6 ms·

Watchdog uses open-source research to investigate Sri Lanka’s ongoing crisis

joshmarinacci 4y ago
This is fantastic. How can western software engineers help?
- yorwba 4y ago
  They have a GitHub https://github.com/team-watchdog https://github.com/team-watchdog They also have a list of ways to donate to other organizations: https://longform.watchdog.team/data-projects/how-to-donate-to-the-sri-lankan-medical-crisis/how-to-donate-to-medicalcrisislk https://longform.watchdog.team/data-projects/how-to-donate-t...
nonrandomstring 4y ago
"We want to help people understand the infrastructure they use. The concrete, the laws, the policies, and the social contracts that they live under. We want to help people understand the causality of how they came to be and how they operate." We could learn a lot in the "West" from these people.
- the_lonely_road 4y ago
  Perhaps the most famous OSINT collective is Netherlands-based Bellingcat, which has used such techniques to investigate conflicts in Syria, Mexico, Iraq, and Ukraine. Wijeratne described Watchdog deferentially as “a junkyard version of Bellingcat.” It seem to me that "these people" have a high opinion of the west as it stands.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - djbebs 4y ago
    Bellingham is pure propaganda
    - Fatnino 4y ago
      Bellingcat. Why do you say that? Their analysis of the Beirut fertilizer explosion was spot on. And their work on MH17 was very good too. Of course that pointed a finger at the Russians who were claiming not to be operating in Ukraine at the time so maybe I actually see why some would prefer to baselessly brush away the whole site as "propaganda". Takes one to know one.
      - 99_00 4y ago
        Saying it's pure propaganda is obviously false and you are right to counter that. They aren't a neutral observer who is simply interested in facts and truth. They have an agenda and are not transparent about it.
        thriftwy 4y ago
        I remember a fake FUD "anonymous letter from FSB officer" which surfaced on HN in early March, for which Bellingcat was quick to issue a "seems legit". Needless to say, in a week most sources deleted the letter as its non-authenticity became too apparent. So basically, they're reposting/legitimizing war propaganda.
        hndamien 4y ago
        Seems like they tell the truth, but not the whole truth, just the CIA truth. But at least it appears to be true.
        99_00 4y ago
        There are countless ways to mislead without technically being false. One way is to intentionally be ignorant of the facts and give an uniformed opinion that fits your agenda. Take the letter from the 51 former senior intelligence officers who cast doubt on the Hunter Biden laptop. https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-4393-d7aa-af77-579f9b330000 https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-4393-d7aa-af77-579f9... "We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal aSorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement -" Reading the letter, you see that they don't say that the laptop is misinformation, or that the emails are fake. Only that, without attempting to verify the evidence available, they suspect it is fake because it is Russia's MO. Why would people who make their career from verifying intelligence evidence not look at the actual evidence? Not attempt to verify before assessing it. So they don't have to lie about it.
- googlryas 4y ago
  I'm confused by this post. Do you believe that quote is some unique "East" perspective, or that there aren't people in the "West" doing the same thing?
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > I'm confused by this post. Do you believe that quote is some unique "East" perspective, or that there aren't people in the "West" doing the same thing? Sorry, I think the brevity of my offhand post has let it be misunderstood. The other commenters seem to think I am talking about the OSINT concept, Bellingcat and the like. I do not mean that. What "we in the West" can learn, as ordinary citizens, is to care more about the machinery that increasingly affects our day to day lives and politics, its ownership, function, explicit and implicit values. Although single issue taglines like "privacy", "e-waste" or "right to repair" are gaining visibility I think, at least in Anglophone countries, US/UK/CA/AUS etc, we are complacent. Countries impacted by more severe political crises seem quicker to catch on that it's technology behind the machinations, and are more ready to question it.
    - mc32 4y ago
      >"that it's technology behind the machinations, and are more ready to question it." Could you expand on that. What machinations. I think I can read between the lines, but it would benefit from clarity.
      - nonrandomstring 4y ago
        Some of what I've been discussing with another commenter in this thread [1] might fit the bill. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nonrandomstring#31745232 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nonrandomstring#3174...
baybal2 4y ago
99_00 4y ago
