12 ms·

Anatomy of a Killing

768 points by danso 8y ago

dddddaviddddd 8y ago
It's fascinating to me that all the information required for the analysis is publicly available. This seems like a big shift from an era when only an intelligence agency would have been able to perform this sort of analysis.
- mherdeg 8y ago
  The "open source intelligence" report on the MH17 incident -- where people found social media videos of the Buk missile proceeding through the countryside before being used to down the passenger jet -- was super interesting in a similar vein: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2015/10/08/mh17-the-open-source-evidence/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2015/10/08/mh1...
  - megous 8y ago
    There are plenty of people doing open source data gathering and investigations. It's pretty interesting. Bellingcat is one of such orgs. You can find a lot of individuals and small orgs on Twitter doing stuff like spotting military ships and their cargo, spotting drones on satellite imagery, collecting lists of destroyed heavy weapons, listing ATGM attacks, airstrike victims (airwars.com), geolocating videos/pictures posted to social media, colleting info on chemical attacks (bellingcat), collecting and publishing ISIS documents online, recreating 3D models of some events from public videos/photos, etc. One example of 3D modelling (they call it forensic architecutre) based on open source data is in this report on Douma attack: https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000005840873/syria-chlorine-bomb-assad.html https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/1000000058408...
    - stevenjohns 8y ago
      > There are plenty of people doing open source data gathering and investigations. It's pretty interesting. Bellingcat is one of such orgs. Bellingcat is also a great example of what it shouldn't be. Most of what is produced is misleading at best. Some of the core "experts" (i.e Dan Kaszeta) are closer to propaganda generators than genuine researchers or informed sources.
      - voltagex_ 8y ago
        Interesting - looks like I follow bellingcat, but I can't remember why. Have you got any information on bias or counter points?
        nmeofthestate 8y ago
        I know of them through their work on the Skripal poisoners' passports (uncovering evidence that they're GRU agents). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45656004 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45656004
      - megous 8y ago
        I dunno, I'm exposed to Bellingcat only via the work of Elliot Higgins, so I'm not able to judge other contributors for myself. But it's very frequent to call people's work propaganda these days, just because someone disagrees. So unless you have more info, it doesn't mean much.
        stevenjohns 8y ago
        Higgins is the person who groomed Kaszeta, together they formed the theory behind hexamine being used as an acid scavenger on the first Sarin chemical attacks attributed to the Syrian government. Together they tried to take on MIT's Postol and others who found it ridiculous (and implausible at best). If you followed Higgins prior to Bellingcat (back when he was "Brown Moses") you'd know he had a strong bias for the rebellion which has since just turned into a strong anti-government bias, strong interventionalism and explicitly anti-Russian. A great example of how their bias slips into their analyses is examples like the fake sniper boy[0] which fooled a lot of anti-government "experts" to the point where people like Higgins tried to organise witch hunts against the scene director. [0] https://journal-neo.org/2014/11/27/what-the-fake-syria-sniper-boy-video-tell-us-about-media-experts/ https://journal-neo.org/2014/11/27/what-the-fake-syria-snipe...
        megous 8y ago
        While I agree I see personal bias in what he writes on Twitter, I'd hardly call it pro-rebel. Anti-government (more like anti-syrian regime), sure. It show in the choice of topics. But the question is how much it shows in the analysis itself. As for Hexamine/Sarin attack/Postol issue: Hexamine was found in Sarin attacks by OPCW, it was declared by Syria to OPCW. Postol is not a chemist, nor CW expert, nor on the ground, nor very credible wrt his claims about Syrian chemical attacks, as several of his claims were already rejected by OPCW, who found Syrian regime responsible for the April 4 2017 attack (Postol had all kinds of theories about this attack). I prefer OPCW's conculsions to some random profesor's taking sides and judging from a distance. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Timeline-of-Syrian-Chemical-Weapons-Activity https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Timeline-of-Syrian-Ch... You quoted Partisangirl, and I just can't take her seriously as an unbiased source either. Just one recent example of clear bias: Despite big civilian protests last few weeks in Idlib, she only tweeted one picture of some marching jihadists. She's very clearly pro assad-regime, at the expense of truth, accuracy, and peoples lives for that matter. So yeah, Higgins is biased, but quoting other biased, non-expert sources doesn't really improve the matters. Re: fake sniper. The experiment can be both revealing of reporting bias and highly irresponsible. People criticized the irresponsibility angle at the time. Witch hunt seems to be your interpretation.
    - Ua2Reemo 8y ago
      There was that one time when /pol/ gathered information that lead to a russian airstrike on some faction in syria.
      - emptyfile 8y ago
        Source? I find this hard to believe.
        esyir 8y ago
        This is not valid evidence, but rather conjecture from the board itself. It is however what he referred to. https://m.imgur.com/gallery/5P1N1GI https://m.imgur.com/gallery/5P1N1GI
    - dwd 8y ago
      A lead investigator on this is also with Bellingcat https://www.twitter.com/Yaolri https://www.twitter.com/Yaolri
  - shodan666 8y ago
    > https://www.bellingcat.com/ https://www.bellingcat.com/ This site is unreliable, its full of bogus claims regrading or example Syria (author of the site is supporting the Kurdish rebels for example).
  - dwd 8y ago
    This was a good blog at the time that did a reasonable effort compiling information from various sources. It was interesting how much could be gathered from the social media accounts of various soldiers and mercenaries. Note that it was tracking Russian vehicle movements before MH-17. http://ukraineatwar.blogspot.com/ http://ukraineatwar.blogspot.com/
- credit_guy 8y ago
  Fascinating indeed. However, the main question remained unanswered (and unasked). Who ordered the killings?
  - ransom1538 8y ago
    I imagine that is what the actual court will flush out. They will all squeal for better deals during sentencing or pleas. No one wants to spend the rest of their life in an improversed hot Cameroonian jail.
- usgroup 8y ago
  If you like this then you’ll appreciate these guys: https://www.bellingcat.com https://www.bellingcat.com
- scrumper 8y ago
  Well not really, the first piece of the puzzle was a tip-off from a Cameroonian source. The mountain range match was corroboration.
Sujan 8y ago
On one page: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1044186344153583616.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1044186344153583616.html
- therein 8y ago
  In the original video form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G9S-eoLgX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G9S-eoLgX4
Semiapies 8y ago
This is some impressive video forensics.
- JoblessWonder 8y ago
  It all started with a tip that gave them the general area though. This is my favorite example of gathering data just from examining a video: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/case-studies/2014/08/22/gun-safety-self-defense-and-road-marches-finding-an-isis-training-camp/ https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/case-studies/2014/08/22...
