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Speaker 3: If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough. You're
Speaker 3: listening to soft Web Radio Special Operations, Military Nails. I'm
Speaker 3: straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 1: Hi, welcome to another wonderful episode of soft rep Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm your host rad as always, and it's another beautiful year.
Speaker 1: We're in the year twenty twenty four and we've made
Speaker 1: it all the way this far. I just want to
Speaker 1: say thank you, and I couldn't have done it without
Speaker 1: you listening. You know, you guys go to the merch
Speaker 1: store which is at soft reap dot com, forward Slash Merch,
Speaker 1: and we've got new stuff coming in all the time,
Speaker 1: and we just really appreciate you buying our branded items,
Speaker 1: you know with softwarep software radio, and just keep doing that.
Speaker 1: Totally stoked. The other thing is our book club. We're
Speaker 1: totally pushing that full steam ahead. We have a lot
Speaker 1: of quality books inside of our book club. So if
Speaker 1: you'll please go to soft reap dot com, forward Slash
Speaker 1: book hyphen Club will check out our book club. Get involved.
Speaker 1: You know, Brandon Webb is just putting a great library
Speaker 1: together for you to enjoy, So go and check it out. Now.
Speaker 1: A lot of times I have people on who have
Speaker 1: been there, you know, served in the military. I have
Speaker 1: today a special guest who works in the private sector. Okay,
Speaker 1: and Abby will for her as Abigail or we'll go
Speaker 1: with Abby. Abby will say Abby, we'll keep the last
Speaker 1: name to d She's a military brat, her father was military.
Speaker 1: She's worked private sector, master's degree in public policy from
Speaker 1: University of Virginia, so she's got credits on what we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about. We're going to get into national
Speaker 1: security talking about you know, company like five Cast, which
Speaker 1: she has currently transitioned into to work with. And so
Speaker 1: I just want to welcome you to the show. Abby, Welcome,
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. And I really like hearing about the
Speaker 2: book club. I'm gonna have to check that out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good time. I mean, if you like
Speaker 1: to read a book and you want to read, and
Speaker 1: I encourage everyone to read all books, ban books, any book.
Speaker 1: Just pick up a book and read a book. It's
Speaker 1: good for the brain. It's a you know, it's like
Speaker 1: a gym. You go to the gym for your body.
Speaker 1: You need to work your brain. You know. My daughter
Speaker 1: in math class was like, why do I have to
Speaker 1: do this hard math? It's like, what in your business, dad,
Speaker 1: do I use this math for? And I asked her
Speaker 1: teacher at her parent teacher conference and she said, Rad,
Speaker 1: it's not so much that the math is used every day,
Speaker 1: it's that it's using your brain to figure out the math.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, tooche touchee. So let's use
Speaker 1: our brains, okay, Let's let's be that of this world.
Speaker 1: Let's be good stewards and with that abby. You know,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that you're a military brat, you know, and again,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. What branch of the service was
Speaker 1: your family in?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so dad was army, just recently got out, And yeah,
Speaker 2: I call myself an army brat, which basically just means
Speaker 2: I cling onto the coattails of my dad's service. But
Speaker 2: I just got the benefits of getting to move around
Speaker 2: and getting to see and experience a lot of different
Speaker 2: things that I don't think the average person gets the
Speaker 2: chance to do. So I got to live overseas, got
Speaker 2: to move around the country a lot. It was a
Speaker 2: really great experience. So yeah, I grateful for that.
Speaker 1: Right. A lot of the gate guards say can I
Speaker 1: see your ID, ma'am, and you're like right here, military
Speaker 1: coming through, no problem, healthy, Like this is my base exactly,
Speaker 1: it's my base. I'm a skateboard all over this place.
Speaker 1: You can't stop me. I got an ID card, you
Speaker 1: see this.
Speaker 2: That was like a big moment in my young life
Speaker 2: and like I'm finally old enough for the dependent ID.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I remember going, we're gonna get your picture now,
Speaker 1: ten eleven years old, to get your but my mom
Speaker 1: and dad always held onto it they're like, uh yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna hold onto this with it. But yeah, right, exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: my dad was in the army. He was a former
Speaker 1: Green Beret. That's his flag on the mantle above the fireplace.
Speaker 1: So when you're a military brat, I'm a military brat,
Speaker 1: you know, and so it bonds us. I'm sure someone
Speaker 1: listening right now is a military brat. You know, what
Speaker 1: do they call him? Over in England? They call him
Speaker 1: h oh, they have a whole different name. I'll think
Speaker 1: about it here in just a minute if I don't remember,
Speaker 1: someone post up what the British called the military brats
Speaker 1: over there. They're like bunker brats. It's something different. But anyways,
Speaker 1: so here you are, and you know, going where dad goes, right,
Speaker 1: dad serving the country recently got out probably like you said,
Speaker 1: And now you're how old when you decide that you know,
Speaker 1: college is for you and you're going to chase this
Speaker 1: you know, public policy masters? How old were you did that?
Speaker 1: Just go straight from high school to you know, to college?
Speaker 2: Straight? Yeah, straight from high school into college. And I yeah,
Speaker 2: probably the geekiest kid in high school. I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't even want to stay here for the full
Speaker 2: four years. I'm just gonna leave high school at the
Speaker 2: end of my junior year, heads straight to UVA, and
Speaker 2: then I really like college. I stayed there longer. I
Speaker 2: stayed there for five years and I got my masters,
Speaker 2: so I hung around there so I could geek out
Speaker 2: a little bit. But I was interested in international affairs,
Speaker 2: foreign affairs, and I studied that as well as German.
Speaker 2: And then I got my master's in public policy through
Speaker 2: the Baton School, which is a fantastic program, and it
Speaker 2: really educates you on all the fundamental tools that you
Speaker 2: need to make policy. So you're talking about math earlier
Speaker 2: and you're like, when am I going to use this?
Speaker 2: You feel that way sometimes when you're in like the
Speaker 2: soft sciences, and the Baton School was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: you still have to maintain all of these hard skills
Speaker 2: because you're going to need them when you actually get
Speaker 2: to the policy making. So I really like the program.
Speaker 1: It was super cool, right, A lot of gym therapy
Speaker 1: for your brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a lot of.
Speaker 1: Different kit I use my Texas instruments, calculator right now,
Speaker 1: Do I really have to do this? Yes, yes, just
Speaker 1: do it. It was a struggle to do it right Yeah,
Speaker 1: just get it done. Because you're so proud of yourself
Speaker 1: for finishing your schooling. I could see it already and
Speaker 1: you smile. You're like, five years college was chill. It
Speaker 1: is a little bit different than going through the high
Speaker 1: school phases. But as someone who's in the middlelitary and
Speaker 1: you're moving around, your schooling probably was broken up here
Speaker 1: and there, friendships were broken up, and now you're this
Speaker 1: place and now you're that place. So really it's commendable to,
Speaker 1: you know, move through that process and get your degree.
Speaker 1: So congratulations on that. Now, thank you. Did you go
Speaker 1: straight to where you're at from college? How did you
Speaker 1: wind up at five Cast? Right, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about five Cast because it's a pretty interesting company that
Speaker 1: you're with and they're also huge, huge supporter of software.
Speaker 1: But I'm not gonna lie about that, Kay. You guys
Speaker 1: have been supporting us and on board and the ship
Speaker 1: and we row it together, and so I was like,
Speaker 1: why don't we just have you on abby tell us
Speaker 1: all about it, right, it's the truth. Yeah, go ahead,
Speaker 1: let's go.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We were super excited to be involved with you
Speaker 2: guys and get the chance to support you all. And
Speaker 2: then of course if I get a chance to talk
Speaker 2: in front of a bunch of people, that's always fun.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to.
Speaker 2: Jump off that. But I pretty much since I graduated
Speaker 2: from UVA, I've been in and supporting the national security space.
