Since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), information reporting from publicly available sources, has made a breakthrough contribution to breaking through the fog of war. Nevertheless, the burgeoning OSINT community has ignored the ethics of publicly disclosing wartime information (the “should” rather than the “what”). Failure to address these issues could undermine our understanding of Russia’s war on Ukraine, instead misleading the public. .
Thanks to the growth of 21st century telecommunications, OSINT has rapidly become an efficient tool for tracking terrorist communications, facilitating criminal investigations, and better understanding military conflicts. Over time, as the amount of data on the Internet continues to grow, this intelligence will aid journalistic groups such as Bellingcat who have no access to sensitive information, uncover conspiracies, combat disinformation, and otherwise remain hidden from the public. It even mitigated security risks. . of economist “OSINT’s decentralized and egalitarian nature erodes the power of traditional mediators of truth and falsehood,” he said.
Open source information during Russia’s war against Ukraine conclusively proves this point. The open-source community was able to track the build-up of Russian forces prior to the invasion, identify war criminals, and even document equipment lost in the conflict. It changed intelligence gathering and belligerent strategy.
Despite these achievements, much of the rapidly growing OSINT community pays little attention to the ethics of their activities. As an investigator myself, I call on open source researchers to ensure that our actions do not cause unintended harm.
HI Sutton, one of the respected open source intelligence veterans, recently said: Ironically, “OSINT is a term coined in March 2022 to gain followers on social media…. The most important prerequisite to becoming an OSINT analyst is being able to download videos quickly . [Telegram]’” He is definitely on point. Aside from longtime professionals who have been active in the field for years, the number of amateur open source researchers active on social media has skyrocketed in the wake of the war in Ukraine. Many have gone viral and changed public perceptions of this military conflict. While some focused on the quality of the information released, many preferred to capitalize on its popularity. leaving little room for costly data analysis. From an ethical point of view in science, the main cause of some questionable attitudes exhibited in the war in Ukraine among the OSINT community is that become increasingly controversial.
First and foremost, as open source intelligence researchers, we are responsible for what, how, and when we share. We must make sure that we are not being used by political actors to make matters worse. This is consistent with the basic principles of science.Don’t lose first—do no harm first. OSINT does not compete to publish content on Twitter as quickly as possible without spending time verifying and assessing its impact. Making decisive decisions and flooding tweets based on scraps of data from the front lines without the necessary scrutiny means combatants could use investigators as a tool for information warfare. To do. Instead of debunking false claims, there is a growing risk that the OSINT community will mislead the public. It happened many times before and during Russia’s war against Ukraine.
This can be seen in the aftermath of the recent massive US data breach on the social media platform Discord. Many of his OSINT-focused profiles on Twitter competed to share uncensored photos of classified documents. Within the first few hours of the leak, some claimed these images were fake or legitimate without providing any proof. Unsubstantiated interpretations of this event by unsuspecting people have contributed to obscuring the truth.Belling Cat and washington post I then did the proper research. They ethically censored all confidential information to prevent misuse of research results.
The same lighthearted attitude towards data analysis and impact assessment can threaten individual privacy and safety. Parts of the OSINT community frequently profile real people using their online identities and publish that information online. It can harm people in many ways. His previously unsuccessful OSINT investigations have blamed the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings on innocent people. The same thing happened during the war in Ukraine. An error made by an open-source researcher when investigating war crimes led to the exposing of an innocent man and sharing his identity and address online. This harm shows how careful we must be when dealing with data about individuals.
Some of OSINT’s ethical issues stem from the legal ambiguity that has been the subject of much research. The global community faces a cross-jurisdictional dilemma, particularly related primarily to the protection of personal data and how sensitive or leaked content is handled. Also, there are no regulations required to explore some layers of the Internet, such as the Dark Web, which is particularly popular among Russian Internet users. In fact, some investigations can result in legal liability if you’re not careful.
Many OSINT researchers also seem to ignore the health risks. These risks are usually subject to ethical evaluation. Collaborating with online sources about the Ukrainian war exposes them to gore and can cause secondary trauma, such as the recent beheading video posted on the Russian Telegram channel. It has been reported in similar areas, such as online terrorism research. In effect, some basic injury prevention standards should be adopted. Failure to do so may expose OSINT researchers to psychological harm that is difficult to overcome in the long run. This especially threatens amateur researchers who lack institutional support.
Their safety may also be at risk. Participating in high-profile investigations can trigger politicians to threaten them with arrest or extrajudicial violence. This recently happened to his Christo Grozev, executive director of Bellingcat. More cases are known of OSINT researchers receive death threatsSearching and processing raw data can also expose you to potential cyber incidents such as spear phishing attacks and malware infections. These can lead to personal information leaks online. Addressing these challenges requires investigators to adopt operational security standards.
Ignoring these issues inevitably degrades open source intelligence. Public perception of OSINT is at stake. Perhaps more importantly, the strong adherence to ethics by our community is the only thing that keeps open source investigators from being used as tools of information warfare or as new sources of risk to innocent people. At the very least, it poses a risk to the researcher’s own safety.
This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily Scientific American.
