Open-source intelligence challenges state monopolies on information
economist.com
economist.com
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...
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.
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.
If the information Was reasonably obtainable by anyone, I would flag this as grey literature. That is OSINT.
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.
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...
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.
Enjoy!
(There are more tricks but if disclosed they could patch those.)
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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
International repercussions over stuff like this take years to run their course.
===
[1] https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Robert-David-Steele/dp/1583944435