  - Deimorz 8y ago
    This is a good one too (archive link since the original seems to have been taken down): https://web.archive.org/web/20171214004829/http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/2017/04/19/the-interpreter https://web.archive.org/web/20171214004829/http://www.nytime...
  - peteretep 8y ago
    > It all started with a tip that gave them the general area _though_ You've made this point twice in the comments. What are you getting at?
    - JoblessWonder 8y ago
      Just that the investigation hinges on decidedly non-technical/novel methods. It is an interesting news story and presentation but isn’t as unique as I think people who just skimmed the twitter thread might assume.
      - dclowd9901 8y ago
        So we’re just going to dismiss the fact that they used social media to get the tip in the first place? It’s incredible boot leather investigative journalism in 2018 and doesn’t need to be qualified. What are you? A paper salesman?
eveningcoffee 8y ago
This answers all the questions but why.
- toyg 8y ago
  Does it really matter? That's not the way to deal with even the most vicious of criminals, let alone his child.
  - eveningcoffee 8y ago
    Yes it does matter. Tremendously. For example is this soldiers initiative or part of a general tactics encouraged by the higher command? Was the execution justified (i.e. motivated, that is, it was not a cover up or a random killing)? I can come up with few reasons to kill the woman but why the child? Is there some message behind this killing? Naturally these questions do not matter for despising such behaviour but are important to help to understand the human nature.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      They murdered two children.
      - endersshadow 8y ago
        Yes, but why? They're up there fighting Boko Haram -- this is a war-torn part of the world. Why is the Cameroonian military killing the people they're charged with protecting? It's something I'd really like to know, after reading through this. I don't understand anything but the most superficial issues facing this region, and it rather shocked me that the national military that's up there to quell the Boko Haram insurgency is committing these atrocities. I mean, yes, people kill people for fun. People kill children because they're monsters, and I get that. But is that what's happening here? Or is this ethnic cleansing? Or is this something else entirely?
        tptacek 8y ago
hkeide 8y ago
At the end they bemoan the fact that the men are facing trial and will be presumed innocent until proven guilty. I expect better from the BBC
- happytoexplain 8y ago
  "Bemoan" is a strong word. The government whose soldiers murdered these women and children called it "fake news", declaring their innocence before even investigating. The BBC is criticising that disgusting behavior by contrasting their emphasis of the soldier's legal innocence until proven guilty with the neglect they exhibited for the people who were executed.
  - gammateam 8y ago
    I can see that perspective, I too thought the wording was negligent.
vmaini 8y ago
how long until AI can do all of this?
- vpark 8y ago
  Interesting, vmaini. Do you mean identify the time/location/persons or kill innocent civilians?
  - platz 8y ago
    What is your desired precision/recall rate
    - msds 8y ago
      Well, if the AI gets to do both, you can make the precision arbitrarily high...
  - pure-awesome 8y ago
    It seems obvious to me that the intended interpretation of the comment is "identify the location" (which is something I immediately wondered about as well). Though perhaps you were attempting to make a droll remark regarding the powerful nature of AI and its capacity to be used for both good and evil?
funwie 8y ago
This is one example of routine acts committed by Cameroon’s military especially in the English-speaking regions. No reaction from international community. Instead, the west is asking Cameroon to investigate. They’re basically asking Cameroon govt to cover up its atrocities. Video clearly shows Cameroon military shooting at mother with children. Same as hundreds of other incidents. What’s there to investigate? Condemn the actions and let the govt face consequences.
- chris_mc 8y ago
  Interesting. When I was in the US Naval Academy, I had a Camaroonean roommate that was going to go to the academy, then become an officer of his homeland's military. I wonder if the US military is still training Cameroonian officers today.
  - kitrose 8y ago
    Not sure what years you went through but I remember we had one (about a decade ago).
- jorblumesea 8y ago
  I think the issue is that they're doing our dirty work, and if we condemn them, we might get less cooperation against Al-Shabaab/AQIM. While I'm sure no one is happy with this, the war on terror is a dirty war and our partners are less than ethical.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Cameroon has not ratified the treaty joining it to the international criminal court. This puts it along with a very small number of other states where there isn't an international legal process for dealing with this kind of crime.
  - deleted 8y ago
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Myrmornis 8y ago
Did the BBC's analysis cause the Cameroon government to come clean and start proceedings against the soldiers or was that coincidental?
aidos 8y ago
Incredible bit of analysis and presentation. It's hard to watch this sort of footage for me now. Once upon a time when I was younger I could handle it, but with young children the same sort of age it really tears me apart. Though, I think people should be forced to confront it, because it's the only way it's ever going to improve.
- abalone 8y ago
  Totally. In terms of handling it, there was a French horror film "Inside" which is very good but involves attacking a pregnant woman. After having kids I found I just couldn't stomach it, which was a change. Same for Sicario's child murder scene which I found just terribly lazy and desperate to be "edgy" and all these rave reviews just pissed me off. Having kids definitely over sensitized me.. in a good way.
  - duxup 8y ago
    There was a Frontline show about life in North Korea, they follow some folks who sneak into North Korea and try to distribute food / money to the poor. One child about 5 or 6 they meet says his mom had to go to the next town to work and had to leave him ... she never came back. The little boy tells the story as directly as a 5 year old would tell it, he is homeless with no family fending for himself in the streets. At the time my oldest was 5.... I can't get that child's voice and image out of my head.
  - davedx 8y ago
    Game of Thrones too. My wife can't watch it, and despite reading the books, I find the constant over-the-top ultraviolence pretty unwatchable too. When I was younger I would have loved it.
  - MisterOctober 8y ago
    Yep -- same with 'Macbeth' for me [the Macduff castle scene] -- especially the recent Stewart version
- davedx 8y ago
  > Though, I think people should be forced to confront it, because it's the only way it's ever going to improve. I'm conflicted about this. On one hand I agree, and the news performs a vital service in exposing us to the terrible things in our world that we should try to fix. But on the other, too much news can numb and demoralize you. The US political news cycle is a good example of this too. I can only stand so much of it before having to tune out for a while, even though I want to engage to the extent that I am able. More important than watching the news is choosing a good couple of charities to donate to, IMO.
x220 8y ago
They should not edit out the end of the video. People should know how harsh the world can get.
- DC-3 8y ago
