Talk:Open-source intelligence

VALUE

This are might sound like an advert but it reflects current policy in the community, I think it should be unflagged. I am new to wiki but it seems that some users and administrators go pretty much over the edge on keeping this "commercial free" or "advert free" OSINT is one of the key facors in intelligence (and guess where wiki comes in on that picture... that was a sidenote...) and some of the proceedures may sound unacademic or like an advert... but this is what it is... so to those wikicleaners please relax a bit you have something great here but if you want non academic "real world" people that actually work in this business you will have to accept tha some of our contributions do not fully satisfy your standards. I just hope we can all live and benefit from one another... Thanks, Desertson 06:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

"some of the proceedures may sound unacademic or like an advert"

Then they shouldn't be in an encyclopaedia.

Jaavaaguru (talk) 13:59, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Let's start fresh

Going even further than David did, I am removing the entire old discussion. Let's start fresh, and everyone please be civil and behave in an adult, professional manner.--Jimbo Wales 17:16, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Archived: here. Peter O. (Talk) 08:07, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

A good decision!

Open Source Intelligence under one name or another has been around for hundreds of years. The significance today of OSINT in the USA is the conflict between military, government and the private sector as to how the bulk of intelligence should be obtained. With the Internet, instant communications, and advanced media search the bulk of actionable and predictive intelligence can be obtained from public, unclassified sources. The major multi-billion dollar US Defense Contractors will soon have the monopoly on military and government OSINT, and are actively seeking to become the sources for countries across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Government Agencies have been slow to embrace OSINT, or believe they already have suitable information feeds from the media, academia and public records. With much fanfare, news releases and statements the US Government has yet to fund any comprehensive movement to an Open Source model.

In the private sector Competitive Intelligence, focused and directed to specific industries still has opportunities for small and medium businesses to compete in niche markets, but that too is being consolidated by the major information providers. In the media OSINT is considered as nothing new, the everyday operation of a traditional newsroom. Investigative Journalists use searches, databases, primary interviews, sources, and leaks to write every feature.

Accredited Journalists have some protection in asking questions, and researching for recognized media outlets. Even so they are imprisoned, even executed for searching out what we know as OSINT. Private individuals remember --- Collecting data for foreign military, known military agents or subcontractors is espionage in most countries. - Alan Simpson, Washington, DC.

Showing some promise

This is showing some promise, but it is still a mess. Am delighted to see Jimbo Wales take an interest.

If someone wants to use www.oss.net/BASIC and www.oss.net/LIBRARY to actually figure out what has been best of the best the last eighteen years, I would be glad to help them (I understand I just cannot hire anyone. I do not, however, wish to deal with self-promoting vendors who are recent arrivals on the scene and now seek to claim a history they simply do not have. The above statement about US defense contractors having a monopoly is flat out wrong. I suggest that both Simpson and I and the CIA person be banned from posting to this article page (but welcome on this discussion page), and we let Wikipedia magic play itself out.

There are two trends, both promising:

1) We all seem to be converging on the need for universal free access to all information in all languages all the time. That includes the end of copyright as it has been manipulated by Disney and others--at a minimum, semantic web on top of Google breaks the copyright link which also opening up the possibility of getting structured footnotes for micro-cash. Hand-held devices (I could have given every one of the five billion poor a cell phone for the cost to date of the Iraq war) will be reach-back tools for both "teach me how" mentoring on demand, and "just enough, just in time" tailored public intelligence.

2) There is indeed a race between Wall Street and its European-based "gnomes" and the Collective Intelligence of We the People. I am absolutely committed to seeing Google.org merge with Serious Games and WikiCalc so that we can do "second life" scenario depictions and issue red-yellow-green scorecards for local, state, national, and global budgets (what I call reality-based budgeting, and the Comptroller General David Walker calls budgeting for the future). Despite attempts to use Web 2.0 to censor and control, I believe the cat is out of the bag and the people will ultimately prevail.

I have posted the program for IOP '07, everything can be viewed at www.oss.net/IOP. I invited Jimbo to speak but evidently his staff did not see fit to respond. I will gladly provide 6 scholarship seats to anyone recommended by the Wikipedia Foundation, and I would like very much to feature Wikipedia and new troll-free options at IOP '08.

