FROM DATA TO KNOWLEDGE: HOW INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY TOOLS CAN HELP - Cyberwar-Netwar: Security in the Information Age - page 128

preaching and the audience there is very well-known and I believe everyone here should
have a list of who is in that audience. I would suggest to the police when they get a hint
of such a man entering the country we should all be alerted. And it happened in Israel
that two of these people with British passports came to Israel and we were not alerted
because we were not aware of their connections; two Britons carried a suicide bomb into
Tel Aviv. So, this kind of information is open information which should be shared of
course in every field of security but when we are speaking about terrorism it is more
crucial. Another point which was raised by General Vellone, is the need for skilled
people who can understand the opponents. One of the problems with information is that
the people who read it and have to evaluate it are doing it technically, without having the
values and the mentality of the other side. This is most important, not just for any
national security but for fighting terrorism because terminology and wording have a lot to
say when you analyse information from the other side, and the problem in the West is the
incapability to fully understand. When we are speaking with the Palestinians about any
kind of peace and we use English it is very easy, but when we are trasnslating into
Arabic, there are many words for peace. Every word has a different meaning and the last
terminology in the phase of peace in the Middle East nowadays is about an interregnum
with a double meaning. It is a truce between two fighting groups, but historically and
traditionally it is a kind of truce that you ask for in order to gather power again and to
strike when your opponent is rich or not paying attention to what you are up to. Always
pay attention to attacks on your back. This is something that Mohammed did to his rivals
in 622 in Mecca, so wording is very important and understanding is even more important.
Policarpo : To highlight the value of open source intelligence, NATO, two years ago,
started a programme to inform its intelligence staff on open source intelligence. So the
first course started in NC3A in 2002 and numbers that were given in the course increased
the percentage amount of open source, in addition to Internet sources, that can be found
and used by NATO or national intelligence services. This course was first open to
NATO countries and is now open to PfP countries. PfP nations are very well welcome on
these courses which started in 2004 at the NATO school in Oberammergau in Germany.
There are some open source databases and good libraries that can be purchased. The
problem of imagery was mentioned. With a hundred dollars I can buy very good imagery
with a one-metre resolution. Obviously other people can also buy the same kind of
imagery. The problem and the line between open source intelligence and human
intelligence is that previously there was a border and now there is no border. So human
intelligence and open source intelligence has become the same and NATO is trying to
develop and train its intelligence analysts in this issue.
Vellone : I fully agree with you but we are talking in part of intelligence, of course
which must be strongly integrated with other things. About open sources, we could speak
of many different examples, but I want to point out the need to understand the exact
meaning of the words. You know that in the past a lot of systems were based on key
words to select the right information and now in this field they are completely inefficient
because there is a new way of communicating. Today young people have a completely
different language than what I would call “normal people”. Today it is important to
consider semantics, but is semantics something that is fixed? No, because it is very
continuous. It is updated every day and this is another additional problem. However,
you have to follow a lead that means open source. You have to collect things although