--- title: "Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) | Altss Glossary" description: "Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is intelligence produced by collecting, checking and analysing publicly available information, and in some definitions…" canonical: "https://altss.com/glossary/osint" --- Glossary · Evidence & data # Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) Also called: open source intelligence · open-source research "Open source" here means publicly accessible information. It has nothing to do with open-source software, which is code that anyone may inspect, modify and reuse. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is intelligence produced by collecting, checking and analysing publicly available information, and in some definitions commercially available information, to answer a specific question or requirement. Publisher: Altss LLCPublished 2026-01-15Content modified 2026-10-02 ALTSS-DATA-001 OSINT turns information that anyone can lawfully see, buy or request into an answer to a defined question. The raw material (filings, registries, websites, news, conference programmes, archived pages) is open source information. It becomes intelligence only when someone collects it for a purpose, checks it and draws a conclusion from it. In private markets the same methods support due diligence, background and client-identification checks, and the mapping of who allocates capital, who manages it and how they are connected. ### Formal definition The US Intelligence Community defines OSINT as intelligence derived exclusively from publicly or commercially available information that addresses specific intelligence priorities, requirements or gaps (IC OSINT Strategy 2024–2026). The Berkeley Protocol defines open source information as publicly available information that any member of the public can observe, purchase or request without special legal status or unauthorised access, and treats open source intelligence as the subset collected and used to address a specific intelligence requirement. ## Information, intelligence, investigation, evidence Four terms are often used interchangeably. The Berkeley Protocol separates them, and the separation is useful outside its human-rights setting: - **Open source information**: anything a member of the public can observe, purchase or request without special status or unauthorised access. A Form ADV, a pension plan's board minutes and a trade-press article are all open source information. - **Open source intelligence**: open source information collected and analysed to answer a defined requirement. A note answering "who decides on private credit commitments at this plan, and has that changed this year?" is OSINT. - **Open source investigation**: the use of open source information to gather information and evidence about a matter. - **Open source evidence**: open source information with evidentiary value that may be admitted to establish facts in legal proceedings. The Protocol also defines what counts as obtaining open information: observation (including content behind a login that any user can create, provided no privacy or security control is breached), purchase (paid services available to any member of the public, but not services limited to groups such as law enforcement) and request (freedom-of-information requests to public bodies). Information obtained by contacting or questioning individuals is closed source. A reference call is therefore not OSINT, even when it confirms an open source finding. ## Typical open sources in private markets - **Regulatory filings and registers**: [Form ADV](https://altss.com/glossary/form-adv) through the adviser search of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), [Form D](https://altss.com/glossary/form-d), Form 13F, company registers, legal entity identifier records. - **Official publications of public bodies**: board and investment-committee minutes of public pension plans, state treasury reports, statutory annual reports. - **The subject's own publications**: websites, annual reports, press releases, investor letters. - **Third-party publications**: news reporting, a counterparty's announcement (a manager naming an LP at a fund close), event programmes, professional directories, archived copies of web pages. These differ in who is accountable for the statement and how close the publisher is to the fact. A regulatory filing and a news story about that filing are both open sources; only the first is a [primary source](https://altss.com/glossary/primary-source) for what was filed. A public record, which a public body keeps and makes available, is one kind of open source, not a synonym for OSINT. ## The OSINT process The Berkeley Protocol sets out the steps of an online investigation: online inquiries, preliminary assessment, collection, preservation, verification and investigative analysis, followed by reporting. Two steps carry most of the weight in financial research. **Collection with a record.