  It's not like anyone is in doubts as to what happens, therefore to show the killings themselves would be somewhat gratuitous.
  - x220 8y ago
    It's not about people not knowing what happens, it's about people not understanding the significance of what happens. Watching videos and seeing pictures can make you understand the meaning of murder, massacre, and genocide in a way that headlines never can.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
  I may be downvoted, but /pol/ is where you see stuff like this.
  - gpvos 8y ago
    > I may be downvoted, but /pol/ is where you see stuff like this. You probably got downvoted for the first part of that sentence, not the second part.
- cm2187 8y ago
  In France the far right leader is being prosecuted for “promoting terrorism” for having shown a killing video from ISIS to condemn it. I can see why people would be shy about showing the actual violence.
  - niea_11 8y ago
    To be precise, she's being prosecuted for putting graphic (violent) content on a platform accessible to minors. Le Pen, who lost to Emmanuel Macron in last year's presidential vote, is facing charges of circulating "violent messages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity" and that can be viewed by a minor. https://m.france24.com/en/20180301-france-marine-lepen-charged-over-islamic-state-tweets https://m.france24.com/en/20180301-france-marine-lepen-charg...
apo 8y ago
I can't imagine this kind of analysis carrying much weight in 3-5 years as advances in machine learning and image manipulation turn the notion of "seeing is believing" on its head. edit: Imagine running this process in reverse. Pick the culprit, time, and location. Then arrange the scene to exactly match the false accusation. Probably didn't happen here, but in a few years it won't be possible to know the difference.
- browsercoin 8y ago
  I disagree that "deepfakes" will be unverifiable. There is very robust forensic framework for analyzing videos for authenticity, and it often relies not just on the visual component but all the other vectors that open up as a result-EM waves being generated, audio analysis, etc. A deepfake that passes this analytical function would imply that we will not be seeing advancements in digital forensics due to AI, which does not make sense because there is no reason not to update forensic processes to keep up with changing technology.
  - wish5031 8y ago
    That seems like a plausible argument, but there’s a huge portion of the population that’ll willingly believe any realistic-looking video they see, regardless of the evidence. That could have fatal consequences, e.g. as happened with the Planned Parenthood video in 2015. [0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_2015_undercover_videos_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_2015_unde...
    - fossuser 8y ago
      It doesn't even have to be realistic, people will believe outrageous claims or lies that conflict current video evidence because it fits a narrative they want to be true. It seems that trying to actually determine what's true as opposed to just attempting to frame issues in support of your team (or what you already currently believe to be true) is a relatively rare quality. I guess the silver lining is that while high quality fake videos may make things worse, there's already a pretty deep divide between people who will try and figure out what's true and people who don't. Higher quality fakes may only grab a small percentage of additional people.
JoblessWonder 8y ago
It all comes back to the original tip from a "Cameroonian source." Without that, they wouldn't have only had a ridgeline somewhere in (probably) Cameroon.
- Senderman 8y ago
  That's a good point. Makes me wonder if that 2D mountain range projection could be used to 'search' through a 3D map for a match.
  - pure-awesome 8y ago
    Coincidentally, I had exactly just that thought about a week ago whilst I was staring out at a nearby mountain. I have very little knowledge about this kind of problem, but to me, it seems like a solvable problem - there has been some interesting work in reconstructing 3D models from photographs of objects (I have a friend who did his masters in something similar) and I don't doubt that people working on that type of problem would likely have some ideas for approaching this one. Though to make it tractable one would perhaps want to "weight" the algorithm / start the search from likely vantage points (i.e. from inside cities / on top of buildings, and along roads), and take some discrete samples of what the mountain range would look like at various angles from that point. I wonder if it would be possible to do something similar to a binary search or Newton's method type thing where if you have two nearby points looking at the same mountain range, you could figure out the probability that the actual vantage point lies somewhere in the vague area between those points, and so get a better idea of where to take more precise samples after you've started with a few discrete samples.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      This should be a tractable problem. Cruise missiles navigate by matching the terrain they're flying by with a 3d model. Doing it with 2d video and not having precise starting coordinates, speed/heading/altitude makes the search space larger but I think that is more than made up for by the fact that you're not trying to do it all on embedded hardware from the 80s.
justtopost 8y ago
Why a twitter link and not the oc at BBC?
- danso 8y ago
  The linked tweet is from the official BBC account, @BBCAfrica. I did Google around for the article page on the BBC's site [0], but submitted the Twitter link because the BBC page isn't an article, but a 10 minute video (which also wasn't playing correctly on my phone). The Twitter thread is fairly easy to read as an article. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-45599973/cameroon-atrocity-finding-the-soldiers-who-killed-this-woman https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-45599973/cameroon-a...
rossdavidh 8y ago
Just in case anyone else is as confused as I was, if you don't hit "play" on the picture of the ridge-line, you won't see the match. Or maybe I'm the only one who was wondering how that could be considered a match, until I figured out to do that.
mcguire 8y ago
A brilliant piece of work to place the location. On the other hand, this seems to be...below...the BBC: "The government statement makes clear that all these men enjoy the presumption of innocence, and that they will be given a fair trial." "The two women killed outside Zelevet received no trial at all. "No presumption of innocence was extended to the children who died with them."
- elyobo 8y ago
  Seems fine, unless you read it as them arguing that they should not be given a fair trial; I read it the opposite way, as them arguing that the women and children should have been.
  - Timmah 8y ago
    editorializing: (of a newspaper, editor, or broadcasting organization) make comments or express opinions rather than just report the news News isnt to tell us how to feel. That's a pretty serious rule to break.
    - sulam 8y ago
      These are facts. If you feel like these facts are biased, I have the perfect group for you to join.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - mcphage 8y ago
      > News isnt to tell us how to feel. That's a pretty serious rule to break. Where did you make that up?
      - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
