For as long as it’s existed, the Central Intelligence Agency has used Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) in its hunt for information that could serve as fuel for its analysis. This often meant simply reading major foreign newspapers, and monitoring for trends. When it came to understanding foreign cultural movements, CIA took it a step further - they studied the political cartoons of foreign countries. Cartoons that were essentially memes.

A series of recently released legal guidelines on Open Source Intelligence explain how and when intelligence agencies can exploit social media and other online resources. One of the documents, previously classified SECRET//NOFORN, hints at the online recruitment of people as sources of information. Collectively, the guidelines spell out the restrictions intelligence agencies work with when dealing with OSINT, revealing how users and developers can deter intelligence agencies from some of the most casual, and pervasive, forms of surveillance.