Speaker 2: I think the whole time I was studying, I was
Speaker 2: interested in diplomacy and national security, and I left thinking
Speaker 2: I was going to be some sort of policy maker
Speaker 2: or involved in supporting policy making. And I actually left,
Speaker 2: and I was waiting for a job, and I started
Speaker 2: in an internship and I got to do some really
Speaker 2: neat work with open source intelligence in that internship, and
Speaker 2: it sort of ruined me for any other career. I
Speaker 2: was like, this is the coolest thing since slice spread.
Speaker 2: I get to actually work with intelligence. I get to
Speaker 2: actually support people who are working, living, breathing the mission,
Speaker 2: and I can make a difference. And I'm looking at
Speaker 2: real life data here, I'm not just writing about the
Speaker 2: theory of it, which is what policy felt like to me.
Speaker 2: And so ever, since I stuck out of academia and
Speaker 2: started working, as soon as I got a taste of
Speaker 2: working with intelligence, solving those real world problems and actually
Speaker 2: feeding people information that could help them make the right
Speaker 2: decision I didn't want to do anything else. So I've
Speaker 2: been doing open source intelligence in the private sector since
Speaker 2: I left school. I've been doing that for quite a
Speaker 2: while now, and I've primarily been working in the technology
Speaker 2: portion of open source intelligence. So I've had the unique
Speaker 2: opportunity of not only collecting intelligence, but actually supporting the
Speaker 2: technology that helps analysts access data, interpret data, and ultimately
Speaker 2: get to the assessments that they're making. So I've always
Speaker 2: been kind of on the tech side of things, which
Speaker 2: has been really interesting, kind of a different, different side
Speaker 2: of osent than I think most people see.
Speaker 1: Right, And so with ost you know, okay, so open
Speaker 1: source intelligence, right, I hear that to a lot of
Speaker 1: guests that are into human you know, human intelligence, Right,
Speaker 1: They're going after all these different acronyms, right and OCENT.
Speaker 1: So what is it exactly and how is it used?
Speaker 1: And why is it important in the job that you're
Speaker 1: doing for you know, over for this tell.
Speaker 2: Me, Yeah, so open source intelligence. You actually just asked
Speaker 2: a question that's kind of a hot debate among the
Speaker 2: community of OCENT because applying it has become pretty challenging
Speaker 2: in the past ten years or so. But open source
Speaker 2: intelligence is all about the intelligence assessment of publicly available information.
Speaker 2: And publicly available information is anything that is readily publicly
Speaker 2: accessible data to the average person, and publicly available information
Speaker 2: nowadays is largely consumed through the Internet. So you see
Speaker 2: a lot of people conflict open source intelligence with just
Speaker 2: the Internet. So you see a lot of OCENT analysts
Speaker 2: are really just passed with getting their arms around the
Speaker 2: entirety of the Internet, which is really challenging and basically impossible.
Speaker 2: And then not to mention that it includes things like
Speaker 2: publications like this, like a podcast or a broadcast, news media,
Speaker 2: hard copy paper, publications of data or information. So yeah,
Speaker 2: OCENT is anything that someone without specialized access could get
Speaker 2: their arms around or could get access to. And nowadays
Speaker 2: it's just conflating with digital intelligence really.
Speaker 1: So's what's hot right now where everybody has captured themselves,
Speaker 1: you know, going after like the Capitol on January sixth,
Speaker 1: and they filmed themselves and then they uploaded that, yeah, themselves,
Speaker 1: So that would be OCENT where it's like public domain
Speaker 1: info of what you want. They're like think, you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: there is thanks for filming you going through the Capitol
Speaker 1: and putting it up on the internet. Yeah, And now
Speaker 1: it's public domain and you can just filter it and
Speaker 1: just and that's how they're I mean, really, I can
Speaker 1: imagine that's just one example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one example of publicly available information. And I
Speaker 2: think one of the biggest difficulties in open source intelligence
Speaker 2: is trying to communicate how valuable it can be. So
Speaker 2: you kind of hit the nail on the head, like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's an example of how I as insert agency or
Speaker 2: insert official could use open source intelligence. And we're seeing
Speaker 2: it nowadays with January six, but also with the conflict
Speaker 2: in Ukraine that was actually able to support a lot
Speaker 2: of force protection and even just basic awareness of like
Speaker 2: order of battle going on in Ukraine, so understanding what
Speaker 2: units are operating in Ukraine in Russia, what people are
Speaker 2: these saying sending there, what resources do they have access
Speaker 2: to that? And now we're seeing it again in Israel
Speaker 2: and Gaza as well. There's a lot of information that's
Speaker 2: spreading throughout typically the Internet, that's spreading rapidly through the
Speaker 2: Internet and open source data and is providing critical insights
Speaker 2: to really anyone that's responsible for security safety or if
Speaker 2: you know they're part of the military, if there are
Speaker 2: military efforts in those spaces they could benefit from those real,
Speaker 2: live pieces of data that might affect the decision making
Speaker 2: that they're making on the ground.
Speaker 1: So right, because I mean like you mean, they showed
Speaker 1: the attack that happened in Israel or October seventh was
Speaker 1: like on social media right right there was like this
Speaker 1: is what they came in on. People had this the
Speaker 1: cameras out at the festivals and they were able to
Speaker 1: capture all of this intelligence right there, real time data,
Speaker 1: and we want to believe it's the real time data. Okay.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that that situation is anything that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that when you're taking these photos or
Speaker 1: you're seeing this intelligence, that's where you have to come
Speaker 1: in and you have to start to like really play,
Speaker 1: like you get to decipher it, right mean, like it
Speaker 1: could be put out there to be found mm hmm
Speaker 1: yeah right, oh now you have Now there's the narrative,
Speaker 1: or it could be out there because it's organically real, Okay,
Speaker 1: because somebody on a wave runner had their cell phone
Speaker 1: or GoPro when an explosion happened, and then that's you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: holy yeah, you know, I never really you know, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't really think of it like we're putting ourselves
Speaker 1: out there so much to be investigated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think, and getting into you, you mentioned
Speaker 2: you know why did I end up at five Casts,
Speaker 2: And it's because I've I've worked in the space of
Speaker 2: ultimately protecting people for a really long time and helping
Speaker 2: people make good decisions in order to protect average citizens
Speaker 2: or global citizens really, and open source data just plays
Speaker 2: such a unique role because essentially there's this plethora of
Speaker 2: data that everyone is capturing sharing online and to actually
Speaker 2: make use of it, you need to have either some
Speaker 2: sort of tradecraft or technical capability to help interpret that.
Speaker 2: And the reason I ended up at five cast is
Speaker 2: because five cast develops open source intelligence solutions and one
Speaker 2: of my former jobs, I was responsible for evaluating open
Speaker 2: source tooling and I actually five Casts came across my
Speaker 2: desk and I was like, this is the coolest thing
Speaker 2: I've ever seen. How does everyone not have this because
Speaker 2: all of the rapid decision making and all of this
Speaker 2: really important work that's being done to protect people and
Speaker 2: protect our country. I was like, what do you mean
Speaker 2: this isn't in people's hands yet. That's actually how I
Speaker 2: ended up podcast because I was supposed to be evaluating
Speaker 2: this tool, which I did, and I reached out to
Speaker 2: one of the co founders. Feels like, if you ever
Speaker 2: make it to the US, you tell me the second
Speaker 2: you make it there, because I would love to work
Speaker 2: with this company, and I've been there ever since.
Speaker 1: Where's Pivecast? Where'd they come from? Australia?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Fivecast is headquartered in Adelaide, Australia.
Speaker 1: But yet they have a worldwide commitment to security. Correct
Speaker 1: is that one? I understand? There?
Speaker 2: Worldwide commitment and we pretty uniquely service primarily the Five
Speaker 2: Eyes community. The Five Eyes community is just kind of
Speaker 2: an intelligence partnership between a lot of English speaking nations,
Speaker 2: So New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the UK, the US. You know,
Speaker 2: all of these countries they fit into this space and
Speaker 2: they're sharing intelligence, they're sharing methods, techniques in order to
Speaker 2: protect one another, and we uniquely service that. So we
Speaker 2: have offices in Australia, in London and in the US.
