We Are Bellingcat An Intelligence Agency for the People
Eliot Higgins
Higgins does an excellent job explaining the genesis of Bellingcat and elucidating its working methods for doing open source investigative work. You get a really clear idea of some of the core methodologies that the collective uses. The book is a bit thin in its reflection on ethical practices though, and stays particularly vague when it comes to buying data from Russian intermediaries. Although I am convinced that Bellingcat is not the direct tool of some intelligence agency, I do believe that their research is very convenient at times for the secret services and is even used to ‘whitewash’ information without compromising sources, which could be problematic. All in all the book contains a lot of food for thought, and convincly argues that facts are important and necessary when battling the ‘counterfactual community’.
Book information
Status: Read
On lists: Read by the 'Book Club for Nerds'
| 16-05-2022 | Finished reading |
| 07-05-2022 | Started reading |
| 25-04-2022 | Acquired |
| 06-08-2021 | Added to wishlist |
Description
'Tells the story of the most innovative practitioners of open-source intelligence and online journalism in the world' Anne Applebaum 'It is impossible to exaggerate the urgency and power of Bellingcat's work' James O'Brien 'The gripping story of how Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat exposed some of the gravest state crimes of our era' Bill Browder, bestselling author of Red Notice How did a collective of self-taught internet sleuths end up solving some of the biggest crimes of our time? Bellingcat, the home-grown investigative unit, is redefining the way we think about news, politics and the digital future. Here, their founder - a high-school dropout on a kitchen laptop - tells the story of how they created a whole new category of information-gathering, galvanising citizen journalists across the globe to expose war crimes and pick apart disinformation, using just their computers. From the downing of Malaysia Flight 17 over the Ukraine to the sourcing of weapons in the Syrian Civil War and the identification of the Salisbury poisoners, We Are Bellingcat digs deep into some of Bellingcat's most successful investigations. It explores the most cutting-edge tools for analysing data, from virtual-reality software that can build photorealistic 3D models of a crime scene, to apps that can identify exactly what time of day a photograph was taken. In our age of uncertain truths, Bellingcat is what the world needs right now - an intelligence agency by the people, for the people.