By Alistair Coleman
Open Source Intelligence (or OSINT) has emerged as a major source of information about the war in Ukraine.
It’s the use of publicly-available images, video and other information such as weather and mapping to accurately locate and verify where and when a particular event happened, and who was involved.
It has allowed news organisations such as the BBC, and investigative organisations like Bellingcat to make sense of conflicting claims, and to publish definitive fact-checks on them.
However, anybody can claim they are an OSINT investigator, and a number of accounts have emerged with varying degrees of accuracy and usefulness.
There are also highly partisan fact-checking organisations that hide behind claims of neutrality, and abuse the concept of OSINT to publish disinformation.
The BBC, as well as other organisations, have published findings which seem to implicate both Russians and Ukrainians in wrongdoing during the conflict.
Is ‘War on Fakes’ a fake?
War on Fakes is a Moscow-based website which publishes ‘"fact-checks" on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It claims to have no political agenda and to be unbiased, but its editorial line is strongly pro-Russian. It appears to be directly linked to the Russian government’s claims that the Western narrative about the war is entirely fictional and driven by “Russophobia”.
While some of its fact-checks are genuine, such as the mislabelling of video in the early days of the war, many display a relentless misuse of open-source intelligence to draw incorrect conclusions about controversial events.
For example, their fact-check on civilian deaths in Bucha is entirely at odds with findings published elsewhere in the world.
The events in Bucha were forensically studied by various organisations, including the BBC, using freely available satellite imagery and social media videos.
However, War on Fakes continues to claim that Russian forces committed no war crimes, and such accusations are examples of “global lies”.
Its own use of OSINT is selective and relies on fitting it to its own narrative, using supposition and flawed logic.
War On Fakes did not use any of the satellite imagery used in various international fact-checks on Bucha.
However, when they did, claiming that there were no satellite images on 19 March proving there were civilian bodies in the street, it was based on incorrect use of satellite imaging company Maxar’s website, where their search parameters were too narrow to find the existing imagery.
Whether this was bad practice or deliberate is unknown, but War on Fakes says that Maxar satellite imagery is unreliable as “it is affiliated with the US Department of Defence”. The US DoD is a Maxar customer.
The ship that didn’t sink
OSINT accounts reacted quickly over claims that the Russian frigate Admiral Makarov had been hit by a Ukrainian missile off Snake Island in the Black Sea. This followed the recent sinking of the Russian flagship Moskva in the same waters.
The first mentions of the alleged attack came from Twitter accounts with low follower counts. However, the rumour was picked up by self-styled OSINT accounts with large numbers of followers and, despite a lack of any proof, it was widely shared out of wishful thinking that it was true.
Its spread across other platforms such as Telegram came with new details added, like news of rescue vessels, a supposed radar trace of the stricken vessel, and eventually the “news” that it had been hit by a Ukrainian Neptune missile. As intelligence experts Velenta wrote about the reflexive nature of social media sharing and exaggeration, “It's all over social media [so] it must be true”.
And once claims that the Makarov had been hit became widespread on social media, other self-styled OSINT accounts posted images that they said “proved” the frigate had been hit.
Several accounts posted a hazy video claiming to show the ship on fire, but closer examination showed it was almost certainly taken from a video game.
This didn’t stop a rumour-mill of unverified claims from accounts claiming to be OSINT specialists. Velenta say the false claim was encouraged by official Ukrainian accounts muddying the waters further, and giving validity to poor OSINT practice.
Claims continued to spread on the Makarov.
One account claiming to be ex-British forces said that a fleet of ambulances had been seen “rushing” to a military hospital in Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea, and linked this to the alleged attack. There’s no evidence that this happened.
Why do people pose as fact-checkers?
There could be several reasons for posing as a fact-checker with no previous experience or expertise.
Firstly, there are people who feel a genuine need to help during a time of crisis, embarking on their own fact-checking missions with varying degrees of success.
Then there are those whose fact-checking and verification is purely to confirm their preconceived beliefs. They might only publish results that suit them, or make errors of omission, or portray readily-available information incorrectly.
Far from being a reliable source for complex investigations or verifying content, some of these so-called OSINT accounts openly share misinformation and outlandish conspiracy theories for clicks and online clout.
A sub-division of these are nationalists, who exist to promote their government’s line and mock their opponents. One Indian example called OSINT Updates is staunchly pro-government and anti-Pakistan, and spreads easily disproved “intelligence” about the Ukraine war, favouring the Russian side.
And finally, there are groups which appear to be partisan or else government trolls, who will deliberately post false OSINT claims in order to create confusion and doubt. One, which went by the user name @OSINTUpdates, no longer exists on Twitter.
While some self-styled OSINT accounts are providing high-quality fact-checks on the Ukraine conflict, they seem to be out-numbered and drowned out by individuals and organisations misusing OSINT for their own agenda.
Additional reporting by Medhavi Arora and Shayan Sardarizadeh
Source: BBC Monitoring 7 Jul 22
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