Reestablishing Reality
In a post-truth era there are new tools and techniques for investigating. Michael Cruickshank explains the fast-growing field of open-source intelligence.
The-“post truth” information environment is a contradiction for journalism. For the majority of readers, reality is malleable. Through the explosion of information sources online and on social media, a reader can pick the news that best conforms to their chosen reality as well as their respective political and cognitive biases. The role of the media as the traditional gatekeepers of truth has been eroded and, along with it, the public’s trust in the accuracy of traditional reporting. However, a fixed physical reality nonetheless exists and it is the job of professional journalists to find and promote that truth.
Luckily, at the same time that technology has upturned the media landscape and ushered in our new era, it has also given us new tools through which we can investigate and report reality. Among these, one of the most promising approaches is the fast-growing field of open-source intelligence (OSINT).
In its simplest form, OSINT is a way of conducting an investigation using only information which is openly available to the public. This wealth of untapped public information includes social media posts, satellite imagery, public databases, remote sensing data and GPS logs.
For journalists, this might seem counter-intuitive, as the emphasis of our profession in the past has always been on uncovering information that was previously hidden and disclosing it to the public. What has changed is that our societies are now creating so much information that, even if it is available to the public, few people bother to look at it, and fewer still are able to draw connections between it and other pieces of public information.
For journalists (professional or otherwise), the source of the data is less important than the way it is analysed. Thus the primary goal for most OSINT investigations involves testing a hypothesis or proving (or disproving) a claim. Several techniques for doing this have risen to prominence within journalistic, activist and academic circles. Of these, by far the most common is known as “geolocation”.
Geolocation involves pinning down an event to a very precise place, anywhere in the world. For example: a video crops up on social media, showing what is claimed to be a group of Russian soldiers in Eastern Ukraine. Russia publicly denies that it has a military presence in this region, and thus video evidence of this fact could be a major story. However, for an OSINT investigation, posting the video alone is meaningless, and people would rightly argue that it could have been shot in any number of places. So geolocation is required, and a common OSINT approach would be to cross-reference satellite imagery with visibly identifiable features within the video and attempt to find a match.
However, often proving the location is not enough, which brings forward another common technique: chronolocation. Perhaps there are claims that the hypothetical video was filmed in Eastern Ukraine, but was filmed during a training exercise prior to the conflict breaking out. Thus, the investigator would need to know, as precisely as possible, when this video was filmed. Again, clues within the original video, such as the position of the sun in the sky, shadows on the ground, the weather and even the colour of leaves on trees can be used to determine this.
These are just two examples of a wide range of investigative techniques, but they underscore the mentality behind OSINT investigations: proof and verification. Of course, using open source information alone as the basis for a story is not enough. The other feature that qualifies an investigation as being “open source” is that an investigator must present the steps that they used in order to arrive at their conclusion. Rather than relying on the testimony of human sources, an OSINT investigation draws its authority from the fact that the readers can follow the very same steps and check the data and the conclusions themselves.
Not every investigation can be carried out through the use of OSINT, but it is well-suited to a wide variety of stories. Many of the first OSINT investigations were carried out in conflict journalism. Groups such as Bellingcat, Forensic Architecture and the NYT Visual Investigations unit have exploited OSINT to create groundbreaking investigations of contested events in conflict zones, avoiding the usual problems of inaccessibility and unreliable sources. Now OSINT is being used for an exploding number of topics, from reporting on climate change through to political corruption and even child abuse.
The best OSINT investigations look at people, places and things that have large digital or physical footprints but are poorly understood. Generally speaking, the first step for any prospective OSINT journalist is to understand how a situation looks in its “normal” state and then watch it over a period of time. Small abnormalities and changes will become noticeable: a new weapon arriving in a conflict zone, a new dam being filled on a critical river, or even a new “friend” appearing on a social media account. All of these are leads and chasing up enough of them will eventually lead to a story.
With every element of our lives leaving a growing trail of data, the future opportunities presented by OSINT are themselves expanding. Alongside a community of talented journalists, there is now a flourishing ecosystem of apps and computer programs which make the field more accessible than ever.
At the root of it all, OSINT is not “shining light into darkness” but rather gleaning understanding from complexity. In our new surreal reality, this has never been more necessary.
Michael Cruickshank is a freelance journalist and OSINT researcher originally from Brisbane, but now living in Berlin. He focusses on investigating the impacts of climate change, emerging technologies and political violence.
This reporting was funded by the Walkley Public Fund and the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas through a Walkley Grant for Freelance Journalism.
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