Overview

This is an introduction to Open Source Intelligence or, as it is called, OSINT.

Open Source Intelligence means useful information gleaned from public sources, such as scientific articles, newspapers, phone books and price lists. Open Source Intelligence processing involves finding, selecting, and acquiring information from publicly available sources and analyzing it. In the Intelligence Community (IC), the term "open" refers to overt, publicly available sources (as opposed to covert or classified sources); it is not related to open-source software. I recommend that you skim the following:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Intelligence
• NATO Open Source Intelligence Handbook
• NATO Open Source Intelligence Reader