Guidelines for public interest OSINT investigations

Welcome to ObSINT!

Who are we

ObSINT has been developed by a collective of like-minded organisations dedicated to conducting public-facing open-source investigative work. Our working group includes EU DisinfoLab, The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), OSINT Curious, CheckFirst, Centre for Information Resilience, OpenFacto, and Logically.

Convened by the European Fact-Checking Standards Network Project (EFCSN), a European Union (EU) funded project, our organisations have cooperated to establish non-binding guidelines for stakeholders conducting public-facing Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) work.

What is ObSINT

We envision ObSINT, or The European Open Source Intelligence Organisations Observatory, as a hub of resources for the OSINT community.

Guidelines for Public Interest OSINT Investigations

The Guidelines for Public Interest OSINT Investigations (“OSINT Guidelines”), divided into five chapters, aim to provide organisations conducting open-source investigations with a framework of good practices and an opportunity to reflect on and potentially refine their methodology, tools, skills, documentation and working environments.

These Guidelines are designed as a starting point. It is hoped that they will be strengthened and expanded with the support of the wider OSINT community, and that this website will be evolved with resources which provide practical templates and examples of the Guidelines in practice.

Join us today and help shape the future of public-facing open-source investigative work!