Open-source sources of information and knowledge are influencing international engagement in the conflict in Ukraine and additional world areas, changing how the private sector, the people, and governments control conflicts.
Within a day of the June 2, 2024, release of a video documenting the abuse of prisoners of war by a Russian soldier in Ukraine, open- source intelligence ( OSINT ) researchers had identified the Russian citizen and his involvement in Ukraine going back a decade.
Following this, Russian officials wrote letters to the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross to explain the mistreatment so they could use it in a pending legal case.
Only one instance of OSINT’s influence on the Ukrainian conflict is in this instance. Online programs have allowed residents to transmit updates to the earth, democratizing information and intelligence transmission.
Strong business satellites enable both parties to track troop and vehicle movements, and georeferencing enables online users to locate targets using images and videos.
Social media study can also provide important local and international insights into the psychological nature of the war by tracking public sentiment and advertising efforts.
Though the Russia- Ukraine conflict has shown the latest innovations in military OSINT, online platforms and international technologies have increased public participation in conflicts for years late.
OSINT is being used to influence how people perceive wars, promote military engagement, offer insight into military operations, and introduce crime. The expansion of OSINT is anticipated to raise more serious threats to regional security and personal privacy as a result of improvements from the private sector, the people, and institutions.
International maps, information, and advertising resources have been gathered for centuries to get insights into the capabilities, planning, and strategies of international militaries. However, the creation of the BBC Monitoring Service in 1939 marked a significant use of OSINT bureaucracy to collect data about World War II.
The US established the Research and Analysis Branch in 1941 to fulfill a similar role as the US’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and OSINT has since grown to be a significant component of contemporary issues.
While Publicly Available Information ( PAI ) makes up part of OSINT, it also includes commercial data that can be bought or obtained, data about network functions, and algorithms to organize information.
Moreover, the effectiveness of storing and organizing the data, as well as reliable and productive communication to discuss and issue the findings, depend on access to data sources.
Governments and private actors are actively attempting to utilize OSINT in their own way, with people living thousands of miles away from the front ranges still playing a significant role in the battle, planning, and understanding of conflicts.
The Russia- Ukraine War continues to show the important part of OSINT in current fight, building on its app in Ukraine over the past decade. Bellingcat, an investigative news organization, used OSINT to highlight Russia’s role in the 2014 shooting of Malaysia Airlines ‘ MH17 over Ukraine and publish a report on Russian artillery strikes against Ukraine in 2016.
Moreover, from 2014 westward, OSINT researchers were able to discover the identities of many Russian employees working for private military and security businesses operating in Ukraine.
In the weeks leading up to the 2022 Russian invasion, companies like Conflict Observatory amassed large amounts of public and commercially available data to help detect potential targets and assault items by Russian troops.
The Middlebury Institute of International Studies ‘ Jeffrey Lewis used traffic information from Russia on Google Maps to signal that Russian forces were about to launch an offensive shortly before Russian troops crossed the border. The first pictures of the war were then captured by citizens who live-streamed Russian tanks crossing the border.
Since the start of the war, OSINT has extremely favored Ukraine. Researchers were able to identify what types of military automobiles Russia had deployed and where using social media posts featuring car license plates.
Viral images and videos of numerous Russian vehicle destruction helped persuade European nations to help more aid to Ukraine, along with other OSINT efforts to uncover possible war crimes, refute Russian claims, and recognize war offenders.
Nevertheless, Russia banned US social media platforms shortly after the war began, limiting the potential of Russian online users to organize, destroy, and control discussions on key global platforms.
Web researchers have followed Russian missile launchers by cross-referencing Google Street View images, popular images, and open satellite data.
Professional satellites have assisted in assessing the damage done by Ukrainian airstrikes against Russian bases. Russian troops have been targeted through their devices and health trackers after connecting to Ukraine’s telecoms community, dating apps, searchable social media posts, and other laptop functions, resulting in fatalities.
Call Russia, a web scraping platform, also gathers information from Russian citizens that is accessible to the public and allows Russian speakers from all over the world to call and speak with Russian citizens about the war.
OSINT related to the war has also spread throughout Europe. Bellingcat used OSINT to identify a Russian spy with a fake identity working in Italy in 2022, and Ukrainian OSINT group Molfar subsequently unmasked 167 Russian spies working across Europe in 2023.
Governments were quick to acknowledge and effectively organize OSINT’s use in the conflict. The Conflict Observatory received immediate assistance from the US State Department, and Europol set up an OSINT task force to assist with Russian war crimes investigations.
The Ukrainian government created an app for citizens to provide information on military movements and illegal activities, and Ukrainian citizens have been able to direct Ukrainian attacks on Russian positions through their phones.
Russia has, however, enjoyed some balance throughout the course of the conflict with OSINT. Various sources use OSINT to update daily maps that show troop movements and changes to the frontline and to document losses of Russian and Ukrainian military equipment.
Chatbots continuously scour the internet for data and update receivers with real- time OSINT analysis to identify and alert soldiers to potentially valuable information. Russian forces are also suspected of receiving images from US satellite companies, which led to costly and fatal attacks that exposed the vulnerabilities of the West’s more liberal business practices and internet standards.
OSINT has been extensively used in other recent conflicts, particularly in the Middle East. Throughout the Syrian Civil War, the Live Universal Awareness Map has primarily used social media posts to map current military movements, unrest, destruction, and violence.