Speaker 2: So I'm based out of our Arlington office in Virginia.
Speaker 1: Do you ever get to go to London?
Speaker 2: I did. Yeah, they're kind enough to send you there.
Speaker 1: We love that. Yeah, yeah, kind five casts, like they
Speaker 1: used to go back so kind, so kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah I got to Yeah, I got to be involved
Speaker 2: in helping the UK team sort of get their feet
Speaker 2: under them as they were setting up the office, which
Speaker 2: was really neat. And now they're you know, fully functioning office.
Speaker 2: They're off and running, which is super cool. And just
Speaker 2: this past year I got the chance to head out
Speaker 2: to Australia as well and meet all these people that
Speaker 2: I've been working with for like four years that are
Speaker 2: developing all these really neat solutions. So yeah, I would
Speaker 2: say we we have a commitment to protecting global communities
Speaker 2: and we pretty meekly are situated within the five Eyes community,
Speaker 2: which is super important just from a partnership perspective. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that's it's a pretty exciting place to be.
Speaker 1: Let me ask this a question, who would use five cast?
Speaker 1: Like who would you put five Who would who would
Speaker 1: need five cast? Right? We're talking national security here, but like,
Speaker 1: really explain that to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, five gasts. So we have a couple of different solutions,
Speaker 2: but our primary users would be intelligence analysts and or investigators.
Speaker 2: So if you have some need, and this is how
Speaker 2: I pitch it to people who are just learning about
Speaker 2: fodcasts for the first time, I tell them, do you
Speaker 2: care about people talking online? Do you care about what's
Speaker 2: being said online? Then you need five casts because we
Speaker 2: give you a unique tool to be able to access
Speaker 2: online communications and begin deciphering them in the context of
Speaker 2: either your next intelligence product or your next case that
Speaker 2: you're working on. So investigators intelligence analysts typically, but we
Speaker 2: find ourselves in unique spots where someone just needs they
Speaker 2: care about what is being said online from a security
Speaker 2: in front perspective, and they need five casts.
Speaker 1: Go find five casts at the website fivecast dot.
Speaker 2: They go to fivecasts dot com, they can check our
Speaker 2: products there.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit more about this five cast.
Speaker 1: So would I be able to use five casts to
Speaker 1: see who's looking at my Instagram profile?
Speaker 2: So five casts is built for and we actually have
Speaker 2: improved use cases. It's built for certain agencies, typically public
Speaker 2: agencies that have the authorities, legal authorities to look at
Speaker 2: data for security. So like an average person me just
Speaker 2: curious about what's on social media, I wouldn't be able
Speaker 2: to use five casts. But if I have the mission
Speaker 2: to look at online data in order to understand a threat,
Speaker 2: in order to pick up certain risks, then I would
Speaker 2: be able to use five casts. So five casts is
Speaker 2: something that we set up for teams to use, typically
Speaker 2: intelligence or collection teams or investigative teams. So typically our
Speaker 2: users fall within defense, national security, law enforcement, private sector
Speaker 2: security entities. So there's a lot of there's a lot
Speaker 2: of pressure place on the private sector too to protect
Speaker 2: their supply chains, to protect their day to day operations,
Speaker 2: their employees, so we help with that as well. And
Speaker 2: of course there are national security threats to private sector
Speaker 2: entities right from an insider threat perspective, from IP protection.
Speaker 1: That's intellectual property perty talking about exactly right.
Speaker 2: So anybody that falls kind of within those types of
Speaker 2: agencies would have the ability to use five casts.
Speaker 1: I see, I see. Okay, So well that's a cool company,
Speaker 1: cool place to work at, and they send you to London.
Speaker 1: Software sends me to London. I can't complain about that, okay,
Speaker 1: very kindly of you, Brandon and the team. We go
Speaker 1: over there to do boxing each year, and then you know,
Speaker 1: we had the great COVID Yeah, and it kind of
Speaker 1: like nipped it in twenty nineteen. We were supposed to
Speaker 1: go over in twenty twenty oh and then you know,
Speaker 1: we've done like three or four years of it up
Speaker 1: until from twenty sixteen till then and then COVID hit
Speaker 1: and kind of like just stopped the world and everything's
Speaker 1: just starting to you know, grease back to movement, you
Speaker 1: know everything. It's just like I mean here in Utah,
Speaker 1: that's where I'm out of It's it's everybody's just trying
Speaker 1: to still, I think, shake it off. You know, we
Speaker 1: have no not to quote Taylor Swift, but it's true.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, can we just shake it off already,
Speaker 1: get back to functioning like we were, you know, going
Speaker 1: to concerts where we were just like right next to
Speaker 1: each other. And you know, that's starting to come back
Speaker 1: to the world. So I can only imagine that intelligence
Speaker 1: is just getting out of control as well, with everybody
Speaker 1: just back to society, and you know, all sorts of
Speaker 1: pings are going off on the internet with like you said,
Speaker 1: involving maybe Gaza and Israel and you know, Iran and
Speaker 1: all these different places. They got cell phones, they're posting
Speaker 1: stuff up and that's being read and watched. You know,
Speaker 1: it's in Ukraine, right, how many of these young kids
Speaker 1: in their twenties over there are fighting the war, are
Speaker 1: tech savvy and they're just like using their drones and
Speaker 1: they're filming. Yeah, it's getting uploaded exactly right.
Speaker 2: And I think you bring up an interesting point about
Speaker 2: specifically open source intelligence during COVID, COVID lockdown and again
Speaker 2: M five casts and OSENT, Like, if you care about
Speaker 2: people talking online, that's when you start caring about this.
Speaker 2: How did people connect and communicate and operate when they
Speaker 2: couldn't do it in person? They moved to digital spaces,
Speaker 2: they moved online. So OSIN actually became one of the
Speaker 2: most critical sources in my opinion, because that's where people
Speaker 2: could commune cap that's where they could collaborate, especially like
Speaker 2: listed activities. That's where a lot of their efforts were shifting.
Speaker 2: And if you didn't have some sort of ability to
Speaker 2: look into that, then you were missing and you had
Speaker 2: huge gaps in your intelligence products. So yeah, COVID affected
Speaker 2: the intelligence space too, and it's affecting you know, what's
Speaker 2: going on in the world obviously, but even just from
Speaker 2: like an analyst perspective, knowing where to look and what's
Speaker 2: going to affect your products or investigations that you're conducting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: OCINTH became kind of came into the center I think
Speaker 2: of where people realized they had to look, is, oh,
Speaker 2: everyone's communicating online now, not that they weren't doing so before,
Speaker 2: but it's especially important because they don't always have the
Speaker 2: means to do that in person. So, yeah, ocean like
Speaker 2: went through then too, all.
Speaker 1: The zooms, right, everybody started to do all these you know,
Speaker 1: like how we're doing these interviews. I used to be
Speaker 1: in a studio and there was a mic situation and
Speaker 1: had a guy in there that was producing and doing
Speaker 1: it all right there, and you'd come in and I'd
Speaker 1: have like three or four guests in a day, and
Speaker 1: you would come in and we'd do hour long episodes
Speaker 1: and then cut them, cut them, cut them. I changed
Speaker 1: my shirt a new day, change my shirt new day.
