[HN Gopher] Open-source intelligence challenges state monopolies...
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Open-source intelligence challenges state monopolies on information
Author : helsinkiandrew
Score : 177 points
Date : 2021-08-07 07:21 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| mdp2021 wrote:
| I would like to notify the interested about this interview from
| Jeremy Paxman to Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat, dated 3 Mar 2021
|
| https://play.acast.com/s/paxman/eliothiggins-bellingcat-
| nathan_phoenix wrote:
| https://archive.is/glZCA
| gatvol wrote:
| Seems the article itself is an attempt to lend Bellingcat et al
| some credibility
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| <<Reuters, BBC, and Bellingcat participated in covert UK Foreign
| Office-funded programs to "weaken Russia," leaked docs reveal>> -
| https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-of...
| beardyw wrote:
| Just finished reading Eliot Higgins' Becoming Bellingcat last
| night. He stresses how important it is to archive sources
| because, as we know, stuff online is here today gone tomorrow.
| Sometimes literally apparently.
|
| International repercussions over stuff like this take years to
| run their course.
| ncphil wrote:
| A good argument for donating to archive.org, which is
| undeniably a global treasure at this point. We definitely need
| more repositories of open source intelligence, if only so we
| can tell when operators like Bellingcat are trying to play us.
| And yeah, Greenwald has stood out with a very few others in
| challenging official propaganda from both government and
| private interests. Believe it or not, there are those out there
| who think he hasn't done enough across a broader front. But
| that's probably unfair: we're talking just a few conscientious
| reporters versus an veritable army of high priced shills in
| shiny suits.
| gpcr1949 wrote:
| Open-source intelligence challenges state monopolies on
| information - except, in some cases it doesn't. To take the
| example of Bellingcat/Higgins, their site definitely has a
| certain political orientation that usually tends to align with
| NATO interests, for example when it comes to Syria or various
| Russian operations. Several of their employees have backgrounds
| in intelligence/military (Kaszeta, Biggers), some of their
| funding comes from state-linked sources (Such as the NED[0]). I
| also recall reading some Bellingcat article where the information
| was not open source, relying on some leaked database of russian
| passports instead [1], which is fair enough as journalism, but
| not open source.
|
| I'm not saying the conclusions of Bellingcat et al are
| necessarily wrong (though personally i take some of what they are
| writing with a grain of salt), but I would doubt that open source
| intelligence groups are necessarily that anti systemic or a
| challenge to state directed information flows and embargos.
| Finally, here is a fairly interesting article with a critical
| view of the Bellingcat group [2], though the source, Mintpress,
| is quite biased so critical reading is advised.
|
| [0] https://www.bellingcat.com/about/
|
| [1] https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-
| europe/2018/10/09/ful...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26772184
| toofy wrote:
| Regardless of your feelings on Bellingcat, none of that changes
| the fact that, us (the community) having access to more
| information and more tools at our disposal to analyze this
| information is a far better outcome than governments locking it
| away.
|
| It is quite literally--as the headline says, challenging the
| governments (and i'd toss in corporations as well) monopolies
| on certain types of information.
|
| Even if you don't personally like Bellingcat, feed us more
| information, not less. The more information we have access to,
| the more difficult it is for authoritarian governments to run
| propaganda against us.
|
| Also, yeah, I think you may have been drastically understating
| when you mention mint being biased. There are surely sites
| which are critical of open source research institutes like
| Bellingcat that will have a far better track record than
| somewhere like mint who have had multiple bouts of absolutely
| bonkers and absurd propaganda for brutal dictators and brutal
| regimes. Of course they're against OSINT.
|
| We need far more open source intelligence research not less.
| mrobot wrote:
| Organizations like Bellingcat are really just sort of less-
| than-professional press outlets for the intelligence
| agencies. The information is controlled, the interpretation
| is biased because of spook affiliation at the highest levels,
| and they can be more sloppy than official government agencies
| with the information that is available to inject some
| narrative into public opinion without it actually being fact.
| They can wave off any harm they do. Some of these
| organizations make absolutely wild conclusions based on very
| limited info like looking up buildings on google earth and
| assuming they are some type of building, making some crazy
| conclusion like such and such number of prisoners somewhere.
