PAI and OSINT Foundations

Foundations of PAI and OSINT

What publicly available information is, how it becomes intelligence, and the working habits that separate analysis from browsing.

• Tell publicly available information (PAI) apart from open-source intelligence (OSINT).
• Describe each stage of the intelligence cycle and what goes wrong when a stage is skipped.
• Turn a vague request into a written intelligence requirement with a clear question.
• Name common cognitive biases and one practical check against each.
• Keep a research log that lets another analyst retrace your work.

Ethics and law

The boundaries of lawful, ethical open-source research: access, privacy, harm, and when to stop.

• Explain why 'publicly accessible' does not mean 'fair to use for any purpose'.
• Apply data minimisation, purpose limitation and retention limits to your own research.
• Recognise methods this course does not teach and why: bypassing access controls, deception, and intrusion.
• Assess the risk of harm before publishing, including misidentification and exposure of private individuals.
• Apply the no-live-positions rule in armed-conflict settings.
• Use a pre-publication checklist and know when to escalate to a lawyer.

OPSEC for researchers

Protecting yourself, your organisation and your subjects while you research.

• Build a simple threat model for a research task.
• Separate research activity from personal accounts and devices.
• Understand what your browser, network and accounts reveal about you.
• Handle distressing material safely and look after your wellbeing.
• Store, share and dispose of research material securely.

Source evaluation and verification

Judging sources and claims separately, spotting circular reporting, and verifying before you trust.

• Grade a source's reliability and a claim's credibility separately.
• Trace a claim back to its first appearance and spot circular reporting.
• Distinguish misinformation, disinformation and satire.
• Verify accounts, documents and media with at least two independent methods.
• Express confidence in plain, calibrated language.

Search and collection

Planning collection, advanced search, archiving and preserving what you find.

• Write a collection plan tied to an intelligence requirement.
• Use advanced search operators and platform search features lawfully.
• Archive pages and media with timestamps and hashes.
• Preserve a chain of custody for material you may rely on later.

Social media and imagery analysis

Reading posts, accounts and images critically: provenance, manipulation and context.

• Establish the earliest available version of a post or image.
• Recognise signs of editing, recycling and synthetic media.
• Read an image for clues without over-claiming what it shows.
• Assess account authenticity without targeting private individuals.

Geolocation and chronolocation

Working out where and when an image or video was captured, and how SITREP's community geolocations work.

• Geolocate an image by matching features against reference imagery.
• Estimate time of capture from shadows, weather and context.
• State a location with an honest radius instead of false precision.
• Follow SITREP's community geolocation rules: proposals, votes, confirmation by independent reviewers, and recusal.
• Apply the no-live-positions rule: locations in active conflict areas are held for review, precise incident pins are held, and military positions never go on the map.

Reporting and briefing

Writing for decision makers: bottom line first, sourced, calibrated and safe to share.

• Write a bottom-line-up-front summary.
• Attribute every claim and state your confidence.
• Separate what is known, what is assessed and what is unknown.
• Redact what the reader does not need, especially personal data.

The SITREP workflow

Using SITREP well: alerts, community threads, channels and geolocations, and the line between community posts and SITREP reporting.

• Read an alert and its sourcing critically.
• Contribute to a community thread with sourced, useful posts.
• Understand why community posts are never SITREP reporting.
• Report content that breaks the community guidelines.

Capstone

A guided exercise on a fictional scenario that brings every module together.

• Plan, collect, verify and report on a fictional scenario end to end.
• Keep a research log another analyst could audit.
• Deliver a short, calibrated brief.

Final exam

30 questions across the course. 80 percent to pass; a 24 hour wait before a retry. Unlocks when every required module quiz is passed.