Speaker 1: You know. That's that's that's changed to this type of
Speaker 1: dynamic where we're relying on the internet and I'm glad
Speaker 1: I get to reach out and talk to somebody who
Speaker 1: is on the other side of the country or the
Speaker 1: world and and connect and I'm glad for this technology
Speaker 1: to be there. But I remember people hacking the meetings
Speaker 1: that these companies had with their yeah, exactly, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you got someone listening in who has
Speaker 1: not signed a non disclosure agreement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, you know, and it's like wow.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, there's so much to think about
Speaker 1: that as going on. And I know, I put myself
Speaker 1: out there right and you're you're standing up in front
Speaker 1: of the microphone. Put yourself out there right now. And
Speaker 1: you know, we discussed before the show, Hey, if you
Speaker 1: don't want it out there on the internet, don't say it,
Speaker 1: because it goes out there on the internet. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is real, right, And so my listener out there,
Speaker 1: if you don't want to set on the internet, don't
Speaker 1: say it on the internet because it'll stick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly right. And I think, yeah, open source intelligence,
Speaker 2: especially digital intelligence rights, we're talking about things that appear
Speaker 2: on the Internet. Social media becomes pretty important in that
Speaker 2: space because that's how people are connecting, communicating, interacting, meeting
Speaker 2: new people, learning about their interests, and ultimately that's where
Speaker 2: a lot of really rich intelligence comes from. And I
Speaker 2: think when you start talking about social media and where
Speaker 2: that came about, which was what early twenty teens a
Speaker 2: little bit before, there's been so many changes to how
Speaker 2: information is following and I think around then. Nothing was
Speaker 2: moderated or understood, and there was really interesting stuff that
Speaker 2: people were like, Oh, it's on social media, nobody's ever
Speaker 2: going to see this, And it turns out that yeah,
Speaker 2: people will see that, and sometimes it would be like
Speaker 2: a key piece of information for someone's security or safety
Speaker 2: or an operational decision that you're making on the ground
Speaker 2: around then. So, for example, you could find out where
Speaker 2: different terror groups were moving operating, who they were getting
Speaker 2: resources from pretty early on. Groups are getting more savvy
Speaker 2: now in how they communicate, but that doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: it's not out there and kind of five casts. Whole
Speaker 2: mission and whole capability is about being able to get
Speaker 2: and access and interpret those spaces and those critical pieces
Speaker 2: of information where they're out there in the public domain.
Speaker 2: So yes, if it's to the general public, if you
Speaker 2: don't have something out there, don't say it. But if
Speaker 2: you're a criminal, please post because it's really great when
Speaker 2: I can, I can help.
Speaker 1: Don't they say criminals are dumb, Yeah, because they're criminals. No,
Speaker 1: Like they usually leave some type of like you know,
Speaker 1: Shaggy and Scooby Doo. Yeah, it was mister so and
Speaker 1: so at the amusement park look, you left the sandwich.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, they think they get away with it.
Speaker 1: Or even this guy recently who they just attributed to
Speaker 1: like three missing women even though he's dead. Technology today
Speaker 1: can go now and figure things out that it couldn't
Speaker 1: then and give these women closure for this guy, you know,
Speaker 1: never having closure for the families, et cetera. It's like
Speaker 1: technology is just crazily expanding and with the world of
Speaker 1: AI out there right and and that you guys have
Speaker 1: to be completely you know, all these chat bots and
Speaker 1: all these different bots and all these different like, hey,
Speaker 1: tell me how to write a contract about rent and boats,
Speaker 1: and it brings up like what you should have for
Speaker 1: a boat rental. But you got to think the words
Speaker 1: that they're taking from all of that information it's gathering,
Speaker 1: the chat gp, these chat bots and all this AI's
Speaker 1: gathering all this information just like a human would be
Speaker 1: doing it, right, But I think a human has If
Speaker 1: you have only AI talking to AI, you know it's
Speaker 1: not going to work. You have to have human interaction
Speaker 1: to control the AI's flow of information. Otherwise AI is
Speaker 1: just going to repeat itself to itself at some level.
Speaker 2: I think not so much with chat GPT. I think
Speaker 2: that's oh man, that's a whole can of worms. We
Speaker 2: could probably talk about that for the whole session.
Speaker 1: We'll let New York Times handle that because they have
Speaker 1: something to say about that right there.
Speaker 2: But you bring up AI and I think it's so important,
Speaker 2: and it's something that at five casts we have a
Speaker 2: whole team dedicated to just figure out new and interesting
Speaker 2: ways to analyze data to raise to the four the
Speaker 2: most relevant content, right, the most important things that investigators
Speaker 2: and analysts would want to find in data. And the
Speaker 2: reason that AI is so critical is because the amount
Speaker 2: of data and the variety of ways it can appear
Speaker 2: online that we have nowadays, and just the rate at
Speaker 2: which it's being generated. You'll hear people talk about the
Speaker 2: three v's a lot in O sense, like velocity, variety, volume. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like that amount of data that's appearing. If you sat
Speaker 2: down a bunch of intelligence analysts and just said you
Speaker 2: have to consume all the data, interpret all the data,
Speaker 2: and put out all these reports, they'd be stuck at
Speaker 2: stage one a lot of the times because they're just
Speaker 2: sitting there trying to find, you know, where is that
Speaker 2: one piece of data where criminal left that bread crumb
Speaker 2: that you're talking about. They have to consume so much
Speaker 2: of that information to get to that point. And ultimately,
Speaker 2: analysts are hired because they have these giant brains and
Speaker 2: they're able to make these connections and able to make
Speaker 2: really critical assessments about why this information is important and
Speaker 2: why decision makers should know about it, and you want
Speaker 2: their big brains working on that problem ninety percent of
Speaker 2: the time, right, And unfortunately, I think a lot of
Speaker 2: the time investigators analysts are just sitting there, like, how
Speaker 2: do I access all this billions and billions of bits
Speaker 2: of data that exists out there? And they're stuck spending
Speaker 2: ninety percent of their time just trying to access the content.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, you.
Speaker 1: Try to art to make a macro to just push
Speaker 1: a button. Yeah, I have a macro on my five cast.
Speaker 1: Have a macro. I just hit it and it pulls
Speaker 1: it all up. I had to put it together, but
Speaker 1: it's just a one button macro.
Speaker 2: Right, And that's the way you see tools like five
Speaker 2: casts becoming so critical in this space because not only
Speaker 2: are threats developing at this crazy rate, data is developing
Speaker 2: at this crazy rate. Criminals are getting smarter every single day,
Speaker 2: and if you can't consume data and make assessments at
Speaker 2: that same rate, you're going to fall behind at some level.
Speaker 2: So when we start introducing tools to automate things that
Speaker 2: the analyst is doing, and we start introducing AI to
Speaker 2: help the analysts arrive at the most relevant data for
Speaker 2: their assessments, I think you end up really getting to
Speaker 2: the point of a company like Fivecasts, which is we
Speaker 2: build solutions to hyper enable an analyst. We don't want
Speaker 2: to replace analysts. We don't want to replace investigators intelligence officers.
Speaker 2: We want to give them the tooling so that that
Speaker 2: ninety percent of their time can be spent all the
Speaker 2: big brain stuff you know AI, talking to AI, you
Speaker 2: talked about chat, GBT, you talked about all these things.
Speaker 2: If you had, you know, computers doing everything, you miss
Speaker 2: this critical component of judgment and decision making and being
Speaker 2: able to draw these really disparate relationships and conclusions that
Speaker 2: analysts are able to do because of their expertise. All
Speaker 2: we want to do is we don't want computers doing everything.
Speaker 2: We want to create solutions that makes their job as
Speaker 2: easy as possible and then lets them spend the majority
Speaker 2: of their time on the most important stuff, which is Okay,
Speaker 2: here's billions of pieces of data, here's the ten most
Speaker 2: important pieces of data. What I care about? And now
Speaker 2: what does this mean and how do I communicate this
Speaker 2: to my leadership so that we can make important tactical, operational,
Speaker 2: strategic decisions so or solve our case or make an arrest,
Speaker 2: whatever it might be. So that's yeah, you hit the
Speaker 2: nail on the head. AI is just that and automation,
Speaker 2: I think are all about the analysts. At the end
Speaker 2: of the day. We just want them to be able
Speaker 2: to do their job best as they can.