Best wishes, Robert David Steele

The article needs help but biased editing is not helpful. Biased resources are questionable and often a waste of time. I saw your changes to this article and can't say your judgement as to what it needs was useful. Self-promting yes. Useful - not much, but a little. Try suggesting a SOURCED paragraph to add to the article that is not self promoting and maybe it'll be added (You do know sources that are not at your website, right?). WAS 4.250 17:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

This comment is understandable but remarkably ignorant. Are you unaware of the fact that my website is the library for the 25,000 pratitioners represented by 7,500 participants in the international conference, who came to hear the wisdom of 600 international experts other than myself as the host and moderator? Sorry, but your system is simply too cranky and disrespectful of collected knowledge. I note that the top of the article now has a complaint about the article not being international enough. Let me explain that clearly: I pointed the entire world to this article and asked them to add their international contributions, after I spent no less than two days fixing it up only to see it trashed by Alan Simpson and some fool from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service. At that point, the international community wrote Wikipedia off as a place for anything other than incidental secondary knowledge. Sorry 'about that--we tried, we all lose.~~ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Robert Steele (talk • contribs) 13:23, 4 April 2007 (UTC).

Here are two references, will not be spending any more time on this

I've been working this for eighteen years. www.oss.net/BASIC is a one page guide to the most important hot links, including the important work of others such as Joe Markowitz and General Al Gray. www.oss.net/LIBRARY is a searchable sortable work table to the entire collection, which includes contributions from over 600 world class people including the Director General of the Red Cross. If you think that pointing to the work of 600 others that I have been carefully archiving is self-promoting, then I really don't want your attention.

I'm going to give up on this page. It is what it is. Yes, First Monday had a fine article. Just about everything else is plagarism, mis-representation, or well-intentioned copy-catting (the East European OSINT pages, for example).

I respect Wikipedia as an idea, and I especially respect the fact that Jimbo took the time (as I took the time to visit Wikimania, something I plan to do annually), but the bottom line is that I have pointed all of you to eighteen years of work by the real pioneers (see the OSINT Honors at www.oss.net for the complete list) and somehow that does not seem to compute. I'm the hub, not the wheel, and frankly, I don't give a damn if anyone considers me self-promoting, that is so far off the mark as to be sad.

With best wishes, Robert David Steele

"... not related to open-source software"

I know that people have bigger fish to fry here, but this phrase in the opening paragraph bothers me.

First, OSINT was a major factor in the name esr and Bruce Perens chose for their post-free-software movement. The initial announcement (preserved at [1]) ends with this paragraph:

Yes, we're aware of the specialized meaning "open source" has in the intelligence community. This is a feature, not a bug.

Second, the article discusses competitive intelligence as well as national intelligence, and clearly, in industries where it makes a difference, open source code is one of the open sources you look at. If Microsoft wants to know where Sun is heading, they study Sun's investor reports, government filings, and press releases... and the source code to Java and Solaris.

I know what this phrase is trying to say--that OSINT isn't named after, nor are its practices significantly inspired by, OSS--and why it's there--because otherwise, many people would incorrectly assume that OSINT 'was' named after or patterned after OSS. But to say that OSINT and OSS aren't related at all, that the similar names are just a coincidence, isn't really true. There has to be a more precise way to get the across, but I can't think of it right now. --75.36.131.149 11:38, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the point is that OSINT is not related to Open source Software, but the proponents of Open source Software appear to see a derivation. It's very much one way traffic.

Frankly OSS is just another available source for an OSINT analyst.

ALR 11:57, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Introduction

Based on the general principle that you should not use a term to define itself, I changed this...

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is an information processing discipline that involves finding, selecting, and acquiring information from open sources and analyzing it to produce actionable intelligence.

to this...

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is an information processing discipline that involves finding, selecting, and acquiring information from publicly available sources and analyzing it to produce actionable intelligence. --Axiomatica 19:59, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

External Links

Deleted these broken links:

From Advocacy and analysis of OSINT http://www.isanet.org/noarchive/hulnick2.html Expanding Open Source Intelligence: Is There a Downside?

