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Federal-level intelligence collection and analysis operations are becoming more critical in combating terrorism, fighting environmental degradation, intercepting trans-international crime, and stopping the use of weapons of mass destruction.

Gathering tremendous amounts of information on foreign countries as well as identifying economic, social, and political trends is now handled on the Internet.

Robert David Steele, a former military intelligence officer in federal civil service, saw the opportunity to exploit and aggregate data of value for federal-level intelligence back in 1992. Since that time he has built a notable web-based inventory of thousands of global information sources and services being overlooked by the U.S. intelligence community. His Internet startup, called Open Source Solutions, Inc. (www.oss.net), received an undisclosed sum from private investors to become a complete online intelligence portal in 1999. His biggest clients are the various branches of the U.S. Government including the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), and the Transportation Command.

Steele knows the methods involved in military information acquisition and assessment. His personal background includes a stint as an operations officer at the Central Intelligence Agency (1979-1988). He then served as a senior civilian and deputy director of the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Center (1988-1992); and managed the U.S. Marine Corps portion of the General Defense Intelligence Program (1992-1993), a $3 billion program for multi-media information collection, processing, and production across all elements of the Department of Defense.

"Although the defense intelligence agencies have failed to really understand open source solutions, the commanders of the theaters, the Pacific command, and the Transportation command have, in recent years, recognized that open source solutions can offer 90% of what they need for planning and peacekeeping around the world," said Steele in a recent interview.

His management team for OSS.net now includes Honorable John A. Bohn, now chairman of the board; Dr. Mark W. Lowenthal, vice chair; and Dr. Michael R. Leavitt, as chief scientist and technical director. Bohn had previously served as president and CEO of Moody's Investor's Service and he as formerly president and chairman of the board for the Export/Import Bank of the United States (1986-1989). Dr. Lowenthal served as staff director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (104th Congress, 1995-1997), and Deputy Secretary of State for Intelligence (1988-1989). Leavitt, a former senior intelligence officer, is responsible for OSS.net's technology partner alliance, with SRA International.

OSS.net has four primary offerings areas online for the end user with strong anonymity protection:

(1) The Open Source Marketplace storefront provides a way for an agency with a question that can lead to profit or savings with a means of contracting for sources, software, or services online.

(2) The Information Arbitrage Subscription Service offers a combination of shared open source intelligence--$150,000 a year per agency or theater for access to more than $3 million in basic global coverage and private open source intelligence "a la carte."

(3) The Information Merchant Banking Transactions, rents out smart interactive internet space for multimedia information storage that can be sold for microcash. The owner of the information can keep very precise control over who sees it or who can buy it.

(4) Finally, the Open Source Intelligence Education section offers a range of both free and for fee distance learning courses on central intelligence methodologies for personal, organizational, or national advantage.

In the Open Source Marketplace, the types of assistance available for purchase are broken into open sources, open software, and open services. A browser can access the names of two to three companies or service providers in each subset of listings per category. Under open sources, for example, are directories of experts, threat assessments and defense forecasts, maps and charts, commercial imagery, direct observation-HUMINT (human intelligence) teams. Under open software are various listings such as data retrieval, automated abstracting, and data mining and visualization. In open services are opportunities for online search and retrieval; telephone surveys; strategic research; and compliance monitoring.

The Information Arbitrage subscription services allows for the hiring of individual or group experts on a project by project basis. For example, $25,000 to $40,000 will secure three to five experts on a particular subject of interest and a written report within 7 to 10 days. Experts can be hired for $6,000/day. Even high resolution commercial imagery with processing is available for $10 to $40 a square kilometer.

Based on the site activity of oss.net, Steele has determined that U.S. government agencies and military units require information on the mid-to-low tier countries, such as Somalia, that have been largely not considered military threats in the last 20 years. In late 1999, OSS.net was competitively selected to manage the first ever program for global coverage of these countries and their potential threats to National Security. "This makes us an extension of the CIA, in essence," said Robert Steele. The program is in place to monitor countries that do not generally qualify for expensive and risky coverage by spies and satellites.

In a written statement submitted to the Munich Conference on Security Policy, Defense Secretary William Choen noted the potential threat of long-range missile attacks on the United States--and possible Europe--from nations such as Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and Libya. He said he believes that in the next five to 10 years, those hostile nations will be able to "hold all of NATO at risk with the missile forces."

Internet intelligence for monitoring foreign countries that could create any potential threat is growing in importance. "We scour both the Internet and a variety of commercial online sources to create a unique proprietary product that is a web-based analytical summary with "drill down" capabilities to the raw, multi-media information (maps, images, and actual broadcasts are included as appropriate)," explained Steele. From this is created a "baseline" product that includes more organized data with appropriate research paths than is generally provided by other commercial sector research companies. "We find that the data is well received by policy staff, intelligence staff, and operational staff in Embassies and theater commands overseas," he added.

The OSS.net approach to global coverage in this case goes beyond research and, with client approval, they established expert discussion forums. Experts are defined as those clearly at the top of their field based on citation analysis. They are given access to the proprietary research product created by OSS.net in return for participating in day-to-day private expert discussion groups that are limited to the client analysts, U.S. government action officers, and the few invited experts that join. The experts then can offer their services for more in-depth analytical work as needed.

