This post was written in August 2022. On the 26 July 2022, the Russian Theft Report dropped, claiming to ‘expose’ Russia’s looting of Ukrainian assets “like steel and grain” using “open-source intelligence tools”. The report was the work of the Initiative for the Study of Russian Piracy (ISRP) a self-described group of “former U.S. government […]
Leonardo da Vinci would have been great at OSINT
Up until the beginning of the 16th Century, most maps of cities were drawn from a hillside view, also called a side-on or birds-eye perspective. They often lacked accuracy as buildings in the forefront would appear larger than equally sized buildings in the the distance. The surrounding landscape and prominent features were often exaggerated. Many […]
How to track Russian oil
On March 9th 2022, Greenpeace launched a Twitter bot called @RUTankerTracker. The bot tweets out every time a ship leaves a Russian port with oil or gas. Thanks to the bot, Greenpeace was able to confirm that 148 super tankers had left Russia since the start of the war. The shipping industry is deceptive and […]
Radar, the ‘new’ satellite imagery
Since Russia began the invasion of Ukraine last week, the Twitter OSINT community, open-source investigators, and analysts, have been in full gear and many working around the clock. Volunteers and professionals (often both simultaneously) are verifying bits of information, tracking casualties and lost equipment, and geolocation airstrikes. I have participated in this Twitterverse myself but […]
When do you stop verifying?
An important part of any investigation is verifying pieces of evidence that you or your team have managed to collect, be it images, videos, or statements made by witnesses or court documents. In most cases, easier said than done. There are a number of variables that determine the difficulty of verifying, say an image. The […]
Feminism, power relations, and OSINT
Perhaps from a reductionist perspective, citizen investigations would not be considered anything new. It is a cocktail of tools, methodologies, and disciplines, that have existed for some time and that are used by the investigative journalist, the academic criminologist or the activist artist. Yet, when viewed holistically, citizen investigations are ground-breaking, radical, and perhaps, just […]
Geolocation: finding a prison in Tibet with Google Earth
Starting a project to map out prison locations in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is quite a daunting task. Considering there is little to no information and such work has not been done in the region previously. The Tibet Research Project is an attempt to map all prison locations in Tibet, similar to the work […]
Verification & Social Media
Verification is the practice or process in an investigation of confirming the accuracy or reliability of sources or content. A source could be a video, a picture, news story, social media post, etc. and the method of verification is dependent on your source. For example, if you have an image that you need to verify […]
Geolocation: AI in Open Source Investigations
Much has been made about Artificial Intelligence (AI) being used to spread disinformation. The latest threat (I use threat lightly here) to open-source investigations is AI created maps and satellite imagery (or deep fakes). However, little has been made about efforts to use AI for citizen investigations, at least on a level accessible to all […]
