Episode Details

The deployment of open-source intelligence, or OSINT – information gathered from publicly-available data sources and used for intelligence purposes – is having a dramatic impact on armed conflict in the 21st century, rebalancing information asymmetries between states and other actors while supporting accountability efforts. There is, however, a downside to these developments, with OSINT creating and enabling the risk of harm to civilians’ rights, lives, and safety in ways that are not yet fully understood. In this post, part of a new series on Cybersecurity and data protection in humanitarian action, legal researcher and OSINT analyst Ed Millett considers how far international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) currently regulate the use of OSINT techniques by state and non-state actors in armed conflict settings, suggesting that our limited understanding of emergent harms is hampering effective regulation