Dr. John Frankenstein, a former foreign services officer, now works with OSS to provide academic research and consulting on topics pertaining to Southeast Asia. "With internet access, you can pull together a big picture analysis on a particular topic, for example, illegal immigration in Southeast Asia, in fundamentally a day. Truly in-depth analysis can be completed in about two days." Dr. Frankenstein sees a continuing and growing need for high-specialized data collection and trend analysis. " There are great standard products, like Oxford Analytica, that issue regular reports on specific topics, but our clients need to know about very specific subjects in a specific timeframe. That's where we find our niche," he added.

Further product development by OSS.net has lead to a full-range of OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) products that can be accessed by country, topic, or timeframe. These toolsets allow for a variety of geospatial and other visualization approaches to monitoring data and detect anomalies and patterns of change. For a further exploration of this go to www.oss.net/OSSDEV/demo/report.html.

Beyond case studies of general security breaches and trends in warfare, OSS.net has been asked in the last year to focus on genocide and atrocities. OSS.net has provided direct support to Ambassador David Sheffer and the effort he leads to predict and prevent genocide and atrocities in Kosovo.

The extranet prepared for this effort by OSS.net included an organized cataloging of dates, places and witnesses. At the same time, other areas of the world were reviewed simultaneously. "Most first readers were shocked to discover that from Sri Lanka to East Timor to the Tatars of Russia, not to mention in Africa, there were countless campaigns of unspeakable, premeditated, and politically-sanctioned violence intended to eradicate specific minority groups," Steele said.

Even with all the Internet searching and desktop tools available for fee and free, there are still a large number of documents on the World Wide Web that are not indexed or cataloged. OSS.net was asked in mid-1999 to attempt to review threats from overseas to U.S. troops, concerns involving force protection. "Roughly 80% of the Internet is not indexed by established search engines, including the meta-search engines that leverage over 200 distinct search engines, Steele indicated. OSS.net was able to assemble a European-based team with prior European government experience. They established long-range reconnaissance patrols in cyberspace. "Within two weeks, we identified more than 350 distinct URLs associated with terrorism, armed opposition, and political opposition, in 27 languages," said Steele. "We did this without being intrusive, using only legal and ethical methods," he added.

And, officials at the various federal agencies have varying views on the success of technology in helping this never-ending process of distilling policy from intelligence gleaned from electronic documentation, and other sources. For example, there are as many as 100 intelligence analysts devoted full-time to study of the People's Liberation Army in the Department of Defense, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) and other offices. A high-ranking Pentagon official involved in Asian-Pacific initiatives said, "Generally technologists involved in this data collection process tend to be more alarmist and look at long-term trends, but it is the political scientists who really don't rely on tools and technology who are setting policy. Planners involved in long-term assessment may align with technology-based research. Actually the best research is available through open sources on the Internet, if you can read Chinese."

Steele says OSS.net ties together four primary targets: (a) machine processing of digital information; (b) human processing of complex concepts; (c) intelligence community processing for discovery and evaluation; and (d) academic process for working with the right combination of personnel for the assignment.

"The information power dynamic has changed; leaders can no longer pretend to be better informed than the public. Leaders are no longer unchallenged on their decisions," Steele said.

The Open Source Marketplace on the oss.net site will soon include more distance learning for open source intelligence gathering. Steele indicated that he expects to see a trend in signups from retired military professionals who would be an appropriate match for collection management and multi-source fusion.

The next big wave in solid open source delivery involves protecting confidentiality. There will be a continued interest in the anonymity of purchasing even open source data for the foreseeable future, so oss.net has created a methodology that allows for a client to identify a document or image they require and to have it anonymously mailed to the client. OSS.net will address further ecommerce anonymity options on its site in Spring 2000.

The OSS.net Conference

Forums for all nations where open source data collection and its use can be discussed and information on the latest software for large scale data management continue to be important even beyond the U.S. Federal Government. The OSS Conference in the United States run by Robert Steele generally draws about 900 attendees each year to Washington, D.C. in May to hear about the use of open source solutions with particular applications.

The next conference called OSS 21 to be held May 15-18, is positioned as a Global Information Forum, "Information Superiority through Relevant Information." Annually OSS 21 brings together, intelligence professionals, information specialists, and operational consumers of intelligence in order to advance one another's capabilities in the art and science of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). This is defined as the acquisition, processing, and actionable exploitation of unclassified relevant information essential to the achievement of information superiority. Attendees are representatives from foreign countries, national-level intelligence, policy makers, military intelligence officers, and all levels of law enforcement, as well as software company representatives involved in data collection. The number of bodyguards from foreign constituents gives away the importance of open sources worldwide.

A special half-day "Senior's Course" will be offered on Monday, May 15th. Prior registration is required and identification cards with rank will be checked at the door. Open only to Colonels (0-6), First Secretaries, GS-15's, and above.

The proceedings of past OSS conferences are documented and presented on the OSS.net website, listing more than 500 international topics and speakers. They cover topics from the Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross to former ministers, directors of intelligence and many global corporate enterprises. In addition, presentations can be seen by notable intelligence thinkers such as Harold Rheingold, John Perry Barlow, and Alvin Toffler.

A large section of the conference will be devoted to national, military and police presentations about narcotics control, genocide, and weapons of mass destruction. Speakers will be participating from a cross-section of global entities, including UN/NATO, Europol, and Interpol. Countries that will be represented include: the United Kingdom, Trinidad & Tobago; Germany, Russia, Netherlands, Australia, Israel, Italy, and China.