From News and Commentary http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060420-114257-9897r_page2.htm Washington Times - Inside the Ring: Secrecy culture - 21 April 2006 --Axiomatica 21:04, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Pathetic

am truly dismayed that this community has seen fit to completely purge OSS.Net and the seminal works of over 650 international authorities. This is childish, unprofessional, and very sad. Robert Steele, not interested in logging in.

Opening section is far too long

template seems to have changed though. ninety:one 19:56, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Can Someone Lock in the New Links that CIA Keeps Deleting?

I have added what I consider, after 20 years of advocacy against fierce opposition from CIA and its FBIS minions, a few essential links. I don't have the time or energy to fight the morons. If there is an adult with Wiki authority to lock in the links I have added, similar to the manner in which the CIA links are locked in (I have more integrity than they do and would NEVER consider deleting their links), then I think we are all better off for. If not, www.oss.net will remain up forever, and continues to be *the* reference site for OSINT--neither the government nor the vendors are honest on this topic. ~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by RobertDavidSteeleVivas (talk • contribs) 17:08, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

personal attacks

Edit summaries like this are personal attacks. Please comment on content, not editors, thanks. Gwen Gale (talk) 05:06, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

can this group be rational, please?

I will summarize the situation as I see it, and hope that this group can be rational. Otherwise I will go to Jimbo Wales and ask that this page be locked AFTER I reinsert the links some fool keeps deleting.

1. In 1992 after four years experience in creating the Marine Corps Intelligence Center, I persuaded the Marine Corps to sponsor an international conference on OSINT. CIA refused to attend unless it was secret and open only to US citizens. Admiral Bill Studeman, then Deputy Director of Central Intelligence agreed with my appeal and ordered CIA to attend the event, open to all. Instead of the usual 150 "insiders" we attracted just over 650, including 15 from Sweden led by Stefan Dedijer, the father of modern business intelligence.

2. I was forced to quit government service in order to keep running the annual event. The Marine Corps lawyers refused to give me permission for a second one, claiming that the phenomenal success sof the first was due to my insider status. I have walked away from three retirements to pursue this public service campaign.

3. As soon as Admiral Studeman moved on CIA refused to attend these events and began refering to "Open Sources." I know these people well. The FBIS crowd is a mix of grandmothers and young kids that would never cut it in either clandestine operations or all-source analysis (I have served in three of the four directorates).

4. The end result is that over 20 years I was able to attract 750 international speakers, including KGB generals, the director general of the Red Cross, the military advisor to the Secretary General of the UN, and many many othes. I did not allow vendors to speak, only exhibit--this has been a non-commercial and break-even event over the years.

5. Those people, not me, produced the 30,000 pages of information on all aspects of open source information and open source intelligence (the two are different, something this page does not reflect), all I have been is the host. The web site is public, free, and hence a public service. It really surprises and irritates me to find that anyone considers links to the page to be self-promotional.

6. The fact that I have written the seminal articles on OSINT (see www.oss.net/OSINT-S and www.oss.net/OSINT-O) should not interfere with their being acknowledged. This is like saying that Buckminster Fuller should not have a link from a World Game page to his seminal article on the topic.

7. I find it amusing that links to the NATO documents are accepted but great lengths are gone to in concealing the fact that I wrote the first, provided 85% of the material for the second. I note that the links to the DIA OSINT Handbook and the Special Operations OSINT Handbook have never survived.

Bottom line: this page has been taken over and corrupted by three specific vandal groups:

1. CIA/FBIS light-weights who cannot stand to be shown up 2. one particular world-class fool 3. Well-intentioned but ignorant wikipedia groupies that seem to have decided that for all of my accomplshments (which they have no clue, my personal page reflects less than 25% of what I have done for the public, but I avoid trying to fix that) that anything I put on this page is somehow self-promotional.

I have decided to persist on the matter of the specific reference as well as the Forbes ASAP article on Reinventing Intelligence.

Wikipedia is now achieving critical mass, but these editing wars are infantile, stupid, and counter-productive. If anyone wants to have a conference call on this, I will gladly participate. The REASON there is no international play on this page is because the three vandal groups have totally turned off a community of 7,500 I have trained (who now manage 25,000 practitioners of government open source intelligence--CIA talks to 11 countries, I interact with 90-120 in any given year). If you as a group want this page to be real, to be truly helpful, to be professional, then you have to shut down the three vandal groups.