        Most news agencies claim, on paper, to aim for impartiality. Emotional response tends to be the opposite of impartial reporting since emotions generally imply a moral response to something, which in turn is quickly stepping away from impartiality. [1] BBC: Impartiality lies at the core of the BBC's commitment to its audiences. [2] NPR: Our journalists conduct their work with honesty and respect, and they strive to be both independent and impartial in their efforts. [3] SPJ (society of professional journalists): Journalists Should: ... Support the open and civil exchange of views, even views they find repugnant. Many newspapers are archived online. It's really phenomenal to see the change in historic and modern reporting. For instance this [4] is the NYT's reporting on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war that immediately followed. Keep in mind that this was shortly prior to the mass production of incredibly dehumanizing propaganda and us rounding up hundreds of thousands of people in the west coast who even looked remotely Japanese, telling them to take all they could carry, and throwing them into concentration camps. The point here is to emphasize what the zeitgeist was at that moment in time, yet their reporting remained remarkably true to the ethics most media still claims to hold to, yet rarely practice -- NYT now included among them. [1] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/bbc-editorial-values/editorial-values https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/bbc-edi... [2] - http://ethics.npr.org/ http://ethics.npr.org/ [3] - https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp [4] - https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1208.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general...
dtf 8y ago
Here is the full video package on this from BBC Africa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbnLkc6r3yc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbnLkc6r3yc
dclowd9901 8y ago
Powerful and absolutely stunning work. This, _this_ is investigative journalism in the modern era. I think it’s worth noting that, as despicable as some of their work can be, Anon pioneered this kind of digital forensic work.
Pristina 8y ago
That's some real life CSI stuff.
zakum1 8y ago
Heart breaking. Congratulations to the BBC for this amazing analysis. But real justice would require telling the story of how these women came to be murdered. This region in Cameroon is a flash point for a regional fight against a Muslim fundamentalist / warlord group called Boko Haram (translates as “western education is a sin”). How and why did these four civilians come to be murdered as a part of this tragic conflict in one of the poorest parts of the world?
- pjc50 8y ago
  For the motive, you'd probably have to ask the murderers. But there's a long tragic history of opportunistic cruelty against women and children (and indeed men, though that's clouded with arguments about combatant status) in warzones.
- dingoegret 8y ago
  So I mention the Christian groups committing the atrocities and my post gets flagged because "religious flamewar" but here we see someone freely attributing Muslim to a group and it's all good. You people are vile bigoted hypocrites lol. Btw recent released reports by Radio France International shows Christians now outnumber Muslims in Boko Haram making Boko Haram now a Christian group. Probably why no one talks about them anymore. You only like shrieking about one specific group of people and selective amnesia for others.
Vinnl 8y ago
On the one hand I think this is really impressive and am somewhat excited that they have been able to do this. On the other hand, I'm also somewhat fearful about the future. For example, what if, in this age of constant surveillance, techniques like these get more automated, and repressive governments are able to more easily and more quickly identify investigative journalists at locations they would not want them to be?
ismail 8y ago
Wow. This is an amazing piece of investigative journalism and probably one of the reasons we should all be supporting an independent media.
baud147258 8y ago
How do we know the whole thing isn't staged? I mean it's not as if getting weapons and uniforms is hard in that part of Africa.
kabacha 8y ago
Man I hate twitter as a delivery for content like this. I'd love to see it as a proper article rather than some toy.
tw1010 8y ago
That mountain ridge trick, how reliable of an identifier is that? I'm not really questioning the validity of its use in this situation, but I'd be curious to know more about the nature of the ridge to gps coordinates mapping. How many ridges map to more than one gps coordinate (albeit at potentially very distant locations, one of which could be excluded if more information is available)? Or is the mapping completely injective? That'd be really cool, a bit surprising, but not infeasible. Sounds like a fun data science project. (Draw a ridge and get a google street view image whose horizon matches the ridge as closely as possible, maybe? Might be fun to play with!)
- bsurmanski 8y ago
  I imagine it depends on the resolution. Taking it to the extremes you can imagine the horizon matched by 2 points a straight line slope. That may match many ridgelines. To the other extreme you can imagine a resolution down to the millimeter of the ridge. Catching every stone and tree. I can't imagine many duplicate ridgelines there.
- flatb 8y ago
  I think they mention they located the mountains not from the ridge outline, but from a tip-off they received about where it all happened, and then they corroborated that tip against the ridge outline, building placement, roads, etc. > After a tip off from a Cameroonian source, we found an exact match for that ridge line on Google Earth
- bagacrap 8y ago
  Try the peakfinder app. I think it works pretty well but haven't tested extensively.
gpvos 8y ago
Below the BBC's thread, an insightful comment by John Odande: > As Africans, we like saying "African solutions to African problems" yet it is funny that we continue relying on international media to relay accurate information and challenge governments' positions all over the continent. Great job BBC Africa!
wafflesraccoon 8y ago
I'm shocked how well Twitter worked here, normally I dread reading long tweet threads but this worked really well. Short videos and a good mix of media helps a ton.
DoctorOetker 8y ago
Could BBC please share the code for matching mountain ridges with locations? They claim that the first mountain ridge was located by a tip from a Cameroonian source. Here they verify the ridge with the mountain ridges from a height map. But later on without mentioning any tip or source they "found" an Channel4 news report in archives with again a mountain ridge match. I consider 3) possibilities: 1) They manually watched all the footage from the last few years in that area, freeze framing them whenever they see a mountain ridge, then manually trace it. I don't believe this is what happened, that's too many man hours. 2) They knew through other means (perhaps camera gps location metadata, perhaps report description/summary) that the report video was taken near the massacre video. Because of this metadata/textual data they were able to realize they had nearby footage of an outpost by querying for the massacre location. But then they fail to mention this trivial step and make a bit of a show by highlighting some features and again a mountain ridge. So in this case they have a database of archive footage and filter by location/time. 3) They have automated software for isolating mountain ridge profiles from footage (perhaps edge detection? remove all edges that don't appear to undergo rigid body motion? but how filter clouds etc?), and matching software for locating where on the heightmap it the footage was made. In this case it is explainable without ridiculous man hours or ridiculous showmanship (instead of mentioning say GPS coordinate metadata of the journalism camera). But in this case perhaps BBC could share this code with the public?
hi41 8y ago
The footage made me very sad. The people have to live in extreme poverty and on top of that hardship they also have to suffer such unspeakable violence. BBC has done a great job of bringing the war criminals to justice.