I don't know anything about this group, but I lost all faith in fact checkers some time ago. I see this too often: Fact checkers take a valid claim add some false exaggeration to it, debunk the false exaggeration and pretend that the kernel of truth was also debunked. They also do a lot worse. We lack neutral observers. The best we can do is have both biased sides fight it out in a neutral arena and allow the public to judge. But we don't even have that.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  It's spooks all the way down, you can tell by their annoying insistence of referring to run-of-the-mill thinktanks with blogs with the codename-styled "OSINT." They piggyback off of the media obsession of "crowdsourcing" from a decade back, and abuse the software term "open source" to refer to these weird private groups. The question is the same as it always was: who benefits from maintaining 12 educated full-time professionals and an office in order to claim (and publicize) that they have the most accurate view of the degree and character of protests against the Sri Lankan government? Somebody is spending a million dollars a year minimum on it; it is the opposite of the crowd/public. Groups like this have two functions: 1) To launder false information. "Legitimate" outlets can spread information pushed by these thinktanks, but disguise it as reporting on the thinktanks themselves. If the funder of the thinktank is the state, they can then use that secondary reporting to justify the action it wants to take. 2) To launder illegitimately obtained information i.e. parallel construction. Come up with another theoretical way that some information that was actually discovered in an illegal or immoral way could have been discovered. Create fake artifacts of that discovery, and have one of these thinktanks release it. Now you can act on the information that you shouldn't have had. I agree (as far as I understand) that the Sri Lankan government is awful, and maybe I agree with spook goals in this case, but their funders aren't doing this for moral reasons. They surely just want to get rid of these despots to put a friendlier set of decisionmakers in.
  - ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
    > Watchdog raised $340,000 from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which let it hire full-time staffers ... Edit: > The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project is a 501(C)(3) organization. We are incredibly grateful to the following institutional donors that make our work possible. • The Bay and Paul Foundations • Catharine Hawkins Foundation • European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights • Ford Foundation • Fritt Ord Foundation • Luminate • Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark • National Endowment for Democracy • Open Society Foundations • Rockefeller Brothers Fund • Sigrid Rausing Trust • Skoll Foundation • The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency • United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office • University of Missouri School of Journalism • U.S. Agency for International Development • U.S. Department of State • Vital Strategies • Oak Foundation • Slovak Agency for International Development Cooperation Support us OCCRP's work is made possible through public and private funding from a range of institutions and the generosity of individual supporters. For more information on the guidelines governing our acceptance of and management of donations, please see our Gift and Donation Acceptance Policy.
Ayesh 4y ago
As a Sri Lankan affected by the crisis, been part of the Galle Face Green movement mentioned in the article, and know Watchdog and Wijerathne, this is a good story and a summary of their work. A few weeks ago, most of the hospitals in Sri Lanka ran out of medicine because imports were restricted due to regulations and lack of foreign reserves. Watchdog quickly setup tooling and infrastructure for hospitals to request the medications they need, and for providers to arrange them. To make the picture more clear, almost entirety of the population relies on free healthcare provided by the government, but poor management and years of politics that lead to this crisis had left hospitals having to ration their medication available. The Galle Face movement, a series of peaceful protests that started several protests throughout the country, was attacked by a group of civilian mobs. This is widely believed to be lead by Mahinda Rajapaksha, the former president and prime minister. The current president is a younger brother of him; Mahinda's son is an MP, and there are several positions held by Rajapaksha family, including in parliament, the state airline, and more. Mahinda had to step down from his role as PM because of the massive backlash from the public following his violence against the Galle Face protestors. Watchdog was one of the only unbiased organizations to actively track and document the incidents by aggregating all social media and news after verifying them properly. Very impressive work by the team Watch Dog.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

This is fantastic. How can western software engineers help?

yorwba 4y ago
They have a GitHub https://github.com/team-watchdog https://github.com/team-watchdog They also have a list of ways to donate to other organizations: https://longform.watchdog.team/data-projects/how-to-donate-to-the-sri-lankan-medical-crisis/how-to-donate-to-medicalcrisislk https://longform.watchdog.team/data-projects/how-to-donate-t...

