5 ms·

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 intelligen

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.

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.