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Comment by throwup238 | Hacker News Reader

One of the reasons OSINT is becoming more popular is that since it’s already public, it can be freely passed around the government without worrying about classification. Analysis is usually classified but handled by each agency separately while still making the core evidence accessible so everyone involved in intelligence sharing between agencies can at least know the topic of discussion without the red tape of making sure everyone has the right clearance. It also makes it a lot easier to share with international partners.

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You hit the nail on the head, but think aside from information being more accessible to analyze/share when it isn’t classified/there isn’t a need to protect sensitive sources and methods, is the benefit vis-a-vis translations.

Finding native speakers of languages like Chinese, Russian, Farsi, etc. who are also eligible/want to have a clearance is a challenge (it’s expensive and self-limiting, since US citizenship is a requirement).

Training people already cleared in those languages takes a ton of time, expensive, and yields linguists with mixed-usefulness (think understanding formal Spanish taught in highschool versus Spanish actually spoken amongst peers/friends). There’s slang, intonations, etc. that non-native speakers have to spend time learning/may misunderstand.

In other words, OSINT has a much larger talent pool that yield arguably/presumably better translations.

> One of the reasons OSINT is becoming more popular is that since it’s already public, it can be freely passed around the government without worrying about classification.

I think the important part of this is how the vast bulk of the OSINT we're discussing is of Americans not suspected of a crime.

Seems like a system of 'open secrets' is the ideal for intelligence agencies. Within and between agencies it cuts down on red tape, but classification can still be selectively invoked to target whistleblowers, the public, etc. With classification turning into a vestigial legal enforcement mechanism. Take the case of the Danish spy chief who was arrested for acknowleging that country's collusion with US intel. The people still know, everyone knows, but the govt still retains the right to take espionage cases against ppl who use the informatian to produce speech they especially don't like. Snowden, Manning, Assange, all seem like similar cases.

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