"We want to help people understand the infrastructure they use. The concrete, the laws, the policies, and the social contracts that they live under. We want to help people understand the causality of how they came to be and how they operate." We could learn a lot in the "West" from these people.

the_lonely_road 4y ago
Perhaps the most famous OSINT collective is Netherlands-based Bellingcat, which has used such techniques to investigate conflicts in Syria, Mexico, Iraq, and Ukraine. Wijeratne described Watchdog deferentially as “a junkyard version of Bellingcat.” It seem to me that "these people" have a high opinion of the west as it stands.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- djbebs 4y ago
  Bellingham is pure propaganda
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    Bellingcat. Why do you say that? Their analysis of the Beirut fertilizer explosion was spot on. And their work on MH17 was very good too. Of course that pointed a finger at the Russians who were claiming not to be operating in Ukraine at the time so maybe I actually see why some would prefer to baselessly brush away the whole site as "propaganda". Takes one to know one.
    - 99_00 4y ago
      Saying it's pure propaganda is obviously false and you are right to counter that. They aren't a neutral observer who is simply interested in facts and truth. They have an agenda and are not transparent about it.
      - thriftwy 4y ago
        I remember a fake FUD "anonymous letter from FSB officer" which surfaced on HN in early March, for which Bellingcat was quick to issue a "seems legit". Needless to say, in a week most sources deleted the letter as its non-authenticity became too apparent. So basically, they're reposting/legitimizing war propaganda.
      - hndamien 4y ago
        Seems like they tell the truth, but not the whole truth, just the CIA truth. But at least it appears to be true.
        99_00 4y ago
        There are countless ways to mislead without technically being false. One way is to intentionally be ignorant of the facts and give an uniformed opinion that fits your agenda. Take the letter from the 51 former senior intelligence officers who cast doubt on the Hunter Biden laptop. https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-4393-d7aa-af77-579f9b330000 https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-4393-d7aa-af77-579f9... "We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal aSorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement -" Reading the letter, you see that they don't say that the laptop is misinformation, or that the emails are fake. Only that, without attempting to verify the evidence available, they suspect it is fake because it is Russia's MO. Why would people who make their career from verifying intelligence evidence not look at the actual evidence? Not attempt to verify before assessing it. So they don't have to lie about it.
googlryas 4y ago
I'm confused by this post. Do you believe that quote is some unique "East" perspective, or that there aren't people in the "West" doing the same thing?
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > I'm confused by this post. Do you believe that quote is some unique "East" perspective, or that there aren't people in the "West" doing the same thing? Sorry, I think the brevity of my offhand post has let it be misunderstood. The other commenters seem to think I am talking about the OSINT concept, Bellingcat and the like. I do not mean that. What "we in the West" can learn, as ordinary citizens, is to care more about the machinery that increasingly affects our day to day lives and politics, its ownership, function, explicit and implicit values. Although single issue taglines like "privacy", "e-waste" or "right to repair" are gaining visibility I think, at least in Anglophone countries, US/UK/CA/AUS etc, we are complacent. Countries impacted by more severe political crises seem quicker to catch on that it's technology behind the machinations, and are more ready to question it.
  - mc32 4y ago
    >"that it's technology behind the machinations, and are more ready to question it." Could you expand on that. What machinations. I think I can read between the lines, but it would benefit from clarity.
    - nonrandomstring 4y ago
      Some of what I've been discussing with another commenter in this thread [1] might fit the bill. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nonrandomstring#31745232 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nonrandomstring#3174...

