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11 tweets,
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Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins has been recognized
pbs.twimg.com/media/DxCMFvlW… … for supposedly using "open-source intelligence to track down identities of Russian operatives". "Open source" is a fabrication. Bellingcat actually used a highly confidential Russian passport database.
pbs.twimg.com/media/DxCMFvlW… … for supposedly using "open-source intelligence to track down identities of Russian operatives". "Open source" is a fabrication. Bellingcat actually used a highly confidential Russian passport database.
2/ for example, Bellingcat reported on "two extremely peculiar details" in "Petrov's passport file", showing those details. The Russian passport database is not "open source" but confidential personal data that was presumably hacked or stolen.
3/ Bellingcat also "obtained" the flight manifest for the flight taken by "Boshirov" and "Petrov" to the UK. This is not "open source" information but information which was hacked or stolen.
4/ Bellingcat observed that d/o/b/ details on "Petrov's" internal passport file (in one confidential database) matched details in the flight manifest (another confidential database). Neither database is "open source".
5/ Bellingcat's DanKaszeta et al recently filed repeated complaints against me under Twitter policy help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-p… for republishing a Strongpoint Security invoice to Institute of Statecraft, previously published online in recent hack of UK propaganda Integrity Initiative
6/ the Twitter policy in question prohibits posting "someone’s private information online" as it may "pose serious safety and security risks for the person whose information is shared". Twitter does not consider "business addresses" as personal private information.
7/ while I do not agree that my tweet violated Twitter policies, Kazeta's complaint draws attention to an interesting irony re Bellingcat's doxxing of Boshirov and Petrov in relation to Twitter personal private information policy.
8/ the information from Boshirov and Petrov passport files was personal private information under Twitter policy. Its publication by Bellingcat was a violation of Twitter privacy policy which posed "serious safety and security risks for the person whose information is shared".
9/ Dan Kaszeta complained that the Integrity Initiative documents were obtained by Anonymous "by illegal acts". They probably were. But the passport database and flight manifests which Bellingcat used willingly were also almost certainly hacked or stolen.
10/ I don't see anything immoral about Bellingcat making use of the hacked/stolen databases. (I had no reservations about using the Climategate or IntInit emails.) However, claims that Bellingcat doxed Boshirov and Petrov using "open source" information appear fraudulent to me.
11/ similarly, given Bellingcat's reliance on hacked/stolen databases to dox Boshirov and Petrov and Bellingcat's own flouting of Twitter personal privacy rules, one would have expected Kaszeta to put on his big boy pants rather than whining to mama Twitter.