Speaker 1: Right, how many of us have ever had like an
Speaker 1: auto email that left your like you know your name,
Speaker 1: your number, your hours, you're in the office, you know
Speaker 1: at the bottom of you know your you know you
Speaker 1: sign your signature. Yeah, I mean it's just like we
Speaker 1: that's just like helps us to have to not type that, right,
Speaker 1: it's like one less thing for me to type. I
Speaker 1: can just fill out the email, send it and it's
Speaker 1: already pre populated at the bottom. When I say macros,
Speaker 1: if my listener doesn't know what a macro is, it's
Speaker 1: like it's a shortcut. It's like a keystroke shortcut that
Speaker 1: somebody learned how to make a macro out of a
Speaker 1: program on the computer, and they just hit the letter
Speaker 1: control F and it like does this whole spreadsheet and
Speaker 1: pulls in all of this data that they spend some
Speaker 1: time to build. But now it's because they don't want
Speaker 1: to have to keep doing that same thing over and
Speaker 1: over and over and over again. It becomes redundant and monotonous.
Speaker 1: And then you start to like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: do this no more. I wish there was a faster way.
Speaker 1: And then that macro, which would be five cast, is
Speaker 1: your macro in those agencies. I would think that you
Speaker 1: guys would be the macro button that an agency would
Speaker 1: want to reach out to you and say, hey, can
Speaker 1: you come help us? And then you guys have all
Speaker 1: the people who make the macros if you will, you know,
Speaker 1: these shortcuts and these spreadsheets and these algorithms and aggregate
Speaker 1: things in meetings, and you know, have all these whiteboard
Speaker 1: conversations about hopefully I'm just assuming, right, And so yeah,
Speaker 1: sounds like you guys are the kind of I don't.
Speaker 2: Know, I like that the macro makers of ocent.
Speaker 1: That's five cast, that's five cast. Yeah, you know, you
Speaker 1: want a simple way. Yeah, you want to have a
Speaker 1: auto reply on your email that you're on vacation, or
Speaker 1: you want to reply every single time.
Speaker 2: And I think something that really drew me to five
Speaker 2: casts is that you talked about, like, you know, these
Speaker 2: whiteboard conversations and trying to solve the problem of I
Speaker 2: don't want to do this no more like the signature.
Speaker 2: The reason I really enjoyed five casts is it's a
Speaker 2: company of people who are doing that every single day.
Speaker 2: They're like, what what are our analysts struggling with today?
Speaker 2: What do they have to do over and over and
Speaker 2: over again that we can save them time from doing?
Speaker 2: Or what is this really challenging piece of data that
Speaker 2: they can't even access unless they have some sort of solution,
Speaker 2: Or what's this really challenging bit of analysis that they
Speaker 2: want to do and it's not possible unless there's a
Speaker 2: tool to help them do it. We have a whole team,
Speaker 2: like the majority of five Casts is made up of engineers,
Speaker 2: data scientists just doing that the macro making that you describe.
Speaker 2: We're just sitting there like, you know, my role, I'm
Speaker 2: a tradecraft advisor. I lead our tradecraft team in the US,
Speaker 2: and I like to think of us as just communicating
Speaker 2: the really cool things that our data scientists and our
Speaker 2: developers are doing day and day out, and that is
Speaker 2: they're just sitting there scratching their head about what is
Speaker 2: making the analyst sic Today and let's try and remove
Speaker 2: that from their day to day tasks. So, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: a lot of what five cast does.
Speaker 1: How to make it better and better and better because
Speaker 1: they get it to a simplistic way to figure things out,
Speaker 1: and then how do they make that even more simplistic
Speaker 1: and how do they make that even more integrated with
Speaker 1: another feature that can just pull in that data to
Speaker 1: maybe give you three of the things you need in
Speaker 1: one macro button versus the one macro. I love that
Speaker 1: concept of just the growth. And you guys have an
Speaker 1: ever changing evolving mindset, right, you have to everybody's like
Speaker 1: working and just getting it done and trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what analysts need. So you guys have to have
Speaker 1: like probably four former detectives and like analysts working for
Speaker 1: you to like give you this insight. Right, you guys
Speaker 1: are like, it can't just be me x skateboarder snowboarder, Like,
Speaker 1: let's do analysts stuff, right, I mean I could I'm.
Speaker 2: Sure you bring you pressure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just think about the gum, the bubble gum. It
Speaker 1: was the bubble gum, right, that's off Colombo.
Speaker 2: That's actually my team. So the tradecraft team at five
Speaker 2: Casts is entirely comprised of former open source intelligence specialists,
Speaker 2: former intelligence analysts, former investigators. So our team sits in
Speaker 2: the function of trying to help our end users get
Speaker 2: the most value out of these products, and then helping
Speaker 2: our engineers and data scientists understand what's making the analysts
Speaker 2: and the investigators sick today. So again work chief communicators
Speaker 2: like our role is just helping meeke sense of the
Speaker 2: traditional challenges and the new novel challenges that are being
Speaker 2: faced in the open source intelligence space, but also in
Speaker 2: the analytical space, so that our users can better leverage
Speaker 2: the five CAST solutions, which are just helping them access
Speaker 2: that ocent in a better and more seamless way. And
Speaker 2: then also the developers, we sit and work with our developers.
Speaker 2: We had a meeting earlier this week where we just
Speaker 2: sit and brainstorm how to better map out a feature
Speaker 2: so that it is seamless and an analyst is not
Speaker 2: going to have to spend more of their time learning
Speaker 2: a new solution and a new way of doing things.
Speaker 2: It's the easy button, it's the macro. So we do
Speaker 2: a lot of that. And the reason we're employed, to
Speaker 2: your point, is we get it. We get what creates
Speaker 2: those headaches. We get what the analysts probably don't want
Speaker 2: to be doing, and if we don't understand, we get
Speaker 2: to sit and listen to them tell us their headaches,
Speaker 2: and we have a special empathy for what they're going through,
Speaker 2: and then we can go champion those changes back to
Speaker 2: the developers and the data science. And sometimes it's really specific,
Speaker 2: like they need this data and they need it faster,
Speaker 2: and they need it to look exactly like this. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it's very specific and I outline the challenge really clearly,
Speaker 2: and then other times I'm going back to the data scientists,
Speaker 2: for example, with a really novel question, and they get
Speaker 2: to sit and just play with how to solve that problem,
Speaker 2: which I admire because it'll be something really huge, like
Speaker 2: how do we better locate information campaigns spreading through social media?
Speaker 2: And our data scientists will say, let's just sit here
Speaker 2: noodle on this as long as we want, and so
Speaker 2: we come to the good solution and we're actually rolling
Speaker 2: out a really cool feature shortly that's going to help
Speaker 2: identifying narratives spreading throughout certain online communities better so that
Speaker 2: when we see dangerous things like miss disinformation, so the
Speaker 2: purposeful manipulation of online data or placement of false information,
Speaker 2: we're able to locate that. Because sometimes just as important
Speaker 2: as finding the critical piece of real information is finding
Speaker 2: the really important fake information out there, so we don't
Speaker 2: make decisions on that right. So we're coming up with
Speaker 2: tools in that area too, and that's all thanks to
Speaker 2: asking some really big, open ended questions to our data scientists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just wild because I'm just thinking of all
Speaker 1: these different things in my head as you're talking about,
Speaker 1: like you know how everybody just leaves a trail everywhere
Speaker 1: they go of just intelligence that you know, you may
Speaker 1: not think you're giving it, but somebody can gather it
Speaker 1: from your photo the background that they wanted to see,
Speaker 1: and they're just like, hey, show me pictures of the
Speaker 1: mountains in Utah. There's like some algorithm that they just
Speaker 1: go and find photos of Utah and next thing you know,
Speaker 1: you see these mountains and then it's just it's just
Speaker 1: like drilling it down onto what you want to find
Speaker 1: and it's already out there, right. You can click on
Speaker 1: a picture, you can write click a picture and you
Speaker 1: can find that proper he's of a picture. You find
Speaker 1: that the picture's geo location tag. And people are just
Speaker 1: not even thinking. It's just right there.
Speaker 2: It's just right now, It's just right there.
Speaker 1: It's just right there. Like like, somebody sent me a
Speaker 1: picture they are sick, and they sent me a COVID
Speaker 1: picture of their like test and it had a thumb
Speaker 1: holding the thing. And I was like, I wonder if
Speaker 1: that's their thumb holding the test strip, right, And I'm cool,
Speaker 1: we're funny about it. And this is a while ago.
