The promise of open-source intelligence
It is a welcome threat to malefactors and governments with something to hide
THE GREAT hope of the 1990s and 2000s was that the internet would be a force for openness and freedom. As Stewart Brand, a pioneer of online communities, put it: “Information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time.” It was not to be. Bad information often drove out good. Authoritarian states co-opted the technologies that were supposed to loosen their grip. Information was wielded as a weapon of war. Amid this disappointment one development offers cause for fresh hope: the emerging era of open-source intelligence (OSINT).
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “The people’s panopticon”
From the August 7th 2021 edition
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