I saw OSINT results frequently during the Second Karabkh War (October 2020). The OSINT evidence of war crimes from that conflict has been adequately recognized and you can find info on that elsewhere. Beyond that, it seems to me that certain things would have gone better if certain locals had been more aware of what OSINT was revealing about the military status of the conflict, as a substitute for government claims and as a supplement to local RUMINT (rumor intelligence). False or uncertain perceptions about the state of a war can be deadly. But there is a language barrier and an online/offline barrier so it is hard to get that intelligence seen and believed by the people who need it.
Beyond that, OSINT might be used to actually influence the military course of conflicts if you can make a serious judgment call of which side deserves help, although this partisan effort wouldn’t really fit the spirit of “civilian” OSINT. Presumably the US and Russia already know the location of each other’s missile silos, but if you look for stuff that is less important or something which is part of a conflict between minor groups who lack good intelligence services, then you might produce useful intelligence. For a paramount example of dual use risks, during this war, someone geolocated Armenia’s Iskander missile base and shared it on Twitter, and it seems unlikely to me that anyone in Azerbaijan had found it already. I certainly don’t think it was responsible of him, and Azerbaijan did not strike the base anyway, but it suggests that there is a real potential to influence conflicts. You also might feed that intelligence to the preferred party secretly rather than openly, though that definitely violates the spirit of civilian OSINT. Regardless, OSINT may indeed shine when it is rushed in the context of an active military conflict where time is of the essence, errors notwithstanding. Everyone likes to makes fun of Reddit for the Boston Bomber incident but to me it seems like the exception that tests the rule. While there were a few OSINT conclusions during the war which struck me as dubious, never did I see evidence that someone’s geolocation later turned out to be wrong.
Also, I don’t know if structure and (formal) training are important. Again, you can pick on those Redditors, but lots of other independent open source geeks have been producing reliable results. Imposing a structure takes away some of the advantages of OSINT. That’s not to say that groups like Bellingcat don’t also do good work, of course.
To me, OSINT seems like a crowded field due to the number of people who do it as a hobby. So I doubt that the marginal person makes much difference. But since I haven’t seriously tried to do it, I’m not sure.
I saw OSINT results frequently during the Second Karabkh War (October 2020). The OSINT evidence of war crimes from that conflict has been adequately recognized and you can find info on that elsewhere. Beyond that, it seems to me that certain things would have gone better if certain locals had been more aware of what OSINT was revealing about the military status of the conflict, as a substitute for government claims and as a supplement to local RUMINT (rumor intelligence). False or uncertain perceptions about the state of a war can be deadly. But there is a language barrier and an online/offline barrier so it is hard to get that intelligence seen and believed by the people who need it.
Beyond that, OSINT might be used to actually influence the military course of conflicts if you can make a serious judgment call of which side deserves help, although this partisan effort wouldn’t really fit the spirit of “civilian” OSINT. Presumably the US and Russia already know the location of each other’s missile silos, but if you look for stuff that is less important or something which is part of a conflict between minor groups who lack good intelligence services, then you might produce useful intelligence. For a paramount example of dual use risks, during this war, someone geolocated Armenia’s Iskander missile base and shared it on Twitter, and it seems unlikely to me that anyone in Azerbaijan had found it already. I certainly don’t think it was responsible of him, and Azerbaijan did not strike the base anyway, but it suggests that there is a real potential to influence conflicts. You also might feed that intelligence to the preferred party secretly rather than openly, though that definitely violates the spirit of civilian OSINT. Regardless, OSINT may indeed shine when it is rushed in the context of an active military conflict where time is of the essence, errors notwithstanding. Everyone likes to makes fun of Reddit for the Boston Bomber incident but to me it seems like the exception that tests the rule. While there were a few OSINT conclusions during the war which struck me as dubious, never did I see evidence that someone’s geolocation later turned out to be wrong.
Also, I don’t know if structure and (formal) training are important. Again, you can pick on those Redditors, but lots of other independent open source geeks have been producing reliable results. Imposing a structure takes away some of the advantages of OSINT. That’s not to say that groups like Bellingcat don’t also do good work, of course.
To me, OSINT seems like a crowded field due to the number of people who do it as a hobby. So I doubt that the marginal person makes much difference. But since I haven’t seriously tried to do it, I’m not sure.