“OSINT should be more secret” – Wrong!

Jennifer Sims of Georgetown University recently made remarks at the Open Source conference that “open source intelligence should be more secret” — I totally disagree. This is exactly the mindset and secretive culture we need to get away from. While she makes a good case that sometimes open source intelligence products can tell the enemy what critical pieces of information decision makers are seeking, she overstates the risk that unclassified open source reports actually have.

The co-chair of the 9/11 commission, Lee Hamilton, issued scathing remarks against the U.S. government’s propensity to classify information that had no business being classified, putting a huge burden on the special handling requirements and red tape that must be performed to manage that information and eventually declassify it. Additionally, the Director of National Intelligence issued an information sharing policy memorandum calling for intelligence products to be written at the lowest classification, even unclassified, if possible, without loosing context. Moreover, homeland security, law enforcement, and first responders need intelligence in the unclassified form to do their jobs.

Instead, if open source information answers a policymaker’s question, and it is sensitive, then the IC should mark it “CUI” a caveat that means it’s controlled but unclassified. This way it can be released across the federal government, but isn’t posted on the internet or other widely public forums for the world (our enemies) to see. We have a responsibility to provide intelligence information to the widest audience possible.