By Marie-Soleil Seshat Landry, OSINT analyst and researcher · ORCID 0009-0008-5027-3337 · Marie Landry Spy Shop, a Landry Industries publication
Say the word “spy” and most people picture two very different characters. One is the brilliant analyst who pieces together the truth from scraps of information everyone else overlooked. The other is the shadowy figure who breaks into phones, plants bugs and reads other people’s mail. Popular culture blends them into one person. The law does not.
This post draws the line between them. On one side is open-source intelligence (OSINT): research built entirely on information that is lawfully and publicly available. Call it the legal side of intelligence work, or, if you like the spy-novel framing, “legal espionage”. On the other side are the practices that turn a researcher into a lawbreaker: hacking, interception, stalkerware, pretexting and surveillance without a warrant.
Quick note on words: in Canadian law, espionage has a precise meaning. It refers to offences such as passing protected government information to a foreign power, now set out in the Foreign Interference and Security of Information Act. OSINT is not espionage in that legal sense, and that is exactly the point. It gets you the insight people associate with spying, without the crimes.
Meet the good spy
The good spy works in the open. Their raw material is what anyone can lawfully access: news reports, court decisions, corporate registries, government data, academic papers, satellite imagery, maps, archived web pages and public social media posts. Their skill lies not in getting at secrets, but in finding, connecting and verifying what is already out there.
That approach has a remarkable track record. After Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014, open-source researchers at Bellingcat used photos, videos and social media posts to trace the Buk missile launcher that downed the plane back to Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, the same unit the official Joint Investigation Team later named. Human rights groups and newsrooms now use the same methods every day to verify footage from war zones, document attacks on civilians and debunk recycled propaganda.
None of it required breaking into anything. It required patience, method and verification.
The good spy’s toolkit
- Public records: corporate registries, court decisions on CanLII, securities filings, lobbying registries, political financing data and government open data.
- Geospatial intelligence: satellite and street-level imagery used to confirm where and when a photo or video was taken.
- Verification: reverse image search, archived copies, source grading and at least two independent sources for every key claim.
- Structured analysis: testing competing explanations against the evidence instead of grabbing the first story that fits.
- AI, used carefully: to summarize, translate and organize, with every claim checked against a real source by a human.
Our free guides walk through each of these: The OSINT Research Method, GEOINT Basics, Public Record Verification and Due Diligence in Canada and AI for OSINT.
Meet the bad spy
The bad spy takes shortcuts, and in Canada most of those shortcuts are crimes. Here are the practices that separate illegal spying from legitimate intelligence work.
Hacking and account intrusion
Logging into someone else’s email or social media account, guessing or phishing passwords, or getting around any access control is unauthorized use of a computer under section 342.1 of the Criminal Code. It does not matter that the password was easy, that the account was left logged in, or that you “only looked”. Damaging or interfering with data is a separate offence, mischief in relation to computer data, under section 430.
Interception and stalkerware
Secretly recording phone calls, reading someone’s messages in transit or installing monitoring software on another adult’s phone can amount to interception of private communications under section 184 of the Criminal Code. So-called stalkerware is marketed as a way to “keep an eye” on a partner or employee. Used on an adult’s device without their knowledge, it is a tool of abuse and a route to criminal charges.
Hidden cameras and covert watching
Secretly observing or recording people where they reasonably expect privacy can be voyeurism under section 162. Repeatedly following, watching or contacting someone so that they fear for their safety is criminal harassment under section 264. The good spy uses detection tools to find hidden cameras and trackers. The bad spy plants them.
Pretexting and impersonation
Pretending to be a bank, a police officer, a relative or a company employee to trick someone into handing over information is not clever social engineering. Depending on the facts, it can be fraud or personation, and it destroys the credibility of anything you learn from it.
Warrantless surveillance
The state is not exempt. Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects everyone against unreasonable search and seizure, and the Supreme Court of Canada keeps applying it to the digital world. In R. v. Spencer (2014), the Court held that police needed lawful authority, not just a polite request, to obtain the subscriber information behind an internet address. In R. v. Bykovets (2024), it went further and recognized a reasonable expectation of privacy in IP addresses themselves. When governments or police watch people without proper legal authority, that is bad spying too, and the courts treat it that way.
Investigating people for pay without a licence
There is one more line that catches many well-meaning people. In New Brunswick, investigating and reporting on a person’s character or actions for pay is the work of a licensed private investigator under the Private Investigators and Security Services Act. Even when every source is public, selling that service without a licence is not OSINT publishing. It is unlicensed investigation.
Good spy vs. bad spy at a glance
| Good spy (OSINT) | Bad spy (illegal practice) |
|---|---|
| Uses lawfully public sources | Breaks into accounts and devices |
| Reads what was published | Intercepts what was private |
| Detects hidden cameras and trackers | Plants them |
| Researches institutions, events and public figures acting publicly | Targets private individuals |
| Verifies with independent sources and cites them | Relies on deception and pretexting |
| Publishes openly and corrects errors | Works in secret and answers to no one |
| Respects warrants, licences and privacy law | Treats the law as an obstacle |
Why the good spy wins
Ethics aside, the good spy simply produces better intelligence. Findings built on illegally obtained information cannot be published safely, often cannot be used in court and expose everyone involved to prosecution and lawsuits. Findings built on open sources can be shown, checked and repeated by anyone. That transparency is what makes OSINT persuasive to journalists, courts, international investigators and the public.
There is a practical point too: the open web holds far more than most people realize. The skill that matters is no longer getting into places you shouldn’t be. It is knowing where to look, how to verify what you find and how to explain it clearly.
“Public” is not a free pass
Being a good spy is not only about avoiding crimes. Information can be technically public and still be wrong to collect, combine or publish. Gathering scattered public details about a private person into one profile can expose them to stalking or harassment, even if each detail was findable on its own. That is why our own code of conduct is stricter than the law requires:
- Do no harm. The public interest must clearly outweigh any harm from publishing.
- Research institutions, events and public figures in their public roles, never private individuals.
- No minors, no home addresses, no family members who are not part of the story.
- Collect only what the question needs, and protect what you hold.
- Give the subjects of serious allegations a chance to respond.
- Cite sources, disclose AI assistance and correct errors openly.
Read more in OSINT, Ethics and the Law in Canada.
Be your own counter-spy
The best way to protect yourself from bad spies is to think like a good one. Run OSINT on yourself to see what a stranger could learn about you in an afternoon, then remove what you can and lock down the rest. Our digital footprint audit walks you through it step by step, and businesses can use the same thinking to map their own attack surface before attackers do. If you suspect a hidden camera or tracker, our guide to finding hidden cameras explains how to sweep a room.
The bottom line
The difference between a good spy and a bad spy is not talent or technology. It is the line between open and stolen, between published and intercepted, between accountability and secrecy. OSINT stays on the right side of that line, and it is more powerful for it.
Explore more methods and case studies in the OSINT Research Hub, or browse hundreds of free reports in our research library.
This article is for education and general information only and is not legal advice. Laws change and depend on the facts; consult a lawyer about your situation. Marie Landry Spy Shop is an open-source intelligence research publication and does not offer private investigation services. This article was written with AI assistance and checked against public sources on October 21, 2026.
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