With best wishes, Robert Steele

~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by RobertDavidSteeleVivas (talk • contribs) 14:07, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Robert, I'm well-aware of who you are, since I remember you flogging this stuff on The WELL umpty-ump years.

And yes Robert, yourself putting stuff on this page which promotes you is by definition "self-promoting". Not that hard.

these editing wars are infantile, stupid, and counter-productive - yes they are. Unfortunately, not in the way you think, especially given your past history (as Robert Steele (talk · contribs)) of being unable to understand collaboration and your recent warning. --Calton | Talk 15:07, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

can the group create a round-robin discussion that includes Calton and myself?

Thank you, Calton, for making it clear that it is you that is seeking to repress my contributions to this page. What part of "host" do you not understand? What part of pioneer? What part of selfless effort over 20 years to the point that I have no retirements, no savings?

I appeal to the larger group for a common sense solution to this. This is about substance and public service, not self-promotion. Does anyone else care to comment? I will gladly participate in an open forum or conference call on this page. What CIA does not realize, and what most of you are probably also unaware of, is that a select private sector group is busy creating the World Brain that will bury both CIA and Google--and will be "open" in every positive sense of the word. I could easily have funded a 100 people to put in one item each on this page, but I did not. I do NOT see the sense of censoring me because I happen to have spent 20 years nurturing thousands of others--unlike anyone else at CIA or in relation to this page. Let me know. My direct email is bear@oss.net

Carlton, thank you for NOT deleting my seven contributed links this time around, I would really like to see others (and yourself, since you evidently have no idea what each link leads to) comment on the utility of those links to the page.

Best wishes to all, Robert —Preceding unsigned comment added by RobertDavidSteeleVivas (talk • contribs)

Don't thank me, because I'm removing them until you make an explicit case for including them other than "because I said so".

Thank you, Calton, for making it clear that it is you that is seeking to repress my contributions to this page. - I believe you are suffering from a reading deficit, if that's what's "clear" to you. I was merely responding to your fact-free paranoid classification scheme. For such a "pioneer", you tend to think inside very narrow little boxes.

Speaking of things not understood, which part of "This is the only warning you will receive" and its constituent parts did you overlook? Particularly all the various rules of the road and content policies that were included?

Bottom line: this isn't your website, and there are expectations, procedures, processes, and requirements which are not yours to control. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is, well, not particularly smart. --Calton | Talk 00:23, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

And for chrissake, add your signature --Calton | Talk 00:29, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, Calton, I put in explicit directions for a sig. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 04:45, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

appeal for third and fourth informed opinions

It would be helpful at this juncture if a third and fourth person--individuals willing to actually follow the links and read the substance and comment on their suitability. In my opinion, as someone who is vastly more familiar with the entire body of OSINT literature (including the internationals who refuse to be party of this petty editing war), they are substantially more relevant and useful to the public than most of the other links.

I am not justifying these links because "I say so." Rather, I am posting these links for evaluation by others, rather than blind deletions by Carlton who had clearly not read any of them!!!!!

I thought I was signing with the ~~

I recommend that several others, willing to read and judge, so so, and that the links then be locked so we can be done with this foolishness. I will continue to "undo" Carlton every time he "undoes" me, and recommend that he be warned by whoever it is that does the warning around here.

Robert Steele —Preceding unsigned comment added by RobertDavidSteeleVivas (talk • contribs) 01:26, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Robert Steele, you can create a time-stamped sig with 4 tildes, thus --~~~~

Section headers are denoted with multiple equals signs, thus ===Your section heading here=== . This appears as a header and in the Table of Contents.

There is a 3 Revert Rule (3RR in wiki-speak) which brings sanctions if 3RR occurs in a 24 hour period by a single editor. Careful.

Chins up, editors

The world is watching

To all editors, I propose that edits be discussed on the talk page before they appear on the article page. This is common practice on many of the articles in the encyclopedia.