Speaker 1: And so my buddy's like, well, Rad, check this out, man,
Speaker 1: and he hit the picture, put it in it said
Speaker 1: show me this picture. He pulled up all these other same,
Speaker 1: similar pictures of the same test with a thumb in
Speaker 1: it holding it. And what we did was we just
Speaker 1: went with the same photo against all of the other
Speaker 1: photos for the thumb. And I was like, dude, if
Speaker 1: that thumb is in these photos, I'm gonna be pissed
Speaker 1: because he's sending me a stock image. Yeah, bro, wait oh,
Speaker 1: Because we're pretty easy going, you know, I'm like Grey's
Speaker 1: six stay home. You know, come on, I love you
Speaker 1: ninety percent love you, ten percent have to fire you.
Speaker 1: You guys know that. Okay, all right? But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they ninety percent love me, but they ten percent might
Speaker 1: have to quit. So we have this relationship dynamic at
Speaker 1: the shops where I work at Kay, It's like we
Speaker 1: love each other, but there's a thing we might have
Speaker 1: to do something to each other so to keep it
Speaker 1: real and like you know, professional, but again, man, wow,
Speaker 1: imagine like I just thought, oh, hey, check out all
Speaker 1: my social media here. Check it out here, We're playing
Speaker 1: war games out in the desert. Here, check out my tank.
Speaker 1: Check out all this stuff. It's like twenty years later
Speaker 1: there's a diary of rat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all available online. And I think, I mean, you're
Speaker 2: hitting on you know, the part where sometimes what we're
Speaker 2: educating people on is look at this really scary stuff
Speaker 2: that we can do. So not only almost as like
Speaker 2: a red teeming exercise, We're like, here's what you don't
Speaker 2: want to do, because here's what we were able to find.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we're educating on that angle of open source intelligence,
Speaker 2: and then other times where yeah, we're showing the shocking
Speaker 2: reality of this is right, you know, here's what it's
Speaker 2: out here, and I actually you just brought up something
Speaker 2: really cool that I think is unique about five casts
Speaker 2: is the ability to do media and analytics at a
Speaker 2: really advanced rate, and specifically doing image and logo detection.
Speaker 2: So that scenario of what you described, something I can
Speaker 2: do is say there was a check that has been stolen,
Speaker 2: and I need to see if there are any photos
Speaker 2: of this check appearing online. I can actually run collections
Speaker 2: against potential suspects and see if they've ever shared that
Speaker 2: photo or they've shared instance of that type of concept.
Speaker 2: I don't even have to have the exact image. I
Speaker 2: can say I'm looking for checks, show me anytime a
Speaker 2: checks popped up in here, and our advanced meet the
Speaker 2: analytics are going to help us get to that. And
Speaker 2: if you're ever scared by the way, speaking of checks,
Speaker 2: I think it was a recent New York Times article
Speaker 2: which talked about checkwashing and don't ever use paper checks anymore.
Speaker 2: I don't think most people do. But it's a whole
Speaker 2: business online now to steal checks, and they can actually
Speaker 2: extract the ink off of them using variety of chemicals,
Speaker 2: and they can now write in new amounts and they
Speaker 2: now have a blank check from whoever wrote it, which
Speaker 2: is pretty terrifying. But this has become a whole illicit
Speaker 2: business online. This has become something where people are coordinating, cooperating,
Speaker 2: collaborating online to do this at massive scales. And I
Speaker 2: just recently had to use onyx to uncover these rings
Speaker 2: of folks that are doing this at a massive scale
Speaker 2: and figure out how onyx can not only find these
Speaker 2: illicit communities that are collaborating and doing these things, but
Speaker 2: also how do we pick up on maybe specific pieces
Speaker 2: of evidence that I'm looking for if I want to
Speaker 2: extract that specific stolen check that I'm looking for protect
Speaker 2: XYZ individual that reported it's stolen. We're trying to do
Speaker 2: it at you know, kind of the macro scale of
Speaker 2: kind of find this threat, but also the really tailored
Speaker 2: scale of I need this specific piece of evidence and
Speaker 2: on its unfortunately unveiled all of this stuff to me.
Speaker 2: So I've learned a lot about checkow and all of
Speaker 2: that online. But yeah, image analytics are so critical because
Speaker 2: I think something we would see earlier in osent is
Speaker 2: people are really reliant on keyword detection. I'm sure, if
Speaker 2: you were to look for something, or if the average
Speaker 2: person were to look for something, they'd go to Google
Speaker 2: and they type in words. That has been obviously made
Speaker 2: a little bit more advanced, but people still really rely
Speaker 2: on keyword searching. I think something I love about Onyx
Speaker 2: is that because evidence nowadays sits in pictures, TikTok videos,
Speaker 2: you know, things like that, you need to move into
Speaker 2: that space of being able to pick up on threats
Speaker 2: and other types of media, if you will. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's illicit groups and how they're using TikTok videos to
Speaker 2: just share evidence of check washing. That's like just one
Speaker 2: small example of how we've automated a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 2: So not only can you pick up on the crime,
Speaker 2: but you can start putting that into your cases and
Speaker 2: using it to stop people from stealing checks and making
Speaker 2: them in blank checks.
Speaker 1: Some of these musicians are out there showing all of
Speaker 1: this like I got cash, I got cars, I got this,
Speaker 1: I got that, and then you know, they're putting it
Speaker 1: out there, and they're putting it out there and they're
Speaker 1: either like being attacked or robbed for showing off all
Speaker 1: of their stuff. And now they're like, you know, walking
Speaker 1: with a five million dollar necklace. Somebody's itching for that, yeah,
Speaker 1: or they're getting in trouble and indicted for you know,
Speaker 1: running gangs and they think that their rap career just
Speaker 1: took off. But they're showing all this other stuff and
Speaker 1: I'm just saying it's out there on the Internet, and
Speaker 1: people are just you know, grabbing it and just saying,
Speaker 1: this is you know, all the rap songs. You're saying
Speaker 1: about all these crimes that happened at the same time
Speaker 1: that you wrote these rap songs and you put them
Speaker 1: all out there. Yeah, these are that's an actual story
Speaker 1: going on. I don't know the full details of it,
Speaker 1: but this rappers and dieted out of Atlanta. So it's
Speaker 1: like ninety eight indictments. I don't want none of that. No,
Speaker 1: thank you, you know.
Speaker 2: But something Yeah, I walk off my lines. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: people don't be very careful about what you post online.
Speaker 2: But if you happen to be doing something illicit, don't
Speaker 2: just share everything.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, right ahead, I'm not trying to say my
Speaker 1: listen it's not my listener.
Speaker 2: No, none of your listeners.
Speaker 1: No. They don't post nothing up on the No, they
Speaker 1: don't incriminate.
Speaker 2: Themselves, right, But I feel like you break something interesting
Speaker 2: because another new trending topic in ocent nowadays is and
Speaker 2: you bring up an important example of it. There are
Speaker 2: a couple of reasons why people use social media. One
Speaker 2: of them is to connect communicate, So from a criminal perspective,
Speaker 2: you know, you can leverage that reliance on social media
Speaker 2: to find a criminal network. Another reason is they are
Speaker 2: running an illicit business. And for our business, you need customers.
Speaker 2: How are you going to connect with customers? Everybody's communicating
Speaker 2: online nowadays, right, so you're going to need to do that.
Speaker 2: Another reason people use social media is to brag. It's
Speaker 2: for the validation. It's people just want to post things
Speaker 2: and feel really good about themselves. And you can rely
Speaker 2: on that habit when you're thinking of folks maybe leaving
Speaker 2: behind evidence of you know, maybe those funds weren't realistic
Speaker 2: for you to have as a public service employee, or
Speaker 2: you're investigating somebody for fraud, people leave behind.
Speaker 1: Everybody carry a birken bag on a on a government jet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's going on?
