We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins

We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins – An Intelligence Agency for the People – is a fascinating book. If you are familiar with OSINT, then this book is for you. If you are not familiar with OSINT (open source intelligence), then this book is for you too. This was written by the founder of Bellingcat, an investigative agency that has a very humble beginning. It started with a man wanting to discover the truth and it grew in a few years. Its future can be even brighter still.

Bellingcat comes from the idea of “belling the cat”, originally a story about mice who put a bell on a cat so they would always know when it was coming. The agency is doing the same, belling the aggressor so people know where the thread is coming from. The team are self-taught internet sleuths and they were involved in information-gathering from what is available on open source (hence the open source intelligence explanation).

Higgins started by looking at the Syrian Civil War. In the last few years they analysed the downing of Malaysia Flight 17 over Ukraine, the identification of the Salisbury poisoners, looked into Navalny’s poisoning. They did some research in Africa too. What people can achieve is incredibly impressive. I think this kind of activism can only grow and can only benefit everybody. He talks about what will happen next and how important it is for journalists to get involved and learn how to use OSINT for their own information gathering.

The only thing that lacked was that he talks nicely about Amnesty, which is known for its shady stances when it comes to Ukraine, for example. One so-called fact-checker from Amnesty talked to a russian propaganda agency to “gather facts” on Ukrainians. They also said that weapons from Ukraine might end up in other countries, which is interesting, considering that, in fact, russian weapons turn up in the hands of people like Hamas. They also had to go back on what they said. A bit of fact-checking of the agencies they work with wouldn’t be a bad idea. I thought of giving the book 4.5 stars for this, but ended up with a 5 because it was nicely written. When more people will join Bellingcat as volunteers, then this issue will, hopefully, sort itself out.