FROM DATA TO KNOWLEDGE: HOW INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY TOOLS CAN HELP - Cyberwar-Netwar: Security in the Information Age - page 126

system to work better. I agree with you on both your considerations. But when I
mentioned the creation of a hypothesis, I believe this would be a way to try to find a
solution to this problem because to create a hypothesis is something which involves a lot
of capabilities including everything we have mentioned. Including also, as I have
mentioned before, the female capability to work much better than the male. This is a
fact. Because the female brain works with the two parts of the brain together, rational
and intuitive, the same thing could be brought into our field. This is the first time that
there is some feedback because previously traditional intelligence did not have any
feedback to check tacit knowledge.
de la Mora : I am surprised to learn that 80% of the information used by intelligence
services comes from open sources and my own interpretation is that probably this is an
error and this would not be a good course of action. For example, take my own company.
I assume there are other people who would like to know what the company is willing to
do in the future; for example, the bids we are going to make and the prices we will put
forward, etc., information which would be very useful to our competitors. But this
information does not exist in an open source. It is impossible for anybody to know it or
to get any useful data on our corporation. Yes, you can try to use open sources, and if this
is true of our company, I assume that this will be true also for terrorists. It is impossible
to believe that useful information cannot be opened. I assume that real useful
information is certainly closed to everyone and the only way to get it is to use the
traditional means of intelligence agencies and not by scanning the Internet. And if
intelligence agencies are relying too much on open sources, that is probably the reason
why they are not getting to the right objective which is to find out what terrorists are
planning and stopping them before they act. My question is, are these 80% open
information sources real?
Vellone : The research refers to about 85% but that is not very important. What is
important is that a lot of open source data can be used to create the right scenario. I want
to refer to just one experience in the fight against organized criminality. It is very similar,
if you like, to terrorism, similar but with strong differences as well. This is mainly
because of the motivation of the groups and also the psychological background. But
when we want to refer to open source data, we refer to a lot of global information. That is
very important, it is a like a spread. I want to speak like a communicator. It is something
like the spread of spectrum technology. You can have the noise with the information
spread, with small spikes inside the noise. If you are able to collect all the small spikes
of signals within the noise and put them together, you will have the signal coming out.
The same could happen in the intelligence field. The issue is not where these pieces of
information are coming from. What is important is that they are consistent with your
target. Consistent with your target means that you have to have correlation with terrorism
activities. If I have a database for cellular communication, I have an autoroute for people
entering and exiting the data route. Just these two. And perhaps in the mass of people
who make phone calls, and the mass of people entering the autoroute, I can see
something strange. I mentioned before, “exception intelligence”. If a countryman from
Sicily goes to the mainland and buys a Mercedes, something is strange. What is this
country-roads man doing on the mainland? These are open sources, but from these
emerge an exception very useful in making a first decision. I have to investigate that car,
the owner of the car, the owner of the telephone. So, from open source information I can