--Ancheta Wis (talk) 04:21, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

It never hurts to ask others for help. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 20:30, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I read the link, it's valid

It's suitable for the article and published in a reliable source. 203.194.11.216 (talk) 03:35, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed addition of two See Also and two references

If there is no objection, I propose to add two See Also:

Community Open Source Program Office, Open Source Investment Strategy (late 1990's) Report to the Director of Central Intelligence, the Challenge of Global Coverage (July 1997)

The first was written by Joe Markowitz, the second by Boyd Sutton. Both are stored at www.oss.net with persistent URLs, so hopefully we are over the "self-promotion" bit.

If there is no objection, I propose to add three links in references, all to actual documents:

General Al Gray, Commandant of the Marine Corps, "Intelligence Challenges of the 1990's," American Intelligence Journal (Winter 1988-1989). This was the first-ever public call for changing the focus on intelligence from the Soviet Union to revolution, crime, and terrorism; and also the first-ever public call by a Service or Agency head to shift emphasis from secret to open sources. Joint Military Intelligence Training Center, Open Source Intelligence Handbook (June 1996) Special Operations Forces Open Source Intelligence Handbook (Strawman)

All of these are visible with links via www.oss.net/BASIC. If BASIC can be locked in and protected, perhaps there is no need for the added references, but I suspect my work, which has now survived three days, will be vandalized eventually, so I defer to the group on what is best.

Best wishes, RobertDavidSteeleVivas (talk) 19:47, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

reunite the communities?

somewhere in the back and forth the OSINT communities appear to have been disconnected. most are under history instead of communities. if there is no objection, I propose:

1) to restore the seven (now) eight communities in order: Government, Military, Law Enforcement, Academia, Business, Media, Non-Profit, and Civil Society (includes Religions and Labor Unions and Advocacy groups like World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility

2) to very slowly and selectively begin creating mini-reference sections, no more than five links at first, growing to ten, under each community--for example, under Law Enforcement, would point to the top presentations from Interpol, Europol, Scotland Yard, Italian Gendarme, etcetera.

3) create an International section, seed it, and then ask roughly ten of the OSINT chiefs abroad to consider contributing links to their own stuff (for example, each Eastern European country has its own OSINT web site now).

will check back early next week.

RobertDavidSteeleVivas (talk) 23:02, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

will get pdf for footnote ten, and link it

Footnote 10 (at this time) is not available online, but it is so important that I will get a pdf made at Kinko's, archive it, and include link. This is the article that I responded to with "The (DNI) Open Source Program: Missing in Action" which is online. I thought so much of this fellow's work that when OSS morphed into a division of a much larger enterprise, I sent him the entire official OSS archives including videos of all OSS conferences, and he is in the process of doing the second PhD thesis on OSINT that I know of--the first was created by a Belgian whose presentations to the annual conference a re archived within www.oss.net/LIBRARY.

Best wishes, RobertDavidSteeleVivas (talk) 11:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Can we add www.oss.net to the See Also?

ever since this page came into being there has been a systematic effort by those in denial to eradicate references to www.oss.net. I respectfully ask that someone else visit this site and if they concur, that they add Open Source Solutions Network (www.oss.net) to the See Also section. That web site is a permanent site that will forevermore serve as the public access repository to all OSINT materials created from 1988 to 2006 (both in archive, and using the links i nthe portal pages, to other external OSINT including CIA publications). Thank you.

RobertDavidSteeleVivas (talk) 14:38, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Review of External Links

In response to the administrative note asking for a review of excessive links, below are the ones that I recommend someone else delete if they agree, or move to news and commentary:

   * Defense Consulting & Outsourcing - Integrating Open Source Intelligence:  VENDOR, delete
   * The New Craft of Intelligence: Making the Most of Open Private Sector Knowledge  MOVE to Advocacy
   * Actual Intelligence Case Studies Leveraging Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)  MOVE to Advocacy
   * Sailing the Sea of OSINT in the Information Age  MOVE to News and Commentary
   * The Intelligence Network  VENDOR, delete
   * OSINT discussion group at Yahoo!  MOVE to News and Commentary
   * Open Source Center - U.S. government arm focusing on open source intelligence under the DNI  KEEP as central
   * Collection and Use of Open-Source Intelligence - A to Z  KEEP
   * Naval Open Source Intelligence  DELETE or MOVE someplace, lightweight
   * C4I.org  DELETE as lightweight
   * Webintel Tools, Tips & News For Early Warning, Crisis Management & OSINT Practitioners  MOVE to advocacy
   * EUROSINT FORUM not-for-profit association aiming to promote OSINT in EU institutions and Member States  MOVE to advocacy or DELETE (VENDOR sponsored organization, false flag)
   * Open Source Intelligence (OSINT): Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service, December 5, 2007  KEEP as Central
   * Critique and Expansion of CRS Report on DNI OSINT  Keep as Central
   * "Freeing knowledge, telling secrets: Open source intelligence and development" Cody Burke, Bond University, May 2007  MOVE to News and Commentary