A terrorist camp in the Syrian desert was discovered by social media users in 2016 after they looked through satellite data and discovered it. Russian forces later bombed it.
With limited access to advanced technologies, militant groups have significantly increased their use of OSINT in the twenty-first century.
Since the start of the Saudi- led intervention in Yemen’s civil war in 2015, Houthi militants have used social media and satellite images to monitor and target the movements of the Saudi- led coalition, though the Saudi coalition has also relied on social media information to target Houthi forces as well.
The Houthis and Iran collaborated to use commercially available maritime intelligence services, such as Marine Traffic and ShipXplorer, to track and attack ships through the narrow body of water after the Red Sea Crisis erupted in late 2023.
Hamas has used OSINT to monitor Israeli policy decisions, troop movements, and public opinion for decades. Since Israel’s military bombardment of Gaza began in 2023, the Washington Post’s Visual Forensics has mapped Israeli advances using videos, photos, and satellite imagery.
Israel’s claim of a Hamas tunnel under al-Shifa Hospital was disproven by Al Jazeera’s fact-checking unit Sanad, and additional OSINT evidence demonstrated that Palestinian civilians had been killed by Israeli forces along the safe routes recommended by Israel.
Contrastingly, OSINT was used by Israel to challenge reports that Hamas had made of an Israeli attack that had destroyed a hospital, and was repeated by international media outlets. Bellingcat investigators analyzed footage from the sites of two Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7 to piece together the assault.
Additionally, Israeli intelligence keeps an eye on Hamas ‘ social media activity and uses OSINT to monitor its activities.
OSINT is increasingly used as a geopolitical tool in contrast to active conflict zones. In 1992, the deputy director of the CIA stated that over 80 % of the agency’s analysis was based on OSINT, and the US actively uses OSINT against adversaries and allies.
However, the West’s availability and commercialization of data have undermined the US’s position as a global military force. For instance, the user map for the Strava fitness app revealed American military personnel ‘ positions and movements in Syria and Iraq in 2018.
Algorithms can now instantly detect the presence of a ship using global port webcams, while US military aircraft can be tracked on programs like Flightradar24, helping map the US global military presence in real- time.
Additionally, ShipSpotting and WarshipCam both have extensive image databases for almost all warships and system configurations onboard. According to a report released in 2023 by the University of California’s Berkeley Risk and Security Lab, China is using various OSINT images of US warships for AI training datasets to create highly detailed computerized images of US and allied vessels.
Additionally, machine learning has made it easy to analyze social media. Information on the language usage and social media poster demographics can be gathered from Lexical Analysis, Web Scraping, and Sensational Analysis.
Russia is well known for using social media to stir up tensions in the US and around Europe, and other states are using similar tactics to influence this.
OSINT is also being increasingly used in DNA analysis. The Human Genome Project, a project led by China’s Beijing Genomics Institute, has compiled millions of people’s genomic data for use in population studies.
Governments and organizations are deploying OSINT domestically in the same way they do when they use it abroad. During the Arab Spring protests in 2010 and 2011, regional governments faced vulnerabilities from protests organized online, with live maps, government atrocities depicted on social media, and other forms of OSINT used.
Beijing quickly acted in response to this by pressing foreign companies to remove the HKMap. live app tracking police forces from their platforms and put restrictions on communications during the 2019 and 2020 Hong Kong protests.
In light of the widespread unrest, Western governments may find it challenging to implement such measures. They instead use strategies like event barraging, which flood the information space with information to detract and obscure valuable information, misinformation campaigns, trend hijacking, and other strategies to undermine OSINT and prevent effective data analysis.
Governments are naturally motivated to use OSINT against their populations, too. By aggregating and analyzing publicly available information and other data, governments can gain valuable insight into citizens ‘ lives, behaviors, and opinions.
However, this significantly compromises personal privacy and makes people and groups vulnerable to unwarranted surveillance. In criminal investigations, law enforcement uses OSINT more frequently.
Moreover, OSINT can be manipulated to shape public opinion, as demonstrated by the” Ghost of Kyiv” during the Russia- Ukraine conflict, which highlighted the potential for OSINT to be hijacked for propaganda purposes.
Companies selling personal and public data for profit are becoming a major part of the surveillance economy as a result of OSINT becoming more and more prevalent. Palantir Technologies, Recorded Future, and Babel Street are some notable names in the OSINT industry.
These companies, along with numerous smaller firms, continue to drive market growth and innovation. These uses of OSINT go beyond traditional methods of gathering intelligence, with the rise in the sophistication of targeted marketing one outcome.
Numerous instances of OSINT being misused by the public range from OSINT-related rumors of war criminals to OSINT-related hacking.
But OSINT has significant positive impacts, including coordinating evacuations and humanitarian aid, alerting civilians to threats and allowing them to document their experiences that can counter or complement traditional media.
However, the majority of OSINT’s efforts are still focused on domestic surveillance and conflict, and its capabilities are rapidly expanding as it integrates with machine learning.
The evolving landscape will require greater attention to the ethics of large-scale data accumulation and the threat to personal privacy as OSINT becomes more widely used and commercialized.
John P Ruehl is an Australian- American journalist living in Washington, D. C., and a world affairs correspondent for the Independent Media Institute. He contributes to several other foreign affairs publications as well as contributing to Strategic Policy. His book,” Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With a Economy Smaller Than Texas,” was released in December 2022.
This article first appeared on Independent Media Institute and is republished with kind permission.