Speaker 1: You know, and take pictures of that, you know, and
Speaker 1: put it online. Hey, doesn't everybody? Isn't that a normal thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: You're totally right. It's like out there, you like just
Speaker 1: incriminated yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and of course, like you're only getting looked at
Speaker 2: if there's some reasonable suspicion in the first place. But
Speaker 2: and so you'd think, you know, somebody who is doing
Speaker 2: criminal activities, you think they would clean up that online footprint.
Speaker 2: But no, like they even even if they know, like
Speaker 2: they've been arrested or charged with or whatever, a lot
Speaker 2: of times you can still go to their online footprint
Speaker 2: and see just litters of evidence for whatever they've been
Speaker 2: charged with. So in that sense, oh, say, it's great
Speaker 2: because it's a cheap, spective way to find evidence, to
Speaker 2: find that intelligence. It's going to help you make a decision.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't take what like curating a human source.
Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't take like putting boots on the
Speaker 2: ground to figure that out. You know, it takes a
Speaker 2: quick search online.
Speaker 1: And I'm just thinking about Google. They yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got this Google thing. It's like, oh, uh, you
Speaker 1: didn't update Google missed an update of your travels yesterday.
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, and I know I'm a
Speaker 1: Google guide okay, And this isn't like a promotion for them.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, oh, damn, dude, I'm tracked everywhere I go.
Speaker 1: If I go into this restaurant, it's like, hey, you're there,
Speaker 1: will you post up a picture of what you're eating?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah, for sure, and I post it,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know, eleven million views later, you know,
Speaker 1: there's where rat eight At the time, I ate whose
Speaker 1: hands were in the photo? Maybe my wife's are friends
Speaker 1: and it can just start to be broken down right there.
Speaker 1: But I'm just trying to I'm thinking of it innocently,
Speaker 1: you know. But at the end of the day, it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's the Internet, man. We got to watch what we're doing.
Speaker 1: You gotta be careful.
Speaker 2: But in that sense, like I think one of the
Speaker 2: best ways to train folks on open source intelligence, it's
Speaker 2: just specifically social media and it actually has its own
Speaker 2: name now, socment social media intelligence.
Speaker 1: Oh that was the thing that's coming. Yeah, sock it
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's its own thing now. And one of
Speaker 2: the best educators is just reflecting like you are now, Like,
Speaker 2: how am I using all of these tools and online
Speaker 2: platforms and ways to communicate and connect, which are all
Speaker 2: built you know, to help people. They're all built to
Speaker 2: help people communicate, collaborate, all these you know, innocent, perfectly
Speaker 2: lovely things. But if you reflect on it and you think, Okay,
Speaker 2: if I was a bad person, I'm either still doing
Speaker 2: those things because I saw friends and I still want
Speaker 2: to talk to people, and I'm just doing that and
Speaker 2: that might give me critical evidence. But also if I'm
Speaker 2: an a lisit actor, those tools can serve illicit purposes
Speaker 2: if I manipulate them slightly. So, like going back to
Speaker 2: that chech example, you know when I was investigating checkwashing,
Speaker 2: you know, they wanted to sell these checks that they've
Speaker 2: been stealing from the mail. They ultimately need to sell them.
Speaker 2: How are you going to sell them? Like? What are
Speaker 2: you going to go house house like offering listed checks?
Speaker 2: Like what are you gonna do? No, you're gonna go online.
Speaker 2: And people suspect that this is going to be in
Speaker 2: the dark web, which sometimes it is, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: know that's not where the majority of your business is
Speaker 2: going to sit. The majority of folks don't use the
Speaker 2: dark web. They're going to go to social media, where
Speaker 2: a lot of folks are. They're going to use really
Speaker 2: clear hashtags, they're going to use really clear photos and
Speaker 2: they're going to try and hide themselves a little bit,
Speaker 2: but they still want to make their business. They still
Speaker 2: want to build their business. And you know, I'm using
Speaker 2: a law enforcement type example, but the same ghosts for
Speaker 2: are you know our listeners are likely from the defense space.
Speaker 2: You know, same goes for if you know you are
Speaker 2: looking for evidence of TRUP movement, if you are looking
Speaker 2: for evidence of certain you know, weapons capabilities in a region,
Speaker 2: those same photos are either being captured by just an
Speaker 2: average person who happened to see it and it looked
Speaker 2: really cool and they wanted to share that photo with
Speaker 2: their friends, or unintentionally that is being captured by maybe
Speaker 2: people assisting with the Truth movement or assisting with the
Speaker 2: resource movement. We saw that a lot with a Russian
Speaker 2: troop movement, where you have soldiers like taking selfies and
Speaker 2: posting them online and you have you even see that
Speaker 2: in their attempt to inform and gather awareness, like with
Speaker 2: specifically a gaza, you saw hamas they spurned out a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of telegram channels and they want people to
Speaker 2: know where their successful strikes were. They want people to
Speaker 2: know where they were looking to actively attack. They wanted
Speaker 2: people to know where their tunnels were that weren't enabling
Speaker 2: them to get around and perform really horrific things. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, those same principles of just wanting to gather
Speaker 2: support or wanting to gain awareness, which is how you
Speaker 2: know social media is used for positive things, it's going
Speaker 2: to be used by illicit or threat actors as well,
Speaker 2: and so that really that act of view just reflecting
Speaker 2: on oh I posted that, you know Google review the
Speaker 2: other day. You know, if that's even just doing that,
Speaker 2: that's what osan analysts are doing all this time. They're like,
Speaker 2: how just reflecting back on how maybe they use it,
Speaker 2: how they've seen social media used positively, and thinking how
Speaker 2: could that be manipulated in a really horrible way, and
Speaker 2: seeing what information you can find.
Speaker 1: You know, I work outside of a base, a military
Speaker 1: air base, and all day I see jets and in
Speaker 1: my whole life, I've been seeing these same jets, different
Speaker 1: aircraft all the time, and I love it. And I'm
Speaker 1: a photographer, so I have my social media and I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, they're flying. But the other like one
Speaker 1: of the other days I heard this is like really
Speaker 1: heavy plane taken off, not normal sound right? And I
Speaker 1: went outside, opened up my double doors, and I look
Speaker 1: right up there and it's huge and it's big, and
Speaker 1: I've never seen the name. And I was filming it
Speaker 1: with my social media at my Instagram, and I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: who knows what this is? And and I didn't even know.
Speaker 1: It seemed like a foreign plane and someone's like, oh,
Speaker 1: rat that plane is going to Ukraine flying from this
Speaker 1: and it's this model and it's a snake and here's
Speaker 1: it's itinerary flight path. And I was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: was just trying to show something fun and something cool
Speaker 1: that I don't usually see.
Speaker 2: But then I.
Speaker 1: Stopped and thought about it after I got that from him,
Speaker 1: and I stopped posting those photos.
Speaker 2: Thank you are those videos.
Speaker 1: But I still video the F thirty fives because everybody
Speaker 1: knows we got f thirty fives and they do their
Speaker 1: little loopy loops. But I sat back for a second
Speaker 1: and I just said to myself, Well, if this dude
Speaker 1: who I don't know can show me the make, model
Speaker 1: and then number of this aircraft that I didn't know
Speaker 1: and the flight path, well then what else are they
Speaker 1: watching on me? When I post up?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know? Am I you know? And so loose lips
Speaker 1: seeing ships. So I took it upon myself to just
Speaker 1: try not to photo the crazy. I'll look at it
Speaker 1: with my own eyes, enjoy.
Speaker 2: The view for yourself.
Speaker 1: And then with all the aliens that fly the f
Speaker 1: thirty fives. Man, I'm gonna film you all day because
Speaker 1: you're all a bunch of aliens flying around my shop.
Speaker 1: I don't even know. Like they sit there and they're
Speaker 1: like in this, they fly straight and then they just
Speaker 1: go like this and they're just like their engines are
Speaker 1: down and they're flying slowly in front of us. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, you grew up on a base, so.
Speaker 2: What you raise a good point too. Like again, like Osin,
Speaker 2: I think when we talk about it, it ends we
Speaker 2: end up taking the role of, you know, educating folks
Speaker 2: on how they can better find, you know, intelligence or information,
Speaker 2: whether that's for a case or for an intelligence product.