|
| If you're worried about brutality, you might want to look up
| what US sanctions on Syria are actually doing to the people
| there. They can't eat. They have no heat. No gas. We are
| stealing their oil. Do you think the Syrian people might see
| us as an authoritarian government? Because they are
| suffering, we are causing it, there's nothing they can do,
| and the situation is enforced by violence.
| noduerme wrote:
| Really? You can't draw some conclusions about the number of
| Uighur prisoners in Chinese camps, based on satellite
| evidence? Oh, right, they're Sunni. We shouldn't put
| sanctions on Assad when he drops barrel bombs on his own
| civilians? Oh, wait, they were Sunnis. Wikipedia is
| controlled by the US intelligence agencies? Don't make me
| laugh. You want pure Shia propaganda from Assad and the
| Ayatollah, trust MintPress.
|
| Even if Bellingcat's views and mission align with NATO and
| against Putin, Assad, et al, so what? We should take the
| word of murderous dictators instead, because the West is so
| evil?
| acituan wrote:
| > us (the community) having access to more information and
| more tools at our disposal to analyze this information is a
| far better outcome than governments locking it away.
|
| > The more information we have access to, the more difficult
| it is for authoritarian governments to run propaganda against
| us.
|
| I am definitely not going to defend the government monopoly
| on information, but people having access to information does
| not mean them coming to the rational conclusions either, as
| evident with the information we have available today more
| than ever and the polarized confusion accompanies almost
| everything that matters to us.
|
| People rarely put in the hours of self-study to do a
| principled analysis and come to their own conclusions. Open
| source or not, people will recycle other people's pre-made
| conclusions with much simpler heuristics. That's not a
| problem per se, the problem is who gets to make those
| conclusions and make most people hear about them.
|
| Just like research papers are cherry-picked to make one's
| biased point, this type of "open-source" branding will lend
| itself readily to _narrative laundering_ , by (ostensibly)
| non-governmental interest groups. Is that a good thing or a
| bad thing? Depends who has the resources to make and
| distribute those narratives. Are those going to be the people
| most interested in neutral _reality_ most of the time?
| Unlikely. That 's why we're reading about it on The Economist
| (or <insert-your-favorite-big-brand-information-resource>).
| That's why DC is choke-full of "think" tanks.
|
| As information warfare gets complicated, it was expected to
| see innovations on narrative branding, e.g. fact-checking,
| fake-news, open-source-intelligence. None of these change the
| problems with the machinery of our collective intelligence;
| in fact they pose a Denial-of-Service threat to our
| individual sense-making capacity, and we either throw up our
| hands in nihilism or clutch on a heavily dichotomized version
| of reality because the discordance between narratives are
| growing larger and the discomfort of uncertainty is just too
| painful.
| kktkti9 wrote:
| They are not anti-systemic
|
| The system will emit one system that will always align with our
| understanding of reality with constants we cannot violate. The
| perimeter is programmed; physics. All this modeling is filling
| in the middle. What it means as far as impact on human agency
| is up to politics as usual.
|
| This is more of the same "we have this streamlined math model,
| now what?"
|
| All these things are is confirmation math operators still work
| within our known bubble of physics.
|
| It's mathematically true whether we define it or not. Some
| geometric art project is not a good basis for application of my
| agency.
|
| Biology science allows us to take the view the application of
| these ideas is chemical delusion. The cynical take is that
| managing human agency with models most cannot understand the
| meaning of is fascist.
|
| Go ahead and draw spirals on a wall all day. I don't have to
| pick to politically empower people for it.
|
| You know what saves money and effort? Doing less and buying
| less. An economical solution that's untenable or rich people
| would be normal.
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| Personally I think collaboration with a government is
| inevitable in order to get access to the kinds of resources and
| technology one needs to really cover one's butt on the
| internet. It seems like government sponsorship is necessary
| these days just to get a computer that hasn't already been
| backdoored.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Pluralism of investigation may be preferable (to the public) to
| monopoly of investigation.
|
| The matter is still part of the problem of the crisis in
| journalism - the difficulties of financing in new market
| models, and the ease of compromises with powers, hinder
| investigative journalism. Even recognition of its core mandate
| as a value is in crisis.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Personally I've never really been under the impression that
| bellingcat were strictly neutral, I mostly buy that they get
| tipped off and then rejustify the story using OSINT sometimes,
| but let's not forget that they have published information which
| is embarrassing to the US. See the recent story on procedures
| on nuclear bases leaking from flashcard apps for example.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > they have published information which is embarrassing to
| the US
|
| Any examples that doesn't directly attack fossil fuel
| competitors?
