The inside story of how it got the Skripal scoop
Bellingcat is an independent group of exceptionally gifted Leicester-based internet researchers who use information gleaned from open sources to dig up facts that no other team of journalists has been able to discover.
Or, Bellingcat is a sophisticated front used by western intelligence agencies to disseminate stories that would be considered tainted if they came from an official source.
Which is it? The answer matters, not just because Bellingcat’s investigators — a tiny outfit with just 11 staffers and around 60 volunteers around the world — have apparently identified Sergei Skripal’s would-be assassins, pinned the blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria squarely on the Assad regime and the responsibility for the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17 on the Russian army. It matters because Bellingcat’s methods have transformed the way that news — and intelligence — is gathered.
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WNU Editor: I was surprised when I read this post, because the author is making a lot of sense in explaining why Bellingcat has been successful in breaking stories .... Bellingcat knows how to use Russia’s thriving commercial black market in personal information to obtain confidential data from the state. To put it in another way .... in Russia the state has turned a blind eye to how the "dark web" and the information that is retrieved is used. Many Russian companies and individuals know this, and they use this "lack of of enforcement" to mine the internet to market information to interested parties. Their work is also not limited in Russia .... the internet is a global network, and anyone in the world can contract their services to find any information that they want. I am just surprised that Western news agencies have not taken advantage of this .... even with all the privacy issues involved.
