Why OSINT works for me
I have always had trouble locating myself as a journalist. I am a white woman, privileged by almost every account.
I don’t have a particular interest in my own cross-cultural lens. Nor do I have interest in becoming the ‘voice of the voiceless’. Nor a foreign correspondent, fresh and blonde from the US of A. But I do agree with the notion that "listening and capturing stories is a way of insisting that every life matters," and for that reason, I’ve always wanted to make reporting my work. Until this point, I simply haven’t been able to envision how the Nick Kristoff model might evolve into something more comfortable, and less self-referring.
I’ve spent the past eight years trying to locate myself within the broader rights movement. I’ve worked as an educator, an aid worker, a researcher, and most recently in a project to renew global rights. Throughout this time, I’ve worked alongside colleagues from many struggles - from Myanmar to Egypt to Palestine. I’ve tried to discern the difference between respect and deference; support versus solidarity; and the critical gap between ‘power with’ and ‘power to’. I’ve tried to interrogate my own motivations to stand alongside various justice struggles, and ensure that my work does not become my karmic salve.
I stumbled into the open-source investigations world by accident. A former colleague was living in northeast Syria when the Turkish military began to invade in September 2019, and I wanted to pull images of what he was seeing from his rooftop at the border. I created a ‘geo-fence’ on Twitter; joined a couple of Telegram accounts; and all of a sudden we were comparing visuals between his phone and my screen.
In the OSINT community, I found a journalistic medium that was both collaborative and evidence-based. I could interrogate a question that colleagues cared about, and pull in perspectives from members of the Kurdish Red Crescent, weapons specialists, UN officials, researchers, and aid workers. This method provided a clear avenue of support for my frontline coworkers, if only because I had the luxury of a 5G-connection, a large hard drive and a stable VPN.
The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated my induction into the OSINT world. As our borders have remained closed and flights grounded, I’ve relied on open-source techniques to confirm research hypotheses and corroborate first-person accounts. Selfishly, I’ve relied on mediums like Google Earth Studios and Snapchat maps to escape the confines of my kitchen-desk-floor. Thus far, I’ve appreciated the horizontal nature of the work, and the humility that I’ve found among early colleagues at a Bellingcat training, the Columbia Human Rights Institute and Business Insider.
I’ve always wondered how to support storytelling in overlooked places like the Rukhban; blockaded enclaves like Gaza; or areas suffering under a media blackout, like the Tigray region of Ethiopia is right now. I certainly don’t have all of the answers, but I’ve at least located a methodology that provides daily opportunities for voracious learning and a more comfortable place to start.