Sylvain Hajri has worn many hats in the world of open-source intelligence — from OSINT community builder to reality TV consultant tracking celebrities on the run. As the founder of search engine Epieos and French community OSINT FR, Sylvain has built tools and networks that empower analysts across the globe.
In this episode, we dive into his earliest memories of OSINT, the ethics of building intelligence tools, and the hunter mindset that separates good investigators from great ones.
Below, you’ll find highlights from our conversation, lightly edited for clarity and length.
On the power of curiosity:
In my opinion, open source intelligence, it's a lot about curiosity — it's one of the qualities that you need in open source intelligence. It's to be curious and to try to think like the person you are investigating.
On the limitations of tools:
You can do a lot of stuff without tools. Tools are not mandatory, they are just here to help you on your investigation, to speed up your investigation. But if you use only tools, it will be useless.
To be good in open source intelligence, you need to have the hunter mindset to search for information.
On his first memory of OSINT:
The news about Saddam Hussein in 2007 or 2008 — I saw on the news when I was a kid that there is a video, footage you could find on the Internet. I was like, “okay, interesting, but how can we find that kind of stuff?”
I remember searching for that video, trying to understand and see about that major event that changed the geopolitics of the world. When I found it, I showed it to my father because he's very interested in geopolitics. That is the first memory I have of open source intelligence — just searching for a video that would change the world and trying to verify if it was real or not.
On his stint as a reality show celebrity hunter:
So you have eight celebrities that are acting like fugitives for a week. And we are in the headquarters, we are like the police, the intelligence. And we will try to catch them.
And it's pretty interesting because they are celebrities, so everybody knows them. You have a lot of people that love that celebrity that will share on Instagram, on Snapchat, on TikTok, that “oh, I saw that person in my city.” So it was very helpful.
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