768 points by danso 8y ago

It's fascinating to me that all the information required for the analysis is publicly available. This seems like a big shift from an era when only an intelligence agency would have been able to perform this sort of analysis.

mherdeg 8y ago
The "open source intelligence" report on the MH17 incident -- where people found social media videos of the Buk missile proceeding through the countryside before being used to down the passenger jet -- was super interesting in a similar vein: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2015/10/08/mh17-the-open-source-evidence/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2015/10/08/mh1...
- megous 8y ago
  There are plenty of people doing open source data gathering and investigations. It's pretty interesting. Bellingcat is one of such orgs. You can find a lot of individuals and small orgs on Twitter doing stuff like spotting military ships and their cargo, spotting drones on satellite imagery, collecting lists of destroyed heavy weapons, listing ATGM attacks, airstrike victims (airwars.com), geolocating videos/pictures posted to social media, colleting info on chemical attacks (bellingcat), collecting and publishing ISIS documents online, recreating 3D models of some events from public videos/photos, etc. One example of 3D modelling (they call it forensic architecutre) based on open source data is in this report on Douma attack: https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000005840873/syria-chlorine-bomb-assad.html https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/1000000058408...
  - stevenjohns 8y ago
    > There are plenty of people doing open source data gathering and investigations. It's pretty interesting. Bellingcat is one of such orgs. Bellingcat is also a great example of what it shouldn't be. Most of what is produced is misleading at best. Some of the core "experts" (i.e Dan Kaszeta) are closer to propaganda generators than genuine researchers or informed sources.
    - voltagex_ 8y ago
      Interesting - looks like I follow bellingcat, but I can't remember why. Have you got any information on bias or counter points?
      - nmeofthestate 8y ago
        I know of them through their work on the Skripal poisoners' passports (uncovering evidence that they're GRU agents). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45656004 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45656004
    - megous 8y ago
      I dunno, I'm exposed to Bellingcat only via the work of Elliot Higgins, so I'm not able to judge other contributors for myself. But it's very frequent to call people's work propaganda these days, just because someone disagrees. So unless you have more info, it doesn't mean much.
      - stevenjohns 8y ago
        Higgins is the person who groomed Kaszeta, together they formed the theory behind hexamine being used as an acid scavenger on the first Sarin chemical attacks attributed to the Syrian government. Together they tried to take on MIT's Postol and others who found it ridiculous (and implausible at best). If you followed Higgins prior to Bellingcat (back when he was "Brown Moses") you'd know he had a strong bias for the rebellion which has since just turned into a strong anti-government bias, strong interventionalism and explicitly anti-Russian. A great example of how their bias slips into their analyses is examples like the fake sniper boy[0] which fooled a lot of anti-government "experts" to the point where people like Higgins tried to organise witch hunts against the scene director. [0] https://journal-neo.org/2014/11/27/what-the-fake-syria-sniper-boy-video-tell-us-about-media-experts/ https://journal-neo.org/2014/11/27/what-the-fake-syria-snipe...
        megous 8y ago
        While I agree I see personal bias in what he writes on Twitter, I'd hardly call it pro-rebel. Anti-government (more like anti-syrian regime), sure. It show in the choice of topics. But the question is how much it shows in the analysis itself. As for Hexamine/Sarin attack/Postol issue: Hexamine was found in Sarin attacks by OPCW, it was declared by Syria to OPCW. Postol is not a chemist, nor CW expert, nor on the ground, nor very credible wrt his claims about Syrian chemical attacks, as several of his claims were already rejected by OPCW, who found Syrian regime responsible for the April 4 2017 attack (Postol had all kinds of theories about this attack). I prefer OPCW's conculsions to some random profesor's taking sides and judging from a distance. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Timeline-of-Syrian-Chemical-Weapons-Activity https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Timeline-of-Syrian-Ch... You quoted Partisangirl, and I just can't take her seriously as an unbiased source either. Just one recent example of clear bias: Despite big civilian protests last few weeks in Idlib, she only tweeted one picture of some marching jihadists. She's very clearly pro assad-regime, at the expense of truth, accuracy, and peoples lives for that matter. So yeah, Higgins is biased, but quoting other biased, non-expert sources doesn't really improve the matters. Re: fake sniper. The experiment can be both revealing of reporting bias and highly irresponsible. People criticized the irresponsibility angle at the time. Witch hunt seems to be your interpretation.
  - Ua2Reemo 8y ago
    There was that one time when /pol/ gathered information that lead to a russian airstrike on some faction in syria.
    - emptyfile 8y ago
      Source? I find this hard to believe.
      - esyir 8y ago
        This is not valid evidence, but rather conjecture from the board itself. It is however what he referred to. https://m.imgur.com/gallery/5P1N1GI https://m.imgur.com/gallery/5P1N1GI
  - dwd 8y ago
    A lead investigator on this is also with Bellingcat https://www.twitter.com/Yaolri https://www.twitter.com/Yaolri
- shodan666 8y ago
  > https://www.bellingcat.com/ https://www.bellingcat.com/ This site is unreliable, its full of bogus claims regrading or example Syria (author of the site is supporting the Kurdish rebels for example).
- dwd 8y ago
  This was a good blog at the time that did a reasonable effort compiling information from various sources. It was interesting how much could be gathered from the social media accounts of various soldiers and mercenaries. Note that it was tracking Russian vehicle movements before MH-17. http://ukraineatwar.blogspot.com/ http://ukraineatwar.blogspot.com/
credit_guy 8y ago
Fascinating indeed. However, the main question remained unanswered (and unasked). Who ordered the killings?
- ransom1538 8y ago
  I imagine that is what the actual court will flush out. They will all squeal for better deals during sentencing or pleas. No one wants to spend the rest of their life in an improversed hot Cameroonian jail.
usgroup 8y ago
If you like this then you’ll appreciate these guys: https://www.bellingcat.com https://www.bellingcat.com
scrumper 8y ago
Well not really, the first piece of the puzzle was a tip-off from a Cameroonian source. The mountain range match was corroboration.

Sujan 8y ago

On one page: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1044186344153583616.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1044186344153583616.html

therein 8y ago
In the original video form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G9S-eoLgX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G9S-eoLgX4

Semiapies 8y ago

This is some impressive video forensics.

