News:
The Boogaloo Movement Is Not What You Think
On May 26th, crowds gathered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to protest the death of 46-year-old George Floyd at the hands of the city’s police department. Floyd was black. Many of the protesters were people of color. The department fired four policemen that same day, after footage emerged appearing to show Floyd being strangled by a white…
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Samos And The Anatomy Of A Maritime Push-Back
Samos And The Anatomy Of A Maritime Push-Back Refugees and migrants have all but stopped arriving on Greek islands amid mounting reports of maritime push-backs. In April of 2020, the UN Refugee Agency recorded a single landing with 39 people. During the same period in 2019, there were 1,856 arrivals by sea. The near-complete drop…
Military And Intelligence Personnel Can Be Tracked With The Untappd Beer App
Surprise! The beer-rating app Untappd can be used to track the location history of military personnel. The social network has over eight million mostly European and North American users, and its features allow researchers to uncover sensitive information about said users at military and intelligence locations around the world. For people in the military, neither…
The Killing of Muhammad Gulzar
Today, in collaboration with Lighthouse Reports and Forensic Architecture, with reporting from Der Spiegel, and research from Pointer and Sky News, we release an investigation which demonstrates that Greek security forces likely used live rounds on 4 March 2020 against refugees and migrants trying to break through the Turkish-Greek border fence. We identified seven people…
The Venezuela/Silvercorp USA Saga Keeps Getting Weirder
Earlier this week, we wrote about “Operación Gedeón”, a surreal and ultimately doomed military operation conducted by Silvercorp USA and a group of Venezuelan expatriates with the aim of instigating a nationwide rebellion against the government and capturing its high-ranking members, including President Maduro himself. The failed plot has attracted a significant amount of media…
Uncovering A Pro-Chinese Government Information Operation On Twitter and Facebook: Analysis Of The #MilesGuo Bot Network
An ongoing information operation is using a network of bots made up of newly created and stolen accounts to target a businessman, exiled from China, who has spoken critically of China’s response to COVID-19. Yet identifying the network has revealed a much larger operation amplifying content across multiple languages, platforms, countries, and topics, with links…
The Invasion of Venezuela, Brought To You By Silvercorp USA
Please see part II of this bizarre saga. The video begins with Jordan Goudreau posing confidently, flanked by a man wearing an armour plate and a Venezuela flag wrapped around his shoulder. The man introduces Goudreau in a stern tone. Goudreau begins to speak with the terseness of a battle-hardened warrior as he confirms that…
Who Is Dmitry Badin, The GRU Hacker Indicted By Germany Over The Bundestag Hacks?
On 5 May 2020, German media reported that Germany’s Federal Prosecutor has issued an arrest warrant against Russian citizen Dmitry Badin, the main suspect in the 2015 hacking of the German Bundestag. What Was The 2015 Bundestag Hack? In April 2015, members of the German parliament as well as members of Merkel’s Bundestag office, received…
At Ukraine’s Asgardsrei, A French Connection
In December 2019, the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, hosted the neo-Nazi Asgardsrei music festival for the fitfh year in a row. It was there that scores of far-right extremists and sympathizers made their way to attend a concert of National Socialist black metal (NSBM) bands, and take in a mixed martial arts (MMA) fight the evening…
Key MH17 Figure Identified As Senior FSB Official: Colonel General Andrey Burlaka
In November 2019, the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) announced the broadening of its criminal investigation into the shoot-down of MH17 to encompass the role of individuals within Russia’s military and administrative hierarchy who enabled the tragedy. The JIT made public 23 telephone intercepts from the days before the shootdown, which appeared to prove the…
Resources:
Investigate TikTok Like A Pro!
TikTok videos have grown increasingly popular over the last few years, with short clips showing people dancing, lip syncing, doing viral challenges, and so on. This relatively new platform lets users share short video clips, and can be looped. It is similar to the now-defunct Vine. Compared to other video-sharing services, TikTok videos are much…
How (Not) To Report On Russian Disinformation
Whether you’re listening to NPR, watching MSNBC, or reading the New York Times, you will likely be barraged with stories about Russian trolls meddling in every topic imaginable. No matter how obscure, it always seems like these nebulous groups of “Russian trolls” are spreading discord about the topic du jour — Colin Kaepernick, the Parkland…
Bellingcat Now Offering Online Investigation Training Workshops
With our in-person workshops delayed due to ongoing concerns from COVID-19, Bellingcat is now offering online training workshops. These workshops will be held at a reduced price compared to our in-person trainings. We will hold sessions of varying length and on different topics over the coming months, in sessions ranging from a few hours to…
Investigating Coronavirus Fakes And Disinfo? Here Are Some Tools For You
There is no dignified way of putting it — the world has gone bananas as the COVID-19 pandemic rages. When the threat of deadly infection is mixed with the peculiar rush of going viral, people are bound to spread fakes. Even those of us who mean well. Many Bellingcat team members are impacted by this…
New Bellingcat Workshops Announced for May – September 2020
Bellingcat will hold a series of workshops in spring 2020, including: Geneva: May 4 – 8 Washington DC: June 22 – 26 Amsterdam: June 22 – 26 Berkeley, California July 6 – 10 London: July 6 – 10 Paris: August 3 – 7 London: September 7 – 11 Please email us at workshops@bellingcat.com with the information…
Bellingcat Is Hiring: Editor (Europe-Based, Part-Time) – Applications Closed
Who We Are: Bellingcat is an independent international collective of researchers, investigators, and citizen journalists using open source and social media investigations to probe a variety of subjects: crime, conflicts, corruption, secret operations, mis- and disinformation, extremist groups, and much more. We have received multiple awards for our groundbreaking research and publications that shine a…
New Bellingcat Workshops Announced for February – April 2020
Bellingcat will hold a series of workshops in spring 2020, including: Amsterdam: February 17 – 21 (FULL, wait-list available) London: March 2 – 6 (FULL, wait-list available) New York City: March 2 – 6 (FULL, wait-list available) Berlin: March 30 – April 3 (FULL, wait-list available) Toronto: April 27 – May 1 Please email us…
Guide To Using Reverse Image Search For Investigations
Reverse image search is one of the most well-known and easiest digital investigative techniques, with two-click functionality of choosing “Search Google for image” in many web browsers. This method has also seen widespread use in popular culture, perhaps most notably in the MTV show Catfish, which exposes people in online relationships who use stolen photographs…
Massive White Supremacist Message Board Leak: How to Access and Interpret the Data
Update: The Internet Archive has removed the SQL leak; however, the information is freely available via a torrent file (download here) or a Magnet link (click here, or copy/paste the link into a torrent client). Today, the entire SQL database from Iron March, a now-defunct neo-Nazi / white supremacist message board, was posted onto the…
New Bellingcat Workshop Announced for Washington D.C.
Bellingcat will hold a new workshop in Washington D.C. on December 9-13. Our planned workshops for the remainder of 2019 are as follows: London: December 9-13 (Full, with lengthy wait-list) Washington D.C.: December 9-13 (Full, with short wait-list) Please email us at workshops@bellingcat.com with the information requested below if you would like to attend. Name…