The Open Source Enterprise (OSE) is a

United States Government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...

organization dedicated to open-source intelligence that was established by

Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Open Source The Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Open Source (ADDNI/OS) is a senior-level position within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for developing strategic direction, establishing policy and manag ...

(ADDNI/OS), Eliot A. Jardines. They provide material to the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) and other government officials through the online news service

World News Connection World News Connection was a compilation of current international news translated into the English language. The United States Department of Commerce National Technical Information Service compiled and distributed it from non-U.S. media sources, usu ...

History

In the fall of November 1992,

Senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

David Boren, then Chairman of the

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (sometimes referred to as the Intelligence Committee or SSCI) is dedicated to overseeing the United States Intelligence Community—the agencies and bureaus of the federal government of ...

, sponsored the National Security Act of 1992, attempting to achieve modest reform in the U.S. Intelligence Community. His counterpart on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was Congressman Dave McCurdy. The House version of the legislation included a separate Open Source Office, at the suggestion of Larry Prior, a Marine Reservist with Marine Corps Intelligence Command experience then serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staff. The Aspin-Brown Commission stated in 1996 that US access to open sources was "severely deficient" and that this should be a "top priority" for both funding and

DCI DCI may be an abbreviation for: Technology * D-chiro-inositol, an isomer of inositol * Data, context and interaction, an architectural pattern in computer software development * Direct Count & Intersect, an algorithm for discovering frequent se ...

attention. In issuing its July 2004 report, the

9/11 Commission The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks", includin ...

recommended the creation of an open source intelligence agency, but without further detail or comment. Subsequently, the WMD Commission (also known as the Robb-Silberman Commission) report in March 2005 recommended the creation of an Open Source Directorate at the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

. Following these recommendations, in November 2005 the

Director of National Intelligence The director of national intelligence (DNI) is a senior, cabinet-level United States government official, required by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to serve as executive head of the United States Intelligence Co ...

announced the creation of the DNI Open Source Center. The Center was established to collect information available from "the Internet, databases, press, radio, television, video, geospatial data, photos and commercial imagery." In addition to collecting openly available information, it would train analysts to make better use of this information. The OSC absorbed the CIA's previously existing

Foreign Broadcast Information Service The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) was an open source intelligence component of the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Science and Technology. It monitored, translated, and disseminated within the U.S. government openly ...

(FBIS), originally established in 1941, with FBIS head

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named as director of the Center. In response to the

Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (of 1962) ( es, Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis () in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United S ...

and START Treaty, FBIS was tasked with monitoring for clandestine and encoded messages from all nations and coordinating broadcast media contact points who could instantly broadcast urgent messages on "All Channels" and "All Calls" and mutually receive messages in all languages and codings from any foreign broadcast station. This task continues despite the Open Source Center's DNI reorganization. The OSC is located in the Reston Town Center development in Reston, Virginia, in the former headquarters of the FBIS. The construction of the facility sparked some controversy in Reston, a planned community, due to the presence of a chained linked and barbed wire fence surrounding the buildings. In the late 1980s, the CIA agreed to install a more aesthetically pleasing fence around the buildings. On October 1, 2015, the OSC changed its name to Open Source Enterprise and was absorbed into the CIA's Directorate of Digital Innovation.

Facilities

From 1943 until 2017, Open Source Enterprise operated a facility at

Caversham Park Caversham Park is a Victorian-era stately home with parkland in the suburb of Caversham on the outskirts of Reading, England. Historically located in Oxfordshire, it became part of Berkshire with boundary changes in 1911. Caversham Park was ho ...

alongside the UK's equivalent open-source intelligence service, BBC Monitoring. In an information-sharing collaboration at Caversham, BBC Monitoring handled media from 25% of the world while Open Source handled the remaining 75%. There are plans to move Monitoring's headquarters elsewhere, possibly impacting this cooperation.BBC Monitoring: MPs raise fears over service's future
/ref> The House of Commons Foreign Affairs and Defence Committees have strongly condemned the gradual scaling down of BBC Monitoring's capabilities in two separate reports.Open Source Stupidity: The Threat to the BBC Monitoring Service
/ref> The division was closed in October 2017.

History

Facilities

See also

Sources and notes

Further reading