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Bellingcat geolocates Elon Musk's stalking video that prompted elonjet ban

10 points by areoform 4y ago

uejfiweun 4y ago
Would love to learn more details about how exactly this video was geolocated. The linked Twitter post is a couple screenshots with some random blurry crap outlined. I don't know how you could get a location from that. It doesn't jive with a post I recently saw here on HN where it took a team of people weeks to geolocate where some Russian hacking group was from a photo.
- areoform 4y ago
  They're bellingcat, they're preternaturally good at this and have amongst other things tracked down Navalny's hit squad, found a russian assassin who killed a target in germany, been crucial in showing that Russia brought down MH-17... There's a discord that you can access where you can watch them work as smooth team to make it happen. They're essentially a full blown OSINT org, a watered down form of the CIA, but open source. https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/14/navalny-fsb-methodology/ https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/14/navalny-fsb-... https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/12/21/if-it-hadnt-been-for-the-prompt-work-of-the-medics-fsb-officer-inadvertently-confesses-murder-plot-to-navalny/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/12/21/if-... https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/case-studies/2015/08/19/yachtspotting/ https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/case-studies/2015/08/19... https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/25/socialite-widow-jeweller-spy-how-a-gru-agent-charmed-her-way-into-nato-circles-in-italy/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/25/socialite-widow-j... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingcat#Poisoning_of_Alexei_Navalny_and_others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingcat#Poisoning_of_Alexei... They've also developed tools such as finding Russian military assets by tracking the interference active RADAR makes with SAR. https://twitter.com/bellingcat/status/1492235415268597762 https://twitter.com/bellingcat/status/1492235415268597762 For people who routinely hunt FSB death squads, I suspect that this was old hat. edit - I looked at the discord on how they did it, and they went frame-by-frame, found a very specific curb, then they looked for that specific curb in the area. After they found the curb, they then cross-referenced it against a building that was visible in a reflection of the car window that they then used to confirm their find. edit 2 — a link to the images, https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1036758130761158677/1053008754456662026/allboxed.jpg https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1036758130761158677/1... https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1036758130761158677/1053008754699943956/loc1boxed.jpg https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1036758130761158677/1... the building itself, https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1036758130761158677/1053014710678720534/image.png https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1036758130761158677... This was done by https://twitter.com/Sepulco1 https://twitter.com/Sepulco1
  - uejfiweun 4y ago
    I see, that's actually really cool. Thank you for the links. Will definitely tune into the discord sometime.

10 points by areoform 4y ago

Would love to learn more details about how exactly this video was geolocated. The linked Twitter post is a couple screenshots with some random blurry crap outlined. I don't know how you could get a location from that. It doesn't jive with a post I recently saw here on HN where it took a team of people weeks to geolocate where some Russian hacking group was from a photo.

areoform 4y ago
They're bellingcat, they're preternaturally good at this and have amongst other things tracked down Navalny's hit squad, found a russian assassin who killed a target in germany, been crucial in showing that Russia brought down MH-17... There's a discord that you can access where you can watch them work as smooth team to make it happen. They're essentially a full blown OSINT org, a watered down form of the CIA, but open source. https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/14/navalny-fsb-methodology/ https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/14/navalny-fsb-... https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/12/21/if-it-hadnt-been-for-the-prompt-work-of-the-medics-fsb-officer-inadvertently-confesses-murder-plot-to-navalny/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/12/21/if-... https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/case-studies/2015/08/19/yachtspotting/ https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/case-studies/2015/08/19... https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/25/socialite-widow-jeweller-spy-how-a-gru-agent-charmed-her-way-into-nato-circles-in-italy/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/25/socialite-widow-j... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingcat#Poisoning_of_Alexei_Navalny_and_others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingcat#Poisoning_of_Alexei... They've also developed tools such as finding Russian military assets by tracking the interference active RADAR makes with SAR. https://twitter.com/bellingcat/status/1492235415268597762 https://twitter.com/bellingcat/status/1492235415268597762 For people who routinely hunt FSB death squads, I suspect that this was old hat. edit - I looked at the discord on how they did it, and they went frame-by-frame, found a very specific curb, then they looked for that specific curb in the area. After they found the curb, they then cross-referenced it against a building that was visible in a reflection of the car window that they then used to confirm their find. edit 2 — a link to the images, https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1036758130761158677/1053008754456662026/allboxed.jpg https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1036758130761158677/1... https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1036758130761158677/1053008754699943956/loc1boxed.jpg https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1036758130761158677/1... the building itself, https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1036758130761158677/1053014710678720534/image.png https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1036758130761158677... This was done by https://twitter.com/Sepulco1 https://twitter.com/Sepulco1
- uejfiweun 4y ago
  I see, that's actually really cool. Thank you for the links. Will definitely tune into the discord sometime.