In collaboration with the Autonomous Disinformation Research Network – @DisinfoResearch On Wednesday, November 6, 2019, leaked data from the defunct neo-Nazi forum, Iron March, emerged online, exposing the personal information of more than 1,200 members, including the locations of their IP addresses and, in some cases, their real names. Already, activists sifting through the database…
In collaboration with Colombia’s La Liga Contra el Silencio and Cerosetenta, Newsy and Bellingcat reconstructed the shooting of Dilan Cruz, an 18-year-old student who was hit in the head with a bean bag round at a protest in Bogota on November 23, 2019. Cruz died from his injuries in hospital two days later. Using a…
In this collaborative report with Newsy, we detail how a number of American active-duty servicemen were members of the Iron March forum, an online gathering place for violent neo-Nazis and white supremacists. You can find more information about this massive data leak, including how to acquire, access, and analyze the information, in our recent guide,…
Ukraine’s President conferred with, and the Prime Minister of Ukraine partied with, known far-right figures as leaders of the country’s veterans. Additionally, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, William Taylor, rubbed shoulders with a far-right figure embraced by Ukraine’s veterans ministry. We explain why these events happened. The heads of Ukraine’s new government, led by…
On March 13, 2019, two young men entered their former high school in the small city of Suzano in São Paulo, Brazil. The first one in, Guilherme Taucci, age 17, immediately opened fire with a .38 revolver. Luiz Castro, 25, followed him inside. So began the eighth massacre in Brazilian schools since 2002. Five students…
Reported with Fredrick Brennan Over the course of 2019, the website “8chan” has directly inspired four acts of terrorism around the world, killing 76 people and wounding 80. The mass shootings in Christchurch, Poway, and El Paso are well-known. The mass shooting in Halle, Germany, which killed two and injured two more, received less attention….
Last month, leading anti-kleptocracy voices in the U.S., Ukraine, Russia, and elsewhere sounded the alarm about a massive donation that Len Blavatnik, a Soviet-born businessman with close ties to sanctioned Russian figures, made to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Blavatnik’s donation was, as one expert said, a clear instance of the “soft enabling of…
Last month, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), one of America’s leading think tanks, announced that it had received a substantial donation that would help round out the organization’s upcoming budget. As a statement on the CFR’s website detailed, a CFR member had graciously decided to help facilitate funding for CFR’s intern program. The donation,…
Iran says it can hack American drones operating in the Middle East and take control of them — and it has released a video purporting to back up its claims. Back in February 2019, Iran’s semi-official Fars News claimed that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intercepted the broadcasts of U.S. UAVs above Iraq and…
On September 10, 2019, CNN reported that the United States helped a Russian government official flee after working as a spy for American intelligence in 2017 — all reportedly due to concerns regarding President Trump and his administration’s handling of “classified intelligence”. The CNN report was sparse on details, but it was enough to identify…