Speaker 2: But then also it's like the scare tactic of if
Speaker 2: we're able to do this for bad people, now you
Speaker 2: know what to avoid personally, Like it's a good exercise.
Speaker 2: And for you it took that comment or that bit
Speaker 2: of feedback from someone where you're like, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: I don't want to just hand that out to everybody publicly.
Speaker 2: So yeah, like be careful even like things that seem
Speaker 2: super innocuous, like sharing that you are somewhere. Like something
Speaker 2: that you would see quite a bit is if folks
Speaker 2: are deployed, they have their cell phones with them and
Speaker 2: they might post where they are and they might share
Speaker 2: a location. Don't do that. I do, Yes, I.
Speaker 1: Do, they do. I know there's protocols and they're like, hey, don't,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if they don't know how to
Speaker 1: stop their thumbs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you also have And the reason I
Speaker 2: know they exist for you know, US folks, But where
Speaker 2: I've been looking is looking at them for Iranian troops
Speaker 2: or Russian troops. You know, there are communities where they
Speaker 2: can join online and it's to share funny means and
Speaker 2: to share photos of them playing with XYZ weapon. Right,
Speaker 2: they are very helpful for me to figure out where
Speaker 2: these people are and what threat that might pose to
Speaker 2: US or coalition forces. But those same things exist for
Speaker 2: US troops. And be very careful with what you're posting,
Speaker 2: and for the most part, ninety percent of people are.
Speaker 2: But that like you said that one time, when you
Speaker 2: share something it could be important. You got to be careful.
Speaker 1: It seemed vital to me. When I got that feedback,
Speaker 1: I was like, you know what, yeah, I was like,
Speaker 1: ah shit, pardon my French. I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I that you know, I hadn't a film.
Speaker 2: That aircraft and we live and we learn, but now
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's like, well if they.
Speaker 2: People listening now also know like oh me, And also
Speaker 2: like if you you know, you work in the space,
Speaker 2: you work with either technology or capabilities that are so
Speaker 2: exciting and it's really cool to see them like you
Speaker 2: were describing, and you probably have a community who also
Speaker 2: thinks whatever it is, it's really cool and exciting, and
Speaker 2: you want to share it by all means, do that,
Speaker 2: but be careful, like maybe not to the public, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I tell my daughters and my kids, like you know.
Speaker 1: The Instagram is more of a brand building content situation
Speaker 1: where if you have a business, it makes sense for
Speaker 1: you to be there to show your products and to
Speaker 1: show your brand and to be there just consistently. That
Speaker 1: is a brand. And if you're an individual civilian and
Speaker 1: you're just starting at thirteen, fifteen, eighteen years old and
Speaker 1: you're making your own name and you're building a brand
Speaker 1: of that name, so you know, my name would every
Speaker 1: picture I post is under my name, Brad. It's like,
Speaker 1: that's the brand I'm putting out there. That's what I
Speaker 1: want you to see is underneath those you know, it's
Speaker 1: just very you're building a brand, and if you're a business,
Speaker 1: it makes sense. If you're not a business, you should
Speaker 1: think about it. Yeah, that's that's all I'm saying.
Speaker 2: It's a very good point, and I think, yeah, ultimately
Speaker 2: something like is I think our responsibility as people in
Speaker 2: the ocent space is just acknowledging that dual role that
Speaker 2: we hold is because we deal with publicly available information,
Speaker 2: so important for us to have these conversations where you
Speaker 2: can say, hey, here's all those really cool things that
Speaker 2: we could locate and all the really awful things we
Speaker 2: can hopefully, you know, have a positive impact on, but
Speaker 2: also used as an educating education opportunity where it's you know,
Speaker 2: I call it a red TeV exercise, but like, yeah,
Speaker 2: what can I find about myself or my you know,
Speaker 2: my TEK, my presence, whatever it is and clean it up.
Speaker 2: It's not hard to do, like switch your account to private,
Speaker 2: you know, be judicious about what you're posting. Be judicious
Speaker 2: about the context that you offer with what you post.
Speaker 1: Photos that you post it up. You know, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: are those still up on the internet. Take a look
Speaker 1: you should find out. Yeah, maybe go take them down,
Speaker 1: you know, get rid of them, or fix it up
Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, clean yourself up. Like we
Speaker 1: shower every day, right, mostly most of us. I try
Speaker 1: to come on. It's probably the same type of thing, hygiene, right,
Speaker 1: we should begetic about it, except for the bad guys,
Speaker 1: except the BA but for that dirty dirty pig pen.
Speaker 2: Leave everything out there. That's so helpful to me. I think,
Speaker 2: like that's always like this a great day when I
Speaker 2: come across like an account, a channel something whatever it
Speaker 2: is where I'm investigating something that it could take a
Speaker 2: long time, right when you're picking out a big problem
Speaker 2: like you know, fruit movement and x y Z location.
Speaker 2: I just love it. When I come across an account
Speaker 2: with this guy who shares daily updates video he tells
Speaker 2: me what it is I'm looking at. I'm like, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you so much, you know, double heart, you telled
Speaker 2: me a lot so oh.
Speaker 1: B yeah exactly, yes, just keep it up, keep it up,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh, it puts a whole other spin
Speaker 1: on I got five on it. You know when you
Speaker 1: got five cast working with you, right, it's like I
Speaker 1: got the whole other spin to that. H that term
Speaker 1: and uh five cast dot com is that how we
Speaker 1: would look you up if you're in the defense departments
Speaker 1: and in the industry, and you're in the eyes of
Speaker 1: the world, and uh, you want to you know, reach
Speaker 1: out to abby D. That's her abby D. You're going
Speaker 1: to have to find her through five cast. So I
Speaker 1: have stolen an hour of her soul for you to
Speaker 1: hear about. You know what we just talked about right
Speaker 1: our footprint, how she can read it. I just want
Speaker 1: to let you know that, like what I was saying
Speaker 1: is like she's laughing because it's true. And so we
Speaker 1: we have to understand that because five cast is out
Speaker 1: there throwing a net looking for things that they need
Speaker 1: to look for, and you know people have been out there.
Speaker 1: So hey, if you're in the industry, you know of
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense, and you're listening to this podcast,
Speaker 1: which you guys do you're write in and so check
Speaker 1: out five casts, hit them up, tell them you heard
Speaker 1: it on soft rep. That'd be cool, you know, give
Speaker 1: me a shout out, and yeah, right, and say you
Speaker 1: heard the Abby the Abby episode, and don't forget to
Speaker 1: buy our merch at soft rep dot com and that's
Speaker 1: at the merch shop. And don't forget the book club
Speaker 1: because it's soft reap dot com forward slash book hyphen Club.
Speaker 1: I really love books, Like I got a lot of
Speaker 1: books like right right here in my desk. Don't even
Speaker 1: make me pull them out, so Abby, I think I'm
Speaker 1: going to wind us down after an hour of conversation.
Speaker 1: I just plugged the merch store by our merch and
Speaker 1: five cast, you know, trying to put a global net
Speaker 1: of security over the bad guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me. I think this is a
Speaker 2: lot of fun to just sit and go about you
Speaker 2: know why I do what I do, And you know,
Speaker 2: let me geek out a little bit on you know,
Speaker 2: relating a lot of the stuff that we do for
Speaker 2: our users to you know, the average person. I think
Speaker 2: that's really enjoyable. And yeah, if people have questions, so
Speaker 2: free to reach out. I love geeking out about this, clearly,
Speaker 2: I'll do it for hours on end. So if you
Speaker 2: have questions, you want to chat, Yeah, reach out to
Speaker 2: us or contact us via fivecast dot com.
Speaker 1: Perfect perfect, Well, thanks so much And this is rad
Speaker 1: On behalf of Abby D and her five cast posse
Speaker 1: and me as softwareps saying peace. In a world where
Speaker 1: information overload can cloud judgment, one platform stands out in
Speaker 1: the intelligence landscape. Meet five cast, the future of data
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Speaker 3: You've been listening to self red Radia