** For each item the Protocol expects the web address, the page source where relevant, a full-page capture showing date and time, embedded metadata, the collector, a time stamp from an accurate clock, and a hash value that shows the copy has not changed since collection (para. 155). Without that record a later reader cannot check what the page said, or when. See [data provenance](https://altss.com/glossary/data-provenance) and [evidence dates](https://altss.com/glossary/evidence-dates). **Verification.** The Protocol splits verification into three checks, compared for consistency: the source (its credibility, independence and the earliest known copy of the item), the digital item itself, and the content, including internal consistency and external corroboration (paras. 176-194). Assessing the source is the subject of [source reliability](https://altss.com/glossary/source-reliability); confirming content against independent sources is [triangulation](https://altss.com/glossary/source-triangulation). For analysis, US intelligence analytic standards (ICD 203) require products to describe the quality and credibility of their sources, to express and explain uncertainty, and to separate underlying information from the analyst's assumptions and judgments. The same discipline applies to a due diligence memo built from public sources. ## Legal and ethical limits Publicly available does not mean free to use for any purpose. The Berkeley Protocol notes that hacked or leaked material can be publicly accessible and still carry legal and ethical restrictions on use, and that breaching a website's terms of service, for example to scrape data, is unauthorised conduct and a breach of contract that may or may not also be illegal, depending on the jurisdiction (fn. 11; para. 65). The Protocol adds that information being publicly available does not remove the privacy implications of collecting and using it, and that in some jurisdictions the systematic collection and long-term retention of personal data may require additional permissions and safeguards (para. 28). Its data-minimisation principle limits collection to what is justified, necessary and proportionate to a stated purpose (para. 31), and it expects a record of how each item was obtained (para. 155). ## How Altss applies this (Altss methodology) This section describes Altss's own evidence model, not an industry standard. Altss records the kind of source behind each evidence item in an **evidence origin** field with five values, assigned by the first rule that matches: REGULATORY_PUBLIC_RECORD (a filing to, or record kept by, a regulator, statutory registry or court, retrieved from that body's system), OFFICIAL_INSTITUTIONAL (an official publication of a public body), DISCLOSED (the subject's own statement), OSINT_SOURCED (a publicly accessible source published by someone other than the subject) and LICENSED_THIRD_PARTY (licensed or private material that is not publicly accessible). In the general meaning above, a publicly accessible artefact is an open source whichever of the first four values it carries; a statement the subject gave on request is DISCLOSED but is not open source. The origin field separates filings, public records and official publications from the residual OSINT_SOURCED value because they carry different accountability: a filing is made under a legal obligation, a third party's article is not. A filing is still the filer's own account, so REGULATORY_PUBLIC_RECORD says where it was filed, not that it is true. A news story about a filing stays OSINT_SOURCED until the filing itself is retrieved. Two further fields are kept apart from origin: the **derivation status** of each value (OBSERVED, DERIVED or ESTIMATED) and the **validation status** of each claim, stated with its date (UNVERIFIED, CORROBORATED, RESEARCH_VALIDATED or CONFLICTING). A licensed dataset that is not publicly accessible is LICENSED_THIRD_PARTY, not OSINT_SOURCED, even though the US Intelligence Community definition of OSINT includes commercially available information. The rules are set out in the [Evidence & Provenance Standard](https://altss.com/knowledge-center/frameworks/evidence-and-provenance-standard). ## Not the same as - [Primary Source](https://altss.com/glossary/primary-source): OSINT is defined by how information is accessed (publicly or commercially); primary describes how close a source is to the fact. Open sources can be primary (a filing) or secondary (a news report about it). - [Triangulation (Source Triangulation)](https://altss.com/glossary/source-triangulation): OSINT is the whole discipline of collecting and analysing open information. Triangulation is one verification step inside it: checking a claim against independent sources. ## Common mistakes - Treating "publicly available" as "verified". Open availability says nothing about accuracy. - Using OSINT to mean news and web pages only. Filings, registries and public records are open sources too, and usually the most accountable ones. - Counting reposts, syndicated copies or aggregator profiles of one statement as several sources. - Assuming that information is free to use because it is public: leaked material, terms of service and privacy law can all restrict collection or use. - Recording how something was collected (a monitoring tool, a feed) as if it described what kind of source it is. - Confusing open source information with open-source