How did a journalist find out who was responsible for bombing hospitals in Syria from his desk in New York? How can South Sudanese monitors safely track and detail the weapons in their communities and make sure that global audiences take notice? How do researchers in London coordinate worldwide work uncovering global corruption? What are policy-makers, lawyers, and intelligence agencies doing to keep up with and make use of these activities?In the age of Google, threats to human security are being tracked in completely new ways. Human rights abuses, political violence, nuclear weapons, corruption, radicalization, and conflict are all being monitored, analyzed, and documented. Although open source investigations are neither easy to conduct nor straightforward to apply, with diligence and effort, societies, agencies, and individuals have the potential to use them to strengthen security.This interdisciplinary book presents 18 original chapters by prize-winning practitioners, experts, and rising stars, detailing what open source investigations are and how they are carried out, and examining the opportunities and challenges they present to global transparency, accountability and justice. It is essential reading for current and future digital investigators, journalists, and scholars of global governance, international relations and humanitarian law, as well as anyone interested in the possibilities and dangers of this new field.

"How did a journalist find out who was responsible for bombing hospitals in Syria without leaving his desk in New York? How can South Sudanese activists safely track and detail the weapons in their communities, and make sure that global audiences take notice? How do researchers in London coordinate worldwide work uncovering global corruption? What are policy makers, lawyers, and intelligence agencies doing to keep up with and make use of these activities? In the Age of Google, threats to human security of every kind are being tracked in completely new ways. Human rights abuses, political violence, nuclear weapons deployments, corruption, radicalisation, and conflict, are all being monitored, analysed, and documented. The startling results are disseminated to diverse audiences, achieving lasting impacts. Though open source investigations are neither easy to conduct nor straightforward to apply, with diligence and effort, societies, agencies, and individuals have the potential to use them to strengthen human security. This interdisciplinary book presents 18 contributions by prize-winning practitioners, experts and rising stars, detailing what open source investigations are and how they are carried out, alongside the opportunities and challenges they present to global transparency, accountability and justice. It is essential reading for current and future digital investigators, journalists, and scholars of global governance, international relations, humanitarian law, or anyone with an interest in the possibilities and dangers of this new field"--

In the information age, it is critical that we understand the implications and exposure of the activities and data documented on the Internet. Improved efficiencies and the added capabilities of instant communication, high-speed connectivity to browsers, search engines, websites, databases, indexing, searching and analytical applications have made

One of the most important aspects for a successful police operation is the ability for the police to obtain timely, reliable and actionable intelligence related to the investigation or incident at hand. Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) provides an invaluable avenue to access and collect such information in addition to traditional investigative techniques and information sources. This book offers an authoritative and accessible guide on how to conduct Open Source Intelligence investigations from data collection to analysis to the design and vetting of OSINT tools. In its pages the reader will find a comprehensive view into the newest methods for OSINT analytics and visualizations in combination with real-life case studies to showcase the application as well as the challenges of OSINT investigations across domains. Examples of OSINT range from information posted on social media as one of the most openly available means of accessing and gathering Open Source Intelligence to location data, OSINT obtained from the darkweb to combinations of OSINT with real-time analytical capabilities and closed sources. In addition it provides guidance on legal and ethical considerations making it relevant reading for practitioners as well as academics and students with a view to obtain thorough, first-hand knowledge from serving experts in the field.

In an era shaped by misinformation, conspiracy theories, and anti-science movements, Science and Technology Studies / Science, Technology and Society (STS) provides a lighthouse of insight and interdisciplinary research. This volume, 'Science, technology and society for a post-truth age: Comparative dialogues on reflexivity,' embarks on a transformative journey through the interdependencies of science, technology, and society, offering vital perspectives and new insights on these challenging topics. This book, written by scholars in the field, reshapes post-truth discourse through STS and positions STS as a central force in addressing the post-truth crisis. It presents a compelling contribution that anchors STS at the heart of contemporary debates about truth and knowledge. 'Science, technology and society for a post-truth age: Comparative dialogues on reflexivity' is a contemporary and thought-provoking exploration of the evolving relationship between knowledge, truth, and society. It makes the case that STS is a catalyst for reshaping our understanding of truth in an age characterised by scepticism and uncertainty.

How can we build back truth online? Here’s how. How can we build back truth online? In this book, researcher Leslie F. Stebbins provides solutions for repairing our existing social media platforms and building better ones that prioritize value over profit, strengthen community ties, and promote access to trustworthy information. Stebbins provides a road map with six paths forward to understand how platforms are designed to exploit us, how we can learn to embrace agency in our interactions with digital spaces, how to build tools to reduce harmful practices, how platform companies can prioritize the public good, how we can repair journalism, and how to strengthen curation to promote trusted content and create new, healthier digital public squares. New, experimental models that are ethically designed to build community and promote trustworthy content are having some early successes. We know that human social networks—online and off—magnify whatever they are seeded with. They are not neutral. We also know that to repair our systems we need to repair their design. We are being joined in the fight by some of the best and brightest minds of our current generation as they flee big tech companies in search of vocations that value integrity and public values. The problem of misinformation is not insurmountable. We can fix this.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'John le Carré demystified the intelligence services; Higgins has demystified intelligence gathering itself' Financial Times 'Uplifting . . . Riveting . . . What will fire people through these pages, gripped, is the focused, and extraordinary investigations that Bellingcat runs . . . Each runs as if the concluding chapter of a Holmesian whodunit' Telegraph 'We Are Bellingcat is Higgins's gripping account of how he reinvented reporting for the internet age . . . A manifesto for optimism in a dark age' Luke Harding, Observer 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.