JoblessWonder 8y ago
It all started with a tip that gave them the general area though. This is my favorite example of gathering data just from examining a video: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/case-studies/2014/08/22/gun-safety-self-defense-and-road-marches-finding-an-isis-training-camp/ https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/case-studies/2014/08/22...
- Deimorz 8y ago
  This is a good one too (archive link since the original seems to have been taken down): https://web.archive.org/web/20171214004829/http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/2017/04/19/the-interpreter https://web.archive.org/web/20171214004829/http://www.nytime...
- peteretep 8y ago
  > It all started with a tip that gave them the general area _though_ You've made this point twice in the comments. What are you getting at?
  - JoblessWonder 8y ago
    Just that the investigation hinges on decidedly non-technical/novel methods. It is an interesting news story and presentation but isn’t as unique as I think people who just skimmed the twitter thread might assume.
    - dclowd9901 8y ago
      So we’re just going to dismiss the fact that they used social media to get the tip in the first place? It’s incredible boot leather investigative journalism in 2018 and doesn’t need to be qualified. What are you? A paper salesman?

eveningcoffee 8y ago

This answers all the questions but why.

toyg 8y ago
Does it really matter? That's not the way to deal with even the most vicious of criminals, let alone his child.
- eveningcoffee 8y ago
  Yes it does matter. Tremendously. For example is this soldiers initiative or part of a general tactics encouraged by the higher command? Was the execution justified (i.e. motivated, that is, it was not a cover up or a random killing)? I can come up with few reasons to kill the woman but why the child? Is there some message behind this killing? Naturally these questions do not matter for despising such behaviour but are important to help to understand the human nature.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    They murdered two children.
    - endersshadow 8y ago
      Yes, but why? They're up there fighting Boko Haram -- this is a war-torn part of the world. Why is the Cameroonian military killing the people they're charged with protecting? It's something I'd really like to know, after reading through this. I don't understand anything but the most superficial issues facing this region, and it rather shocked me that the national military that's up there to quell the Boko Haram insurgency is committing these atrocities. I mean, yes, people kill people for fun. People kill children because they're monsters, and I get that. But is that what's happening here? Or is this ethnic cleansing? Or is this something else entirely?
      - tptacek 8y ago

hkeide 8y ago

At the end they bemoan the fact that the men are facing trial and will be presumed innocent until proven guilty. I expect better from the BBC

happytoexplain 8y ago
"Bemoan" is a strong word. The government whose soldiers murdered these women and children called it "fake news", declaring their innocence before even investigating. The BBC is criticising that disgusting behavior by contrasting their emphasis of the soldier's legal innocence until proven guilty with the neglect they exhibited for the people who were executed.
- gammateam 8y ago
  I can see that perspective, I too thought the wording was negligent.

vmaini 8y ago

how long until AI can do all of this?

vpark 8y ago
Interesting, vmaini. Do you mean identify the time/location/persons or kill innocent civilians?
- platz 8y ago
  What is your desired precision/recall rate
  - msds 8y ago
    Well, if the AI gets to do both, you can make the precision arbitrarily high...
- pure-awesome 8y ago
  It seems obvious to me that the intended interpretation of the comment is "identify the location" (which is something I immediately wondered about as well). Though perhaps you were attempting to make a droll remark regarding the powerful nature of AI and its capacity to be used for both good and evil?

funwie 8y ago

This is one example of routine acts committed by Cameroon’s military especially in the English-speaking regions. No reaction from international community. Instead, the west is asking Cameroon to investigate. They’re basically asking Cameroon govt to cover up its atrocities. Video clearly shows Cameroon military shooting at mother with children. Same as hundreds of other incidents. What’s there to investigate? Condemn the actions and let the govt face consequences.

chris_mc 8y ago
Interesting. When I was in the US Naval Academy, I had a Camaroonean roommate that was going to go to the academy, then become an officer of his homeland's military. I wonder if the US military is still training Cameroonian officers today.
- kitrose 8y ago
  Not sure what years you went through but I remember we had one (about a decade ago).
jorblumesea 8y ago
I think the issue is that they're doing our dirty work, and if we condemn them, we might get less cooperation against Al-Shabaab/AQIM. While I'm sure no one is happy with this, the war on terror is a dirty war and our partners are less than ethical.
pjc50 8y ago
Cameroon has not ratified the treaty joining it to the international criminal court. This puts it along with a very small number of other states where there isn't an international legal process for dealing with this kind of crime.
- deleted 8y ago
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deleted 8y ago

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Myrmornis 8y ago

Did the BBC's analysis cause the Cameroon government to come clean and start proceedings against the soldiers or was that coincidental?

aidos 8y ago

Incredible bit of analysis and presentation. It's hard to watch this sort of footage for me now. Once upon a time when I was younger I could handle it, but with young children the same sort of age it really tears me apart. Though, I think people should be forced to confront it, because it's the only way it's ever going to improve.

abalone 8y ago
Totally. In terms of handling it, there was a French horror film "Inside" which is very good but involves attacking a pregnant woman. After having kids I found I just couldn't stomach it, which was a change. Same for Sicario's child murder scene which I found just terribly lazy and desperate to be "edgy" and all these rave reviews just pissed me off. Having kids definitely over sensitized me.. in a good way.
- duxup 8y ago
  There was a Frontline show about life in North Korea, they follow some folks who sneak into North Korea and try to distribute food / money to the poor. One child about 5 or 6 they meet says his mom had to go to the next town to work and had to leave him ... she never came back. The little boy tells the story as directly as a 5 year old would tell it, he is homeless with no family fending for himself in the streets. At the time my oldest was 5.... I can't get that child's voice and image out of my head.
- davedx 8y ago
  Game of Thrones too. My wife can't watch it, and despite reading the books, I find the constant over-the-top ultraviolence pretty unwatchable too. When I was younger I would have loved it.
- MisterOctober 8y ago
  Yep -- same with 'Macbeth' for me [the Macduff castle scene] -- especially the recent Stewart version
davedx 8y ago
> Though, I think people should be forced to confront it, because it's the only way it's ever going to improve. I'm conflicted about this. On one hand I agree, and the news performs a vital service in exposing us to the terrible things in our world that we should try to fix. But on the other, too much news can numb and demoralize you. The US political news cycle is a good example of this too. I can only stand so much of it before having to tune out for a while, even though I want to engage to the extent that I am able. More important than watching the news is choosing a good couple of charities to donate to, IMO.

x220 8y ago

They should not edit out the end of the video. People should know how harsh the world can get.

