Google maps is the new James Bond

Open-source intelligence is a vital tool for governments — and for holding them accountable

Emily Thornberry, a member of the British Parliament, recently told the House of Commons that “relying on so-called open-source intelligence provided by proscribed terrorist groups is not “acceptable” when it came to identifying the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Ms. Thornberry’s words betray an alarming lack of knowledge not only about Syria but also about how open-source investigation has revolutionized government and commercial intelligence, journalism and conflict monitoring.

Open-source intelligence refers to data that are out in the open; anyone can see and read them. The internet, for example, is the greatest collection of opensource data that has ever existed. This vast repository is useful not only for intelligence agencies and private companies; it has also become a vital source for civil society groups to track conflict, fight corruption and investigate crimes. Open-source intelligence also is more reliable and checkable by a democratic public than traditional closed sources.

Open-source intelligence is well-established and used extensively by intelligence agencies and law enforcement. First adopted at scale during World War II, open-source intelligence has provided vital context and sometimes key pieces of previously unknown information to decision-makers. In the words of William Donovan, head of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA: “Even a regimented press will again and again betray their nation’s interests to a painstaking observer.”

Since the advent of the internet, social media and smartphones, open-source intelligence has undergone a revolution as people willingly and publicly post vast amounts of information online. Actors outside of the traditional intelligence community have begun to take notice. One study found that in 2014, about 80 percent of federal, state and local law enforcement in the United States were using social media platforms as intelligence-gathering tools.

Commercial intelligence companies have started to crawl through the vast reservoirs of online data and turn them into threat intelligence for businesses. Civil society has also begun to embrace open-source investigation, using it to track the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons, to monitor conflict and to inform investigative journalism.

One strength of open-source investigation is that the sources and methodology are exactly that — open. Anyone with a computer and an internet connection can follow the reasoning of analysts, interrogate the same sources and critique the techniques used. Mistakes and errors in reasoning can be identified and called out.

Some are unknown quantities and cannot be trusted, which is why open sources are analyzed and verified before being included in intelligence reports. Does a video show what it claims to show? Has it been taken at the claimed location? What time was it taken?

Analytical techniques have been developed by the opensource community. The process of geolocation has become central to this verification process: using details in images or videos to identify the precise location that events took place, sometimes with an accuracy of an inch or so. Once you know the location, you can use shadows to judge the time. Other details — such as weather data, daily satellite imagery and the rate of building construction — can be consulted to test if a piece of media is consistent with what it claims to be. Even the sudden increase in posts on social media alone can be used to establish whether an event has occurred.

Simply identifying exactly where an event took place can lead to significant discoveries. Geolocation of videos depicting strikes in Syria released by the Russian Defense Ministry identified that, despite claiming to be targeting the Islamic State, it was actually bombing civilian infrastructure in rebel-held areas. The total number of verifiable Russian airstrikes that hit Islamic State targets in the first 25 days of the country’s air campaign? One.

Although not a rich country, Syria has workable internet infrastructure, and the percentage of its citizens using the internet has actually increased during the conflict, from 21 percent in 2010 to nearly 30 percent in 2016. This infrastructure has been complemented by enterprising groups and citizens, who have realized that an internet connection is one of the most important tools a citizen could have. By taking videos and images of air raids and artillery bombardments, they could refute the smears of a regime that painted entire populations as terrorists.

The vast majority of opensource information emerging from Syria comes from normal citizens and local civil society. The traumatic videos from Khan Sheikhoun showing children choking to death after a sarin gas attack by the Syrian regime were taken by first responders, doctors, local journalists and activists. A multitude of civil society actors across rebel-held areas has documented war crimes perpetrated by the regime, including chemical and incendiary attacks and cluster bombings, in incredible detail.

Some open-source information does, of course, come from the rebels, as indeed a proportion comes from the regime and its allies. This is why the process of verification that investigative groups such as Bellingcat has pioneered is so important. As well as accidentally giving away vital details that can directly uncover operations or secrets, these partisan sources have been used to track casualties from the obituaries of dead fighters, understand the development of car bombs and uncover the extent of the Islamic State’s drone program. All these investigations were done mostly using partisan sources, but the information was verified in such a way that it still produced a useful product.

Last year, the International Criminal Court released its first arrest warrant based primarily on videos of mass executions posted on social media. The Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, while investigating chemical attacks in Syria, used open-source videos and images from the incidents, which it verified and used to fact-check the testimony of witnesses.

The joint investigation team examining the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, in which 298 people were killed, has used video and images to track the Buk missile system that fired the weapon traveling from Russia into Ukraine. Although, as with all investigatory techniques, it is not perfect, opensource investigation is not a wishy-washy so-called technique: It is a potent, accepted, and verifiable tool to hold power to account.

“So-called open-source intelligence,” as Ms. Thornberry put it, has developed into a powerful and respected tool, capable of uncovering secrets hidden in plain view. In the case of Syria, the vast majority of this information comes from civil society and regular citizens. They are simply ordinary people who are recording the industrial-scale slaughter around them in the hope that somewhere, someone is watching.

Nick Waters is an ex-British Army officer and open source analyst. He wrote this for Foreign Policy. David M. Shribman’s column this week, about the Kavanaugh nomination, was published Wednesday and can be found online at post-gazette.com.