What is HUMINT?

• A. Interpersonal contact by human sources
• B. Satellite imagery
• C. Open-source data from the internet
• D. Open-source social media

Answer: (A)

HUMINT is intelligence gathered through direct human contact. It relies on people—through interviews, debriefings, informants, and liaison with sources—to obtain information, often including motivations, plans, or insights not available publicly. This human-driven approach captures nuance and context that sensors or publicly available data might miss. Satellite imagery, by contrast, provides visual data from space and falls under imagery intelligence rather than HUMINT. Open-source data from the internet and open-source social media are OSINT, gathered from publicly accessible sources without requiring direct personal contact. Because HUMINT centers on information obtained through interpersonal interactions with people, it best fits the description of interpersonal contact by human sources.