DC-3 8y ago
It's not like anyone is in doubts as to what happens, therefore to show the killings themselves would be somewhat gratuitous.
- x220 8y ago
  It's not about people not knowing what happens, it's about people not understanding the significance of what happens. Watching videos and seeing pictures can make you understand the meaning of murder, massacre, and genocide in a way that headlines never can.
qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
I may be downvoted, but /pol/ is where you see stuff like this.
- gpvos 8y ago
  > I may be downvoted, but /pol/ is where you see stuff like this. You probably got downvoted for the first part of that sentence, not the second part.
cm2187 8y ago
In France the far right leader is being prosecuted for “promoting terrorism” for having shown a killing video from ISIS to condemn it. I can see why people would be shy about showing the actual violence.
- niea_11 8y ago
  To be precise, she's being prosecuted for putting graphic (violent) content on a platform accessible to minors. Le Pen, who lost to Emmanuel Macron in last year's presidential vote, is facing charges of circulating "violent messages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity" and that can be viewed by a minor. https://m.france24.com/en/20180301-france-marine-lepen-charged-over-islamic-state-tweets https://m.france24.com/en/20180301-france-marine-lepen-charg...

apo 8y ago

I can't imagine this kind of analysis carrying much weight in 3-5 years as advances in machine learning and image manipulation turn the notion of "seeing is believing" on its head. edit: Imagine running this process in reverse. Pick the culprit, time, and location. Then arrange the scene to exactly match the false accusation. Probably didn't happen here, but in a few years it won't be possible to know the difference.

browsercoin 8y ago
I disagree that "deepfakes" will be unverifiable. There is very robust forensic framework for analyzing videos for authenticity, and it often relies not just on the visual component but all the other vectors that open up as a result-EM waves being generated, audio analysis, etc. A deepfake that passes this analytical function would imply that we will not be seeing advancements in digital forensics due to AI, which does not make sense because there is no reason not to update forensic processes to keep up with changing technology.
- wish5031 8y ago
  That seems like a plausible argument, but there’s a huge portion of the population that’ll willingly believe any realistic-looking video they see, regardless of the evidence. That could have fatal consequences, e.g. as happened with the Planned Parenthood video in 2015. [0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_2015_undercover_videos_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_2015_unde...
  - fossuser 8y ago
    It doesn't even have to be realistic, people will believe outrageous claims or lies that conflict current video evidence because it fits a narrative they want to be true. It seems that trying to actually determine what's true as opposed to just attempting to frame issues in support of your team (or what you already currently believe to be true) is a relatively rare quality. I guess the silver lining is that while high quality fake videos may make things worse, there's already a pretty deep divide between people who will try and figure out what's true and people who don't. Higher quality fakes may only grab a small percentage of additional people.

JoblessWonder 8y ago

It all comes back to the original tip from a "Cameroonian source." Without that, they wouldn't have only had a ridgeline somewhere in (probably) Cameroon.

Senderman 8y ago
That's a good point. Makes me wonder if that 2D mountain range projection could be used to 'search' through a 3D map for a match.
- pure-awesome 8y ago
  Coincidentally, I had exactly just that thought about a week ago whilst I was staring out at a nearby mountain. I have very little knowledge about this kind of problem, but to me, it seems like a solvable problem - there has been some interesting work in reconstructing 3D models from photographs of objects (I have a friend who did his masters in something similar) and I don't doubt that people working on that type of problem would likely have some ideas for approaching this one. Though to make it tractable one would perhaps want to "weight" the algorithm / start the search from likely vantage points (i.e. from inside cities / on top of buildings, and along roads), and take some discrete samples of what the mountain range would look like at various angles from that point. I wonder if it would be possible to do something similar to a binary search or Newton's method type thing where if you have two nearby points looking at the same mountain range, you could figure out the probability that the actual vantage point lies somewhere in the vague area between those points, and so get a better idea of where to take more precise samples after you've started with a few discrete samples.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    This should be a tractable problem. Cruise missiles navigate by matching the terrain they're flying by with a 3d model. Doing it with 2d video and not having precise starting coordinates, speed/heading/altitude makes the search space larger but I think that is more than made up for by the fact that you're not trying to do it all on embedded hardware from the 80s.

justtopost 8y ago

Why a twitter link and not the oc at BBC?

danso 8y ago
The linked tweet is from the official BBC account, @BBCAfrica. I did Google around for the article page on the BBC's site [0], but submitted the Twitter link because the BBC page isn't an article, but a 10 minute video (which also wasn't playing correctly on my phone). The Twitter thread is fairly easy to read as an article. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-45599973/cameroon-atrocity-finding-the-soldiers-who-killed-this-woman https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-45599973/cameroon-a...

rossdavidh 8y ago

Just in case anyone else is as confused as I was, if you don't hit "play" on the picture of the ridge-line, you won't see the match. Or maybe I'm the only one who was wondering how that could be considered a match, until I figured out to do that.

mcguire 8y ago

A brilliant piece of work to place the location. On the other hand, this seems to be...below...the BBC: "The government statement makes clear that all these men enjoy the presumption of innocence, and that they will be given a fair trial." "The two women killed outside Zelevet received no trial at all. "No presumption of innocence was extended to the children who died with them."