I myself will take no action, limiting myself to offering opinion here in this discussion group. As the DNI OSINT Conference approaches in mid-September, many will not be attending but will be seeking guidance on the Internet, this page can and should be as good as we can all make it before then.

RobertDavidSteeleVivas (talk) 20:27, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Sock puppet watch

There are single-contribution edits occurring. Unless these editors contribute in a sustained way to the encyclopedia, their edits will be reverted. I will wait one week to see if useful edits occur from these editors. One way to prove that these edits are not from single-issue drive-by edits, is to add usable content to other articles, talk pages, and user pages. But lack of content speaks for itself.

As in any community, there will be points of view. Everyone has useful knowledge to contribute. It takes time, knowledge, expertise and judgement to contribute; a single contribution to the encyclopedia by a single editor will be taken as good-faith evidence until the week is up. This means that any multiple sock puppets can then be revealed for what they are. Any objections? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 19:43, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation Needed

Ancheta Wis or any other uber editor out there, I would like to create a page on Dan Butler the new Acting Assistant Deputy DNI for Open Source but there is already a page for "Dan Butler" and I don't know how to disambiguate. Can you help please? Bear bs (talk) 03:20, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Try the following markup on a new page ---

'''Dan Butler''' may refer to:
* [[Dan Butler (Open Source Intel...)]], a kind of ...
* [[Dan Butler (historian and wrestler)]]
{{disambig}}

You may not have the ability to create a page for several days, but after the new editor timer has expired, you ought to be able to create a page. If you feel the need to create the page, then open a red link for Dan Butler and let the wiki take its course. But you will have to fend off the New Page patrol for non-notability etc. And unless Dan Butler has some other credentials his page may very well die in the jungle that is the encyclopedia. It helps to have pictures, links to other topics, categories, a place in a larger infobox, and a set of like-minded editors with similar interests. If you can interest editors from other countries, that always helps. But they need to be able to write English. If some definite article is missing from a noun, for example, then that could also hurt the chances of the page. If none of this makes sense to you, then browse and lurk to learn more. You may find some surprising allies. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 04:05, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Would be nice if undoing were done by someone who knew what they were doing

I am not going to waste my time undoing what has been undone by a person who has no understanding of the topic of this page nor my role in it. I thought we had settled this. I ask for other mature individuals to examine each of the links and all of the text that was undone, and decide for yourselves if they are relevant. I really cannot help this page achieve the accuracy, the international nature, or the depth it could achieve. Single source is a web site with 2500 sources. What part of that do these people not understand? The fact that I happen to be the 20-year long nurturer of the global OSINT dialog by 7,500 individuals should NOT be held against me.

Can someone please overturn the individuals who falsely accuse me of self-promoting?

Over to you for self-policing. I am not going to get into an editing war. I *can* withhold my knowledge and time if this stupid nit-picking continues. If that's what you want, leave the vandalism in place.

RobertDavidSteeleVivas (talk) 20:28, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

PS was about to reference this page in a major work, the vandalism killed that idea

regardless of what the vandals think of me, I was about to reference the page in a major work and will not do that now that I have seen my contributions destroyed. Pity.

RobertDavidSteeleVivas (talk) 20:30, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

--Vandals destroyed a week of contribution, each one discussed here in advance==

Just realized the vandals set this page back two weeks. Each of the carefully calibrated contributions, each discussed here in advance as one person suggested, has been removed. This page has reverted to the CIA pablum version. As a result, I am not going to add the seven unique links for each of the communities, since they all lead to www.oss.net and that appears to be the sole attribute for vandals concluding that my links are self-promoting. PLEASE, can we get some adults able to read and judge on the basis of the information written by others, NOT on the link which happens to have 30,000 pages by 2500 sources, 750 of them speaking at the conferences?