software. ## Edge cases - A paid database that any member of the public can subscribe to is an open source under the Berkeley Protocol; one restricted to law enforcement or licensed investigators is not. - Under the Berkeley Protocol, content behind a login that any user can create counts as open source, provided access is legal where it is made and no privacy or security control is breached to view it. - A page that has been taken down may survive in a web archive. The archived copy shows what the page said at the capture date, and the earliest copy found is not necessarily the original. ## Questions ### Is OSINT legal? Public availability does not settle the legal question. The Berkeley Protocol notes that leaked or hacked material can be publicly accessible and still be restricted in use, that breaching a website's terms of service is unauthorised conduct and a breach of contract, whose legality otherwise depends on the jurisdiction, and that collecting personal data has privacy implications even when the data is public. Whether a particular use is lawful depends on the jurisdiction and the purpose. ### Is a regulatory filing OSINT? In the general meaning, yes: a filing is publicly available. It is also made under a legal obligation and is a primary source for what was filed, which is why some evidence models record filings separately from other open sources. ### Does data bought from a vendor count as OSINT? Under the US Intelligence Community definition, commercially available information can feed OSINT. Under the Berkeley Protocol it counts as open source only if any member of the public can buy it. ## External standards | Standard | Relation | Note | | --- | --- | --- | | IC OSINT Strategy 2024-2026 (ODNI) (OSINT definition, p. 1) | equivalent | Includes commercially available information. | | Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations (Paras. 14-21 (terminology)) | related | Distinguishes open source information, intelligence, investigation and evidence. | ## Sources - [The INT of First Resort: Unlocking the Value of OSINT - The IC OSINT Strategy 2024-2026](https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/IC_OSINT_Strategy.pdf). Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI, Strategy covering 2024-2026; foreword by DNI Avril D. Haines. Status: Current strategy period (checked 2026-10-01). p. 1 (OSINT definition); p. 3 (PAI and CAI) — supports: US Intelligence Community definition of OSINT, including commercially available information - [Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations](https://humanrights.berkeley.edu/publications/berkeley-protocol-on-digital-open-source-investigations/). OHCHR; Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law, United Nations (OHCHR) and UC Berkeley, HR/PUB/20/2; launched 2 December 2020; printed edition (c) 2022 United Nations. Status: Current (checked 2026-10-01). Paras. 14-22 (terminology; para. 14 on hacked or leaked material; para. 16 on content behind a login; fn. 11 on terms of service); para. 28 (privacy and data protection); para. 31 (data minimisation); para. 65 (violating terms of service); para. 155 (collection record); paras. 176-194 (verification) — supports: Open vs closed source; observation, purchase, request; OSINT as a subset; collection and verification steps; hacked or leaked material, terms-of-service, privacy and data-minimisation limits - [Intelligence Community Directive 203: Analytic Standards](https://archive.dni.gov/files/documents/ICD/ICD-203.pdf). Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI, Signed 2 January 2015; technical amendments incl. 21 January 2022. Status: In force (as amended) (checked 2026-10-01). Section D.6.e(1)-(3) — supports: Analytic standards: describe source quality and credibility, express uncertainty, separate information from assumptions - [Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD)](https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/). U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Live database (accessed 2026-10-01). Status: current (checked 2026-10-01). Firm search (Form ADV filings) — supports: Public search of Form ADV filings as an example of a regulatory open source ## Related terms 6 terms - [Primary Source](https://altss.com/glossary/primary-source) - [Triangulation (Source Triangulation)](https://altss.com/glossary/source-triangulation) - [Source Reliability](https://altss.com/glossary/source-reliability) - [Data Provenance](https://altss.com/glossary/data-provenance) - [Evidence Dates](https://altss.com/glossary/evidence-dates) - [Form ADV](https://altss.com/glossary/form-adv) ## Referenced by 2 terms - [Beneficial Ownership](https://altss.com/glossary/beneficial-ownership) - [Form D](https://altss.com/glossary/form-d) ## Concept record Concept ID ALTSS-DATA-001 Classification Evidence & data Topics Private markets data & OSINT Version 2.0.0 Last reviewed 2026-10-02 Structured data [JSON](https://altss.com/reference/concepts/osint.json) Source check Legal statements checked against the cited primary sources on 2026-10-02 ([how](https://altss.com/methodology)). General information, not advice. ## Canonical URL https://altss.com/glossary/osint