Documents from the Russian Department of Internal Security newly acquired by @the_ins_ru and Bellingcat appear to acknowledge that data used by our investigative team is legitimate data of FSB officers from cellular phone operators. theins.ru/politika/246166
The documents examined by Bellingcat and @the_ins_ru relate to a criminal case against a former fitness trainer who obtained data from cellular operators with fake documents.
These documents run counter to the statement from President Putin that documents used in our investigations are “legalisation of foreign special service materials”
The documents detail how Russian investigators identified the suspects and details how they acquired the material, stating that the information was about Russian Federal Security Service officers. Bellingcat's investigation process is detailed here bellingcat.com/resources/2020…
This page from the document includes the names of FSB officers who had their data accessed, all of whom are individuals named in our Navalny investigation.
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@planet We ran a poll of four options (suggested by readers) and initially planned to capture only the winner. This turned out to be the Al Watiyah Airbase in Libya.
@planet However, we liked the runners-up so much that we captured them too. These were Jiangnan Shipyard in China, the La Palma Volcano and Diego Garcia.
Sometimes, a critical mindset and a close look at the context of an image or post are often all it takes to discover whether a piece of content is genuine.
Verification is key to a lot of the work we do at Bellingcat.
You can read some of our previous work on the subject and how we have identified misinformation and disinformation via the following links
@BcatMonitoring Founded by Vladislav Pozdnyakov — a man convicted of inciting hatred against women in 2018 — Male State’s tens of thousands of followers have been at the forefront of a backlash against gender equality in Russia, winning a fair share of headlines.
@BcatMonitoring In the past several months, they’ve harassed and threatened retailers who use Black models in their advertisements.
We note the decision of the Russian justice ministry to name Bellingcat as a foreign agent. This puts us in the same company as many of Russia's remaining prominent independent media outlets and human rights NGOs.
However, unlike the majority of other "foreign agents", Bellingcat has neither a legal nor physical presence in Russia. We are a foundation registered in the Netherlands without staff in Russia.
The goal of designating Bellingcat is likely an attempt to limit the opportunities of Russian media to cite our investigations and circulate our findings to their audiences, further limiting freedom of the press in Russia
Last night, Bellingcat’s investigation with CNN into the poisoning of Alexey @Navalny won two Emmy awards, the first for Outstanding Investigative Report in a Newscast
The second Emmy award was for Outstanding Research: News. A huge thank you to @clarissaward and her team at CNN for helping to bring this story to a wider audience in such an engaging way
CNN’s reporting can be seen here, including the moment where @clarissaward doorsteps one of the FSB team members involved with Navalny’s poisoning identified by Bellingcat’s research.