Someplease send me an email, bear at the offending site, if this situatioin cleans itself up, I am once again going to give up on Wikipedia.

RobertDavidSteeleVivas (talk) 20:34, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Seeking and Recommending Multiple Parties to Address Two Wiki Notices

This page needs a small core group that does not include the "stakeholders" (CIA, OSS.Net). There are two Wiki notices: one on the lack of international, which I can fix, but only if the page stabilizes and the vandalism against links to www.oss.net; and the other, on excessive links, which I totally agree with. The problem in my view is that a whole bunch of second rate links have slipped in, loaded by their owners while vandals have tried to delete every link to www.oss.net which happens to be the free public repository for ALL of the OSINT pioneering done in the past 20 years. I have no problem--zero, zip, nada--with CIA's entries, I only have a problem with their omissions, and there again, vandals are deleting rather than more properly highlighting need for references, which is easy (e.g. Aspin-Brown Commission, National Security Act of 1992).

I want to help this page be all it can be. I cannot do that if my every move is vandalized. Any volunteers for getting this right?

98.169.105.55 (talk) 11:45, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Reverting content vadalized by RobertDavidSteeleVivas

I will revert the multiple WP:SOAP violations now that the WP:NPA violation was reverted by User:Toddst1. RobertDavidSteeleVivas has been indefinately banned and has been associated with sockpuppets User:Robert_Steele, User:Robert_David_Steele, User:Bear@oss.net and the anonymous entry immediately preceding this one from IP 98.169.105.55 - note advocacy of the www.oss.net site and "I cannot do that if my every move is vandalized." comment.Bear bs (talk) 16:28, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

==Open Source ? The article states explicitly that OSI is nothing to do with Open Source Software, however with things like GFDL and other licenses aimed at enabling reuse and repurposing of information is this still true? Sgt101 (talk) 15:48, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Move. Jafeluv (talk) 22:19, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Source located for unsourced claim

The first graph in the History section has an unsourced claim about the FBIS that I traced. https://www.army.mil/article/94007/Service_members__civilians_learn_to_harness_power_of__Open_Source__information

I'm not well versed in Wiki policies or how to update this sort of thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.115.13.130 (talk) 11:21, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

---

Open source intelligence → Open-source intelligence –

Per WP:HYPHEN, and to match sibling articles, WP:TITLE. The compound name is openly ambiguous without a hyphen (source intelligence that is open?). Tony (talk) 14:02, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

• Support. I agree with Tony that hyphenation adds clarity. Jenks24 (talk) 18:57, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

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aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnL3dpa2kvUGluZWFwcGxlX2p1aWNl — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr0wnP00L (talk • contribs) 18:43, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

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OSINT projects in United States

"The US is the birth place to one of the most advanced capabilities in conducting OSINT for usernames. The leading community backed capability currently available is UserSearch. It claims to offer the most robust Search Engine for Usernames, with supporting capabilities in emails and phone numbers. It's noted to provide reverse username searches for over 400 social networks and online communities, which is double that of any other Reverse Username capability online, including charged services. It claims to be free and community focused."

This reads like an advert. I think it should be removed. Bobazoom (talk) 10:47, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

How to hack google droks

hello how to hack google droks 113.199.223.79 (talk) 02:10, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

OSINT and privacy?

I was looking to find information on OSINT and privacy concerns which must be there with the incredible amount of information individuals, corporations, parties or governments can receive on other individuals with it. Was surprised, that there is nothing on Wikipedia and didn't find a lot with other sources, too. Maybe, someone could add a paragraph and some good sources for that. (: Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Carroll D. (talk • contribs) 12:34, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

@Carroll D.:

I recommend starting here:

• "Search for "Open-source intelligence" "privacy"". Google Scholar. Retrieved 2022-06-26.

If you find anything appropriate for inclusion into the article, please consider improving the article. Peaceray (talk) 17:31, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Contested deletion

Not a copyvio. The Wikipedia article was drafted before the page, which is marked 2019 Jack4576 (talk) 09:26, 14 May 2023 (UTC)