Symposium Events

Moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli, this talk on how open-source intelligence tools and collective strategies reconfigure investigations brings together investigative television journalist Natalie Sedletska, software artisan and ethical hacker Denis “Jaromil” Roio, and data team lead at OCCRP Friedrich Lindenberg.

How far should a journalist go when it comes to investigating radical Islamism, and what are the dangers? What methods work best - undercover reporting online, the interpretation of documents, social media analysis, documentary or on-the-ground reporting?

When two suspects were identified in the police investigation surrounding the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia last March, several researchers from Bellingcat began a hunt to verify the real identities of the suspects, and their links to Russian military intelligence.

Tracking agents of the Russian secret service and their European operations requires employing the full range of open-source intelligence techniques. This class will show you many tips and tricks, while explaining how they were used in a range of investigations looking into GRU activities in Switzerland, Bulgaria and elsewhere.

What is “chronolocation” and why do we need it? How do we research deceiving Instagrams? What is wrong with Google reverse image search? What is the hidden connection between Instagram and Facebook?

Who is the mysterious person behind a mining contract in the Central African Republic? What do you do when you have only a very common name and no photos? And what to do when a Twitter account is completely deleted?

More than 10,000 civilians have died since the Saudi-led war against Yemen’s Houthis began in 2015. While traditional field investigations are still critical to covering the crisis, open source monitoring and investigations are increasingly playing a role in holding power to account.

Forensic Architecture work on human rights violation investigations with a range of different partners, from international prosecutors to media organisations. This session will provide an insight on this work from the mindset of both an architect and a journalist, with examples and workshop exercises in image analysis, geo-locating, and interpreting video.

This talk will provide an overview of investigative interviewing tools and techniques used within a forensic context. The focus here is to elicit detailed and reliable information from witnesses and suspects as this can play a central role in legal decision-making and, ultimately, the delivery of justice. For a number of psychological reasons, even cooperative witnesses do not spontaneously report all the information they know.