If Intelligence were a baseball game....

IMINT takes a pciture every day or so, trying to discern whose winning from sporadic snap-shots at different times of day, different angles of look.

SIGINT trys to bug the dug-out and discern how the game is going from comments by the players

HUMINT tries to recruit the batter, find out where he thinks he is going to hit the ball, and send a spy out to catch it if it ends up there.

MASINT tries to smell the player's armpits and the arc of the ball from leather secretly treated beforehand.

OSINT gives everyone in the audience a baseball glove, and counts the ball out if anyone in the stands catches the ball.

What's the point? OSINT is not a substitute for spies, satellites, or secrecy. It simply takes all the low-hanging fruit off the table so the secret sources and methods can focus. Put simply, OSINT changes the rules of the game--eliminates all the "home runs" by the enemy that need not occur if we harness the distributed intelligence of the audience--and allows the secret sources and methods to focus more carefully on what's left inside the playing field.