| mhh__ wrote:
| Nuclear bombs not reactors
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| > Any examples that doesn't directly attack fossil fuel
| competitors?
|
| No offence, but that is moving the goalposts a bit;
| information critical of the US is still critical of the US.
| deadalus wrote:
| US govt-sponsored website Bellingcat disrupts MH17 trial in
| Netherlands
|
| Source : https://thegrayzone.com/2021/01/02/bellingcat-
| disrupts-mh17-...
|
| ______________________________
|
| Bellingcat fabricate evidence, deliberately hide documents in
| new 'Russian spy plot'
|
| Source : https://armswatch.com/exposed-bellingcat-fabricate-
| evidence-...
|
| ______________________________
|
| Bellingcat is funded by and works together with the UK
| government through the 'Institute for Statecraft' aka
| 'Integrity Initiative'
|
| Source :
| https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Bellingcat#Integrity_Initiative
| alwayseasy wrote:
| TheGrayZone and wikispook are clearly known disinformation
| outlets.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| bredren wrote:
| > where the information was not open source, relying on some
| leaked database of russian passports instead
|
| If the information Was reasonably obtainable by anyone, I would
| flag this as grey literature. That is OSINT.
| wpietri wrote:
| If a database has been leaked enough to be widely available,
| isn't the effectively "open" in the OSINT sense?
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| That mintpress site is shady af, from zero transparency into
| funding sources to the impossible-to-deny red flag of
| attributing stories to writers who immediately deny all
| involvement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MintPress_News
|
| And trying to triangulate the truth somewhere between them and
| Bellingcat works about as well as a Tesla trying to triangulate
| between the highway exit and continuing in its lane. As but one
| example: either Assad dropped chemical weapons on his citizens,
| or the rebels did. The former is supported by famous fans of US
| imperialism like the UN, Doctors' without Borders, Amnesty, the
| EU. and the reality that Assad was generally known to posses
| those weapons and delivery capabilities. Taking the other side
| are Putin, Assad, and, probably, Glen Greenwald.
| mandmandam wrote:
| I consider MPN far less shady than Fox, CBS, NBC, WaPo, or
| the NYT. It's really nice to have a news source that applies
| a modicum of skepticism to America's "foreign policy".
|
| From your link:
|
| > "BuzzFeed News in 2013 described the site as having "an
| agenda that lines up, from its sympathy with the Syrian
| regime to its hostility to Sunni Saudi Arabia, with that of
| the Islamic Republic of Iran."
|
| If we're talking about bias; how biased is it to claim that
| since MPN don't agree with regime change in Syria, and they
| don't go along with America's (twisted beyond belief)
| "friendliness" towards SA, they must be working for Iran?
|
| And, isn't it _weird_ that the wiki page makes no attempt to
| link to any of MPN 's responses to such claims? Looking over
| a recent one makes a lot of the claims made in your comment
| and in the linked wiki page look ridiculous -
| https://www.mintpressnews.com/a-biased-newsguard-honors-
| mint...
| mrobot wrote:
| Yes, i don't think people realize just how ruthlessly
| enforced alignment with US foreign policy goals is on
| Wikipedia. In matters of foreign governments and current
| events related to war, Wikipedia is essentially a
| propaganda page of the CIA. Very few editors control
| exercise real control over the foreign policy information
| on Wikipedia. It is not the democratic neutral source that
| people see it as, and that's part of why it's a good
| propaganda tool. It is kind of a Trojan horse into your
| trust boundaries.
|
| If you watch some of the edit wars when a big event happens
| in the news, you can often see very useful information
| (with sources) being thrown away. It's not really possible
| to get information on there that conflicts with the current
| military goals, because that would upset the mission.
| bishoprook2 wrote:
| > their site definitely has a certain political orientation
| that usually tends to align with NATO interests,
|
| It seems to me that if a site presents any threat to the ruling
| class, you simply see your Paypal access disappear, VISA
| accounts go away, hosting goes away, ability to make a public
| case via FB/Twitter/etc. goes down the memory hole, 'kept'
| reporters attack you, MSM mobs you, so I'm not surprised.
|
| The last half decade has made the real game as plain as day.
| [deleted]
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