elyobo 8y ago
Seems fine, unless you read it as them arguing that they should not be given a fair trial; I read it the opposite way, as them arguing that the women and children should have been.
- Timmah 8y ago
  editorializing: (of a newspaper, editor, or broadcasting organization) make comments or express opinions rather than just report the news News isnt to tell us how to feel. That's a pretty serious rule to break.
  - sulam 8y ago
    These are facts. If you feel like these facts are biased, I have the perfect group for you to join.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - mcphage 8y ago
    > News isnt to tell us how to feel. That's a pretty serious rule to break. Where did you make that up?
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      Most news agencies claim, on paper, to aim for impartiality. Emotional response tends to be the opposite of impartial reporting since emotions generally imply a moral response to something, which in turn is quickly stepping away from impartiality. [1] BBC: Impartiality lies at the core of the BBC's commitment to its audiences. [2] NPR: Our journalists conduct their work with honesty and respect, and they strive to be both independent and impartial in their efforts. [3] SPJ (society of professional journalists): Journalists Should: ... Support the open and civil exchange of views, even views they find repugnant. Many newspapers are archived online. It's really phenomenal to see the change in historic and modern reporting. For instance this [4] is the NYT's reporting on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war that immediately followed. Keep in mind that this was shortly prior to the mass production of incredibly dehumanizing propaganda and us rounding up hundreds of thousands of people in the west coast who even looked remotely Japanese, telling them to take all they could carry, and throwing them into concentration camps. The point here is to emphasize what the zeitgeist was at that moment in time, yet their reporting remained remarkably true to the ethics most media still claims to hold to, yet rarely practice -- NYT now included among them. [1] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/bbc-editorial-values/editorial-values https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/bbc-edi... [2] - http://ethics.npr.org/ http://ethics.npr.org/ [3] - https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp [4] - https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1208.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general...

dtf 8y ago

Here is the full video package on this from BBC Africa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbnLkc6r3yc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbnLkc6r3yc

dclowd9901 8y ago

Powerful and absolutely stunning work. This, _this_ is investigative journalism in the modern era. I think it’s worth noting that, as despicable as some of their work can be, Anon pioneered this kind of digital forensic work.

Pristina 8y ago

That's some real life CSI stuff.

zakum1 8y ago

Heart breaking. Congratulations to the BBC for this amazing analysis. But real justice would require telling the story of how these women came to be murdered. This region in Cameroon is a flash point for a regional fight against a Muslim fundamentalist / warlord group called Boko Haram (translates as “western education is a sin”). How and why did these four civilians come to be murdered as a part of this tragic conflict in one of the poorest parts of the world?

pjc50 8y ago
For the motive, you'd probably have to ask the murderers. But there's a long tragic history of opportunistic cruelty against women and children (and indeed men, though that's clouded with arguments about combatant status) in warzones.
dingoegret 8y ago
So I mention the Christian groups committing the atrocities and my post gets flagged because "religious flamewar" but here we see someone freely attributing Muslim to a group and it's all good. You people are vile bigoted hypocrites lol. Btw recent released reports by Radio France International shows Christians now outnumber Muslims in Boko Haram making Boko Haram now a Christian group. Probably why no one talks about them anymore. You only like shrieking about one specific group of people and selective amnesia for others.

Vinnl 8y ago

On the one hand I think this is really impressive and am somewhat excited that they have been able to do this. On the other hand, I'm also somewhat fearful about the future. For example, what if, in this age of constant surveillance, techniques like these get more automated, and repressive governments are able to more easily and more quickly identify investigative journalists at locations they would not want them to be?

ismail 8y ago

Wow. This is an amazing piece of investigative journalism and probably one of the reasons we should all be supporting an independent media.

baud147258 8y ago

How do we know the whole thing isn't staged? I mean it's not as if getting weapons and uniforms is hard in that part of Africa.

kabacha 8y ago

Man I hate twitter as a delivery for content like this. I'd love to see it as a proper article rather than some toy.

tw1010 8y ago

That mountain ridge trick, how reliable of an identifier is that? I'm not really questioning the validity of its use in this situation, but I'd be curious to know more about the nature of the ridge to gps coordinates mapping. How many ridges map to more than one gps coordinate (albeit at potentially very distant locations, one of which could be excluded if more information is available)? Or is the mapping completely injective? That'd be really cool, a bit surprising, but not infeasible. Sounds like a fun data science project. (Draw a ridge and get a google street view image whose horizon matches the ridge as closely as possible, maybe? Might be fun to play with!)

bsurmanski 8y ago
I imagine it depends on the resolution. Taking it to the extremes you can imagine the horizon matched by 2 points a straight line slope. That may match many ridgelines. To the other extreme you can imagine a resolution down to the millimeter of the ridge. Catching every stone and tree. I can't imagine many duplicate ridgelines there.
flatb 8y ago
I think they mention they located the mountains not from the ridge outline, but from a tip-off they received about where it all happened, and then they corroborated that tip against the ridge outline, building placement, roads, etc. > After a tip off from a Cameroonian source, we found an exact match for that ridge line on Google Earth
bagacrap 8y ago
Try the peakfinder app. I think it works pretty well but haven't tested extensively.

gpvos 8y ago

Below the BBC's thread, an insightful comment by John Odande: > As Africans, we like saying "African solutions to African problems" yet it is funny that we continue relying on international media to relay accurate information and challenge governments' positions all over the continent. Great job BBC Africa!

wafflesraccoon 8y ago

I'm shocked how well Twitter worked here, normally I dread reading long tweet threads but this worked really well. Short videos and a good mix of media helps a ton.

DoctorOetker 8y ago

Could BBC please share the code for matching mountain ridges with locations? They claim that the first mountain ridge was located by a tip from a Cameroonian source. Here they verify the ridge with the mountain ridges from a height map. But later on without mentioning any tip or source they "found" an Channel4 news report in archives with again a mountain ridge match. I consider 3) possibilities: 1) They manually watched all the footage from the last few years in that area, freeze framing them whenever they see a mountain ridge, then manually trace it. I don't believe this is what happened, that's too many man hours. 2) They knew through other means (perhaps camera gps location metadata, perhaps report description/summary) that the report video was taken near the massacre video. Because of this metadata/textual data they were able to realize they had nearby footage of an outpost by querying for the massacre location. But then they fail to mention this trivial step and make a bit of a show by highlighting some features and again a mountain ridge. So in this case they have a database of archive footage and filter by location/time. 3) They have automated software for isolating mountain ridge profiles from footage (perhaps edge detection? remove all edges that don't appear to undergo rigid body motion? but how filter clouds etc?), and matching software for locating where on the heightmap it the footage was made. In this case it is explainable without ridiculous man hours or ridiculous showmanship (instead of mentioning say GPS coordinate metadata of the journalism camera). But in this case perhaps BBC could share this code with the public?

hi41 8y ago

The footage made me very sad. The people have to live in extreme poverty and on top of that hardship they also have to suffer such unspeakable violence. BBC has done a great job of bringing the war criminals to justice.