How to Enhance Officer Safety with OSINT

Law enforcement officers have always faced a certain amount of danger, but today’s threats extend far beyond the streets. Officers are now being targeted not just by criminals in the physical world but also by those exploiting digital data to locate and put them in harm's way.

Increasingly, digitally-savvy criminal organizations are using publicly available information to vet their members and associates, exposing and risking the safety of undercover officers, informants, and controlling agents. Criminal networks now scan social media for personal connections, family members, and more while looking at breached data and public records to uncover PII, like home addresses. In effect, some bad actors have “turned the tables,” applying OSINT techniques to gauge law enforcement presence, evade detection, or even retaliate against officers.

To limit operational risk to officers in the field, agencies must establish new protocols and apply existing OSINT tools in new and novel ways to ensure officer safety. By proactively leveraging resources that departments typically reserve for criminal investigations, teams can flag and qualify data that enhances situational awareness, identity protection, and operational safety. 

Vetting Informants

OSINT is often cited as a discipline of first resort for investigating potential risks in covert human intelligence sources. Controlling officers vetting a potential confidential informant must check online history for criminal backgrounds and recent social media activity to determine if they pose a security risk, have ties to hostile groups, and can be reliable. Utilizing a standardized OSINT process to qualify confidential sources of information can ensure officer safety and prosecutorial integrity.

Detecting Officer Exposure

As already touched on, criminal groups are now combing the internet for law enforcement officers’ personal information, home addresses, and even location data on their family members. Bad actors are also relying on leaked data found on the dark web or public information such as consumer records. Sometimes, an officer’s associates or family members inadvertently post information that could compromise them or their alias. Identifying this high-risk content first enables agencies to take action quickly to protect their personnel and maintain the integrity of undercover identities. 

Backstopping Undercover Identities

Even the best covers can be compromised, especially now that digital footprints have made it easier to verify or disprove someone's identity. To maintain the integrity of fabricated cover identity, law enforcement agencies can adopt OSINT to ensure an identity appears in all the right databases and platforms and holds up under scrutiny.

Preventing Blue-on-Blue Incidents

Undercover work often involves multiple agencies operating independently, leading to potential conflicts. OSINT can help prevent blue-on-blue incidents by ensuring agencies are aware of connections between undercover officers and informants to avoid clashes between personnel operating in siloed missions. This ensures that undercover officers, informants, and operational teams do not unintentionally interfere with each other’s missions. 

Using OSINT to Increase Situational Awareness

Situational awareness—the ability to assess and understand an operational environment—is critical to officer safety. This is especially true when an operation is being set up in public. By analyzing near real-time data, law enforcement can anticipate threats and take preventive action. By scanning message board chatter, social media discussions, and other location-based intelligence, teams can quickly flag potential risks in an operational environment. OSINT protocols provide a measure of security to the locations your officers choose to stage, operate, and debrief after their operations. OSINT checks and alerts should be a component of your physical and electronic surveillance infrastructure.

Automating OSINT for Officer Safety

OSINT is a necessity for protecting law enforcement personnel. By leveraging OSINT for situational awareness, entity investigations, and officer data protection, agencies can stay ahead of threats.

By integrating automated OSINT tools into operational workflows, agencies can more effectively detect threats to officers and ensure mission and officer safety.

Skopenow is a leader in open-source intelligence. Our AI-powered tools help investigators process vast amounts of publicly available data to generate actionable insights. 

Join over 1,500 organizations—including 50+ U.S. government agencies—that rely on Skopenow's platform to automatically collect and process relevant publicly available information to make better decisions. Learn more and schedule a personalized demo today at www.skopenow.com/try.