baybal2 4y ago

99_00 4y ago

I don't know anything about this group, but I lost all faith in fact checkers some time ago. I see this too often: Fact checkers take a valid claim add some false exaggeration to it, debunk the false exaggeration and pretend that the kernel of truth was also debunked. They also do a lot worse. We lack neutral observers. The best we can do is have both biased sides fight it out in a neutral arena and allow the public to judge. But we don't even have that.

pessimizer 4y ago
It's spooks all the way down, you can tell by their annoying insistence of referring to run-of-the-mill thinktanks with blogs with the codename-styled "OSINT." They piggyback off of the media obsession of "crowdsourcing" from a decade back, and abuse the software term "open source" to refer to these weird private groups. The question is the same as it always was: who benefits from maintaining 12 educated full-time professionals and an office in order to claim (and publicize) that they have the most accurate view of the degree and character of protests against the Sri Lankan government? Somebody is spending a million dollars a year minimum on it; it is the opposite of the crowd/public. Groups like this have two functions: 1) To launder false information. "Legitimate" outlets can spread information pushed by these thinktanks, but disguise it as reporting on the thinktanks themselves. If the funder of the thinktank is the state, they can then use that secondary reporting to justify the action it wants to take. 2) To launder illegitimately obtained information i.e. parallel construction. Come up with another theoretical way that some information that was actually discovered in an illegal or immoral way could have been discovered. Create fake artifacts of that discovery, and have one of these thinktanks release it. Now you can act on the information that you shouldn't have had. I agree (as far as I understand) that the Sri Lankan government is awful, and maybe I agree with spook goals in this case, but their funders aren't doing this for moral reasons. They surely just want to get rid of these despots to put a friendlier set of decisionmakers in.
- ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
  > Watchdog raised $340,000 from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which let it hire full-time staffers ... Edit: > The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project is a 501(C)(3) organization. We are incredibly grateful to the following institutional donors that make our work possible. • The Bay and Paul Foundations • Catharine Hawkins Foundation • European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights • Ford Foundation • Fritt Ord Foundation • Luminate • Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark • National Endowment for Democracy • Open Society Foundations • Rockefeller Brothers Fund • Sigrid Rausing Trust • Skoll Foundation • The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency • United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office • University of Missouri School of Journalism • U.S. Agency for International Development • U.S. Department of State • Vital Strategies • Oak Foundation • Slovak Agency for International Development Cooperation Support us OCCRP's work is made possible through public and private funding from a range of institutions and the generosity of individual supporters. For more information on the guidelines governing our acceptance of and management of donations, please see our Gift and Donation Acceptance Policy.

Ayesh 4y ago

As a Sri Lankan affected by the crisis, been part of the Galle Face Green movement mentioned in the article, and know Watchdog and Wijerathne, this is a good story and a summary of their work. A few weeks ago, most of the hospitals in Sri Lanka ran out of medicine because imports were restricted due to regulations and lack of foreign reserves. Watchdog quickly setup tooling and infrastructure for hospitals to request the medications they need, and for providers to arrange them. To make the picture more clear, almost entirety of the population relies on free healthcare provided by the government, but poor management and years of politics that lead to this crisis had left hospitals having to ration their medication available. The Galle Face movement, a series of peaceful protests that started several protests throughout the country, was attacked by a group of civilian mobs. This is widely believed to be lead by Mahinda Rajapaksha, the former president and prime minister. The current president is a younger brother of him; Mahinda's son is an MP, and there are several positions held by Rajapaksha family, including in parliament, the state airline, and more. Mahinda had to step down from his role as PM because of the massive backlash from the public following his violence against the Galle Face protestors. Watchdog was one of the only unbiased organizations to actively track and document the incidents by aggregating all social media and news after verifying them properly. Very impressive work by the team Watch Dog.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]