OSINT is amazing. It enables truly jaw-dropping findings, from the Yale HRL’s work on Ukrainian children to Bellingcat’s investigation of the Malaysian Airlines flight. That OSINT, in theory, can be conducted by anyone, anywhere, is additionally amazing. However, I wonder if journalists have been a little too forthcoming with the techniques they’ve used to uncover airstrikes and human rights abuses. The director of Yale HRL, for instance, told me that their team started with social media posts from Russians, who were posting geotagged photos of children from what appeared to be re-education facilities. The team could then cross-reference those locations with satellite imagery, Russian property records, and other materials to determine with reasonably high likelihood that they were hosting kidnapped Ukrainian children. But what if the Russians had realized that their posts could be used as material in OSINT and turned their location tagging off? Maybe the investigation wouldn’t be dead in the water, but it would be much harder. I agree journalists should show their work, and the transparency in OSINT is important to shoring up trust in the reporting. But how much disclosure is too much? How could it inhibit future investigations?
OSINT benefits from many of the creepiest aspects of 21-century online surveillance. In 2020, for example, Bellingcat had an amazing investigation tracking the men who attempted to poison Alexei Navalny. They did so in part using cell phone and geolocation records that had been purchased from Russia’s open data market, in some instances for shockingly low prices. I’m not rubbed the wrong way behind this because there was a compelling and newsworthy reason to stalk these people, and Bellingcat was not obtaining the data via any particularly untoward means (for Russia’s standards, anyway). Still, I think it’s an interesting question to consider as these organizations convey to readers that they should be trusted.
I also think we should be careful jumping to the assertion that OSINT is truly accessible to everyone. Even if you’re an independent person not tied to a particular institution, you still have skills, connections, and expertise that most ordinary people would not have (in addition to time). Regular citizens are involved insofar as anyone can contribute video, audio, or other material to be used by an OSINT expert; I think about this Missouri man on Twitter who posted a photo of B2 bombers flying east in the hours before the US bombed Iran this summer. Is that any different from how journalism has been carried out? Ordinary people have always contributed stories, tips, perspective, and other insights that are then analyzed and narrativized by professional journalists. The Internet has just made things more accessible now.
