Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) Next generation challenges, priorities, and opportunities

Open-Source-Intelligence (OSINT) represents a powerful instrument for collecting, analyzing, and making decisions about data accessible in publicly available sources for use in an intelligence context. OSINT offers to LEAs many benefits such as, among others, low costs of obtaining information due to the ever-increasing level of digitization and large amount of freely available information, automatization of information acquisition and low risk of being discovered based on the accessibility of information in public infrastructures and techniques. However, there are some challenges on the path towards the successful application of OSINT, which relate to the increased use of social media and low trust in and credibility of the provided reports. Against this back ground, the project NOTIONES created a white paper, which elaborates the next generation of challenges, priorities and opportunities for OSINT and highlights the aspects to be considered for harnessing its full future power.