OSINT stands for Open-Source Intelligence: the practice of gathering and analyzing publicly available information for investigative or intelligence purposes. Distinct from classified-source intelligence (HUMINT, SIGINT, etc.) by relying entirely on legally-accessible data: social media, public records, news archives, satellite imagery, leaked databases, blockchain ledgers. Practiced by: investigative journalists, human-rights researchers (Bellingcat, Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab), commercial private investigators, and (the structural threat side) doxxers and stalkers using the same methodology against private individuals.
What it means in practice
The OSINT discipline is the same regardless of practitioner. Bellingcat’s investigations of Russian intelligence operations (the Skripal poisoners, the Navalny poisoning team, the MH17 BUK missile transit) used: leaked passport databases, frequent-flyer leak data, social-media posts by the operators themselves, Russian-language vehicle databases, and satellite imagery. The same techniques apply at smaller scale to individual targeting: a stalker can reconstruct a target’s daily routine from Strava heatmaps, their family graph from tagged photos, their home address from property records, their employer from LinkedIn. The defensive posture is asymmetric: the person reducing their public footprint must consider every category of public source the attacker might use.
Where it shows up
Used legitimately by: investigative journalism (Bellingcat, ICIJ, NYT Visual Investigations, Forensic Architecture), human-rights documentation (Amnesty Crisis Evidence Lab, HRW Digital Investigations, Syrian Archive), academic research, security researchers exposing nation-state operations, and law enforcement using open sources to supplement classified intelligence. Used adversarially by: stalkers, doxxers, harassment campaigns, divorce private investigators (within legal limits and increasingly tested), and intelligence services using publicly-available data to triangulate against classified targets. The Predaxia editorial frame for individual readers: OSINT is the methodology adversaries use against you, and the defensive understanding helps you anticipate which footprints to reduce.
What you can change today
Audit your own OSINT exposure as if you were a stalker investigating yourself. Walk through: LinkedIn (employer, job history, professional connections, sometimes home city), Facebook (family, friends, location check-ins, photos with metadata), Instagram (visual reconnaissance of home, vehicle, daily places), Twitter/X (opinions, schedule, locations mentioned), Strava (running routes mapping daily routine), dating apps (photos, neighborhood, vehicle), public-records databases (property, voter registration, court filings, business filings), data brokers (Spokeo, Whitepages results), reverse-image search of your photos (PimEyes, TinEye). For each category that produces actionable adversary data, decide what to reduce or remove. The audit takes 2-3 hours and is the foundation of every meaningful PERSEC improvement.