On August 14, a Twitter thread that included a small army of “Amazon FC Ambassadors” went viral, bringing to light Amazon’s year-long social media brand ambassador program. What exactly are these “Amazon FC Ambassadors”, how many of them are there, and are they actually real people? The Amazon Research Agency These “Amazon FC Ambassadors” all…
On August 10, 2019, a 21-year-old man reportedly murdered his 17-year-old stepsister before attempted to attack a mosque just outside of Oslo, Norway; he managed to injure only one person in the attack. The Norwegian claimed he had been inspired by another 21-year-old man in El Paso, TX, whose massacre on August 3 was driven…
A sophisticated phishing campaign targeting Bellingcat and other Russia-focused journalists has been much larger in scope than previously thought, and has lasted at least several months. Bellingcat has identified dozens of targeted individuals across Europe and the US, with the earliest reported attack dating back to April 24 2019, and some evidence suggesting the campaign…
Terrorists have been tinkering with bitcoin as early as 2012 — but today, jihadi crowdfunding campaigns have been on the rise. Some think that since most of these campaigns haven’t raised significant funds, there isn’t much to worry about. I will explain why this is wrong. Terrorists’ early attempts at using cryptocurrencies were filled with…
This week, a Ukrainian court ruled it’s not OK to call a neo-Nazi group a neo-Nazi group. In May 2018, a tweet from Ukrainian independent media outlet Hromadske, on its international English-language Twitter account, described C14 as “neo-Nazi.” “Neo-nazi group C14 has seized a former militant of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic”, Brazilian Rafael Lusvarghi,…
Ukraine’s Education Assembly (Освітня асамблея) is officially registered (archived copy) as a “community organization” in Ukraine. On its face, nothing about how they describe themselves sounds particularly worrisome, as seen in the group’s description of itself on their website: “Education Assembly is a project whose goal is comprehensive youth development (…) The project takes the…
Previous reporting by news outlets L’Espresso and Buzzfeed News has revealed that Gianluca Savoini, a close aide to Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, took part in negotiations for clandestine funneling of Russian funding to Italy’s Lega Nord party. The negotiations — the contents of which came to light thanks to an audio recording obtained…
During the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries one candidate has stood out from the rest due to her stance on the conflict in Syria. Tulsi Gabbard has drawn fire from commentators and her opponents for her comments on Syria, most recently with one of her opponents, Kamala Harris, dismissing Gabbard as an Assad “apologist”. In…
On August 3, 2019, at around 11am local time, initial police reports indicated that a gunman had walked into an El Paso Wal-Mart and opened fire. As of the publication of this article, at least eighteen people have died and several others have been injured. One victim was a four-month old infant. As we’ve seen…
UPDATE: In an article published in Estonian media on August 2, 2019, ICDS chief executive Dmitri Teperik told news website Delfi: “At one point [Yevhen] Karas came to the event, and he stayed there for maybe three hours. We asked a local man whom he was dealing with and he explained who he was…when we…
You can listen to the fifth episode of the Bellingcat Podcast on the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), “The Men on the Ground”, by subscribing on any major podcast application by searching “Bellingcat”, including at: iTunes Spotify Google Podcasts Stitcher TuneIn You can manually add the podcast RSS feed to your favorite podcast…
You can listen to the fourth episode of the Bellingcat Podcast on the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), “Manhunt”, by subscribing on any major podcast application by searching “Bellingcat”, including at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn. You can manually add the podcast RSS feed to your favorite podcast app with the URL:…
You can listen to the third episode of the Bellingcat Podcast on the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), “The Murder Weapon”, by subscribing on any major podcast application by searching “Bellingcat”, including at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn. You can manually add the podcast RSS feed to your favorite podcast app with…
You can listen to the second episode of the Bellingcat Podcast on the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) by subscribing on any major podcast application by searching “Bellingcat”, including at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn. You can manually add the podcast RSS feed to your favorite podcast app with the URL: bellingcat.libsyn.com/rss…
You can listen to the first episode of the Bellingcat Podcast on the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) by subscribing on any major podcast application by searching “Bellingcat”, including at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn. You can manually add the podcast RSS feed to your favorite podcast app with the URL: bellingcat.libsyn.com/rss…
Bellingcat will hold a series of workshops this summer and autumn, with the new workshops being Amsterdam (two in August) and Copenhagen (October/November). Munich: July 22-26 (Full, with no wait-list) London: July 29-August 2 (Full, with short wait-list) Amsterdam: August 12-16 Amsterdam: August 19-23 Berkeley (San Francisco): August 19-23 (Full, with lengthy wait-list) Zurich: August 26-30 (Full, with…
Many open source researchers rely on journalists to turn data into a narrative that will then reach a wider audience. Yet journalism today is in a crisis! You can trust me as a person who comes from a traditional journalism background — oh, the sheer amount of horror stories I can tell over whiskey. In…
To some researchers, TweetDeck might seem superfluous in a world where Twitter Advanced Search exists. The platform would appear to be just a prettier version of what you are already doing through Twitter. However, I am here to show you how TweetDeck can vastly simplify and organize your research while allowing you to collect a…
West of Moscow is a theme park called Patriot Park. One interesting exhibit at this park is an alleged Sarin production laboratory, said to have been captured in Syria. But is this really a production rig for the nerve agent Sarin? Photographs of the “Sarin Lab” courtesy of the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) Sarin Production…
Bellingcat will hold workshops in Europe and the United States in the coming months, where participants can learn the tools and methodologies used by Bellingcat in their investigations. Paris, May 13-17: Full, completed Toronto, May 20-24: Full, completed Munich, July 22-26: Full, completed Berkeley (San Francisco), August 19-23: A few remaining spots Zurich, August 26-30:…
