Overview

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ""Fascinating ... A powerful, exhortatory call to arms.""--New York Times Book Review ""A David-and-Goliath story for the digital age ... Thrilling.""--Foreign Policy The page-turning inside story of the global team wielding the internet to fight for facts and combat autocracy--revealing the extraordinary ability of ordinary people to hold the powerful to account. In 2018, Russian exile Sergei Skripal and his daughter were nearly killed in an audacious poisoning attempt in Salisbury, England. Soon, the identity of one of the suspects was revealed: he was a Russian spy. This huge investigative coup wasn't pulled off by an intelligence agency or a traditional news outlet. Instead, the scoop came from Bellingcat, the open-source investigative team that is redefining the way we think about news, politics, and the digital future. We Are Bellingcat tells the inspiring story of how a college dropout pioneered a new category of reporting and galvanized citizen journalists--working together from their computer screens around the globe--to crack major cases, at a time when fact-based journalism is under assault from authoritarian forces. Founder Eliot Higgins introduces readers to the tools Bellingcat investigators use, tools available to anyone, from software that helps you pinpoint the location of an image, to an app that can nail down the time that photo was taken. This book digs deep into some of Bellingcat's most important investigations--the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine, Assad's use of chemical weapons in Syria, the identities of alt-right protestors in Charlottesville--with the drama and gripping detail of a spy novel.

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9781635577303

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Reviews

In a world of disrupters, Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat have turned the world of intelligence gathering on its head and put to shame the intelligence services of the biggest and most powerful countries in the world. We Are Bellingcat tells the gripping story of how the Bellingcat team used innovative investigation techniques to expose some of the gravest state crimes of our era. Their success is a wake-up call to governments who have been asleep at the wheel about what is needed to fight dictators and kleptocrats. --Bill Browder, author of RED NOTICE If you don't know what Bellingcat is, this is your chance to learn: We Are Bellingcat tells the story of the most innovative practitioners of open-source intelligence and online journalism in the world. They have told the true stories of the missiles that downed the MH17 airplane in Ukraine and the chemical weapons used by the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. They have identified the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, exposed a Kremlin hit team, found ISIS supporters in Europe. In this book their founder, Eliot Higgins, describes how and why they do it. --Anne Applebaum, author of TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY and GULAG Bellingcat has pioneered a new field of investigation that has proven key to understanding the clandestine criminal actions of Russia and other nations both at home and abroad. They have exposed numerous war crimes, human rights violations, and much more. If there were a Nobel Prize in uncovering war crimes, Bellingcat would receive it. No wonder authoritarian and criminal regimes hate them so. --Toomas Hendrik Ilves, former President of Estonia A lively account...there is an awful lot to be on guard against in cyberspace but also a willing and utterly capable army of defenders against those who would disinform, misinform, and outright lie for political advantage. Those who are not allergic to facts will find this a provocative, even inspirational read. --Kirkus Reviews Recent [open-source] journalism achievements-such as Bellingcat's investigations ... are compelling not just for their findings, but for the openness with which they explain the process of discovery. This is the closest that journalism has come to a scientific method. --New York Review of Books Taking on the Kremlin from his couch . . . Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat are fighting Vladimir Putin and his ilk, using little more than computers and smartphones. --Foreign Policy Higgins's self-taught skills are impressive...fans of Bellingcat and advocates of citizen journalism will be fascinated by the behind-the-scenes details. --Publishers Weekly

Recent [open-source] journalism achievements-such as Bellingcat's investigations ... are compelling not just for their findings, but for the openness with which they explain the process of discovery. This is the closest that journalism has come to a scientific method. --New York Review of Books Taking on the Kremlin from his couch . . . Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat are fighting Vladimir Putin and his ilk, using little more than computers and smartphones. --Foreign Policy

Author Information

Eliot Higgins is the founder of Bellingcat, an international collective of researchers, investigators, and citizen journalists using open-source and social media investigation to probe some of the world's most pressing stories. Higgins also sits on the technical advisory board of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. In 2018 he was a visiting research associate at King's College London and at the University of California, Berkeley. @EliotHiggins

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