Chapter 1: Open Source Investigations in the Age of Google: How Digital Sleuths Can Strengthen Human Security

A growing number of digital investigators, analysts, activists and agencies are electing to observe and understand the world through open source research, revealing detailed information that would otherwise remain unknown and unanalyzed. Their work is made possible by technological advances that enable people to access and process conventional and novel data sources that, while publicly available, may be too obscure, voluminous or dynamic to be handled using more traditional methods. These emerging practices provide new opportunities for innovative monitoring, post-hoc investigation and sense making, and suggest radical possibilities for global justice, accountability and governance. This book brings together chapters from leading open source research practitioners and experts, describing and analyzing this fast-growing sector from multiple perspectives, as well as showcasing specific investigations, methods and tools, and examining how findings can be applied across a very wide set of contexts. This opening chapter frames the contributions that follow by identifying and exploring common themes and challenges, and assessing the opportunities for, barriers to, and significance of this exciting new field.