT: lavatory intelligence, such as heard in restrooms,
RUMINT: rumor intelligence,
REVINT: revelation intelligence, and
DIVINT: divine intelligence.
One of the hallmarks of the post-cold war world is the increased availability of OSINT. The ratio of open source to classified intelligence on Russia has more than reversed from its 20:80 ratio during the cold war. The number of closed societies and denied areas has decreased dramatically. Many of the former Warsaw Pact states are now NATO allies. This does not mean that classified collection disciplines are no longer needed, but that the areas in which OSINT is available have expanded.
The major advantage of OSINT is its accessibility, although it still requires collection. OSINT needs less processing and exploitation than the technical INTs or HUMINT, but it still requires some P&E. Given the diversity of OSINT, it may be more difficult to manipulate for the purpose of deception than are other INTs. OSINT is also useful for helping put the secret information into a wider context, which can be extremely valuable. DNI McConnell has referred to OSINT as the starting point for collection, as have others before him—in other words, looking for the needed intelligence in open sources first before tasking classified collection sources, either technical or human. Putting this seemingly obvious plan into practice has proven difficult over the years for a number of reasons, including preferences within the intelligence community and among policy makers for classified sources and the difficulty that the intelligence community’s open source activity has had in keeping pace with the explosion of open sources.
The main disadvantage of OSINT is its volume. In many ways, it represents the worst wheat and chaff problem. Some argue that the so-called information revolution has made OSINT more difficult without a corresponding increase in usable intelligence. Computers have increased the ability to manipulate information; however, the amount of derived intelligence has not increased apace.
The OSINT phenomenon echo is the effect of a single media story being picked up and repeated by other media sources until the story takes on a much larger life of its own, appearing more important than it actually is. Echo is difficult to deal with unless one is aware of the original story and can therefore knowingly discount its effect.
Popular misconceptions about OSINT persist, even within the intelligence community. OSINT is not free. Buying print media costs the intelligence community money, as do various other services that are useful—if not essential—in helping analysts manage, sort, and sift large amounts of data more efficiently. Another misconception is that the Internet or, more properly, the Worldwide Web, is the main fount of OSINT. Experienced intelligence practitioners have discovered that the Internet—meaning searches among various sites—yields no more than 3 to 5 percent of the total OSINT take. That is why practitioners spend much time on what is called the “Deep Web,” meaning that much larger portion of the Web that has not been indexed by search engines. Some experts estimate that the Deep Web is roughly some 500 times bigger than the easily accessible Web.
Even though OSINT has