monitoring

UNCLASSIFIED
DEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD | DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
On balance, however, it is the judgment from the task force that more information from
remote sensing systems, both commercial and dedicated national assets, is better than less
information. The increase in information from commercial systems adds to the importance of
recommendations, made in Chapter 3, to improve the United States ability to process and
analyze information proactively and to find weak signals of threat or noncompliance even
within the most cluttered and noisy environments. The ready availability of commercial
imagery and other open source data also increases the ability of the United States to share or
discuss data with international partners in ways that serve to protect the most perishable of
intelligence sources and methods.
5.5.3. Open Source Center (OSC)
The OSC provides accessible reporting on foreign political, military, economic, and technical
developments in over 80 languages and from more than 160 countries. The OSC, largely based
on the former Foreign Broadcast information Service, uses open sources such as radio,
television, newspapers, news agencies, databases and the World Wide Web. Within the OSC is
the Counterproliferation Program (CPP) office charged to track priority CP issues through
various public media. Since the establishment of the CPP in 2007, the OSC has provided, by
many accounts, excellent support with limited resources to the IC’s counterproliferation
mission.
Open Source (OSINT)/Social Media/Networking is the area that is undergoing perhaps the most
revolutionary change within the IC and across the globe. "The poor man's intelligence
community" is now available to anyone with access to the Internet. The continual launch of
commercial space‐based sensors of every phenomenology (e.g., electro‐optical, multi‐spectral
imaging, hyperspectral imaging, synthetic aperture radar, and eventually full motion video) has
meant an explosion in source data originating from outside the national security community –
which is often difficult to process, exploit and disseminate. Nonetheless, these and other
geospatial (or geospatially‐enabled) data are becoming increasingly available around the world,
and are helping to shape and reshape GEOINT and Open Source as new modes of high‐value
"intelligence." Cell phones, Smartphones, tablets and other like devices are increasingly able to
sense location, giving rise to a new class of applications. In this class of applications, the line
between Open Source and GEOINT will become more blurred. Eventually, as all open source
information becomes more anchored in place and time, one will see Open Source transform
how GEOINT is prosecuted and used.
5.6. Assessment: Data Exploitation
The Task Force focused on two emerging enablers for exploiting the increasingly vast amounts
of data available at the heart of the assessment function: big data analytics and crowd
sourcing.
DSB TASK FORCE REPORT Chapter 5: Improve the Tools: Access, Sense, Assess | 60
Nuclear Treaty Monitoring Verification Technologies
UNCLASSIFIED