In the previous part of this investigation, we showed how a batch of images published by Europol, Group ImageG13, was geolocated to a small coastal village in southwest Madagascar. Based on the evidence discussed, it was determined that ImageG13 was most likely produced between January 2002 and March 2004. Given the number of hotels and…
This investigation is an excerpt from the weekly CryptOsint, Brenna Smith’s newsletter which digs into the intersection of open source research and cryptocurrency. You can subscribe to the newsletter here. Crypto-twitter was abuzz this weekend over a rumor of police raids at one of the world’s most popular and most influential exchanges, Binance. The twist:…
This investigation was conducted jointly with Umut 2020, a new Kyrgyz popular movement focused on investigating corruption. You can watch their video of the report at the bottom of this post (Russian). On November 10th, the businessman Aierken Saimaiti, who had an arrest warrant international arrest warrant issued after fraud allegations, was shot dead in…
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the three former republics of the Caucasus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, failed to demarcate and delimit their borders. This failure has resulted in regular incidents across the fringes of each nation’s respective territory. The well-publicized border disputes between Armenian and Azerbaijan are complex in nature, and the two…
These findings were made by BBC open source investigator Benjamin Strick and Elise Thomas, a researcher with the International Cyber Policy Centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. A new open source investigation has analysed a well-funded and co-ordinated social media campaign aimed at distorting the truth about events in the restive Indonesian province of…
Written by Narine Khachatryan Over the past months, right-wing groups and individuals in Armenia have been actively campaigning on and offline against the ratification of the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (more widely known as the Istanbul Convention). What the controversy in Armenia? Armenia signed the…
The ongoing conflict in West Papua has surged recently as the West Papuan freedom movement seeks independence from Indonesia. While aggression has been documented on both sides, there are grave concerns that Indonesian security forces have been responsible for human rights abuses through the violent suppression of West Papuans in their pursuit of independence. Hostilities…
New satellite imagery acquired by Digitalglobe shows that China has increased the deployment of Guizhou Aviation Industry Group (GAIG) EA-03 Xianglong high altitude long endurance (HALE) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to Yishuntun airbase in Jilin province. The platform, identified by its unique box wing design and V shaped vertical stabilizers, is often considered China’s answer…
Activists on Twitter have recently claimed that China has been destroying historic mosques across Xinjiang province, which is home to a large population of Uighurs, a primarily Muslim minority in China. By using open sources and satellite imagery we can locate these mosques and check such claims. We can also potentially narrow down when the…
On Friday, March 15th, one or more gunmen opened fire in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. As I write this, three men and one woman have been taken into custody by local law enforcement. It is unclear to what extent they were all involved. The only thing we know is that one of the…
