
How The New York Times Verified the Iran Missile-Strike Footage - danso
https://www.cjr.org/q_and_a/new-york-times-iran-ukraine-flight.php
======
oxplot
Very cool.

For fun, I once verified the actual speed of a motorbike in a youtube video.

The video was a first person POV which also showed the speedometer clocking at
300km/h on a German autobahn. There were various comments on the video
claiming it was fake. So I decided to verify it myself.

I went on Google satellite imagery and looked at a few autobahns to see how
far apart the line markings were. I then measured how many lines the bike
passed by going through the video frame by frame. Did the math and it turned
out that the bike was actually moving at about 290 km/h. It was either
measurement error on my part, measurement error on the bike's part, or that
the bike's wheels were slipping at that speed (which was something I didn't
know before this). I didn't look into it any further.

It was a fun experience.

~~~
CraigJPerry
IIRC there’s a script written in the RC model aircraft community that verifies
claimed speed of models by assessing the doppler shift from the video sound
track as the plane passes.

/me googles

[https://youtu.be/DZZWtT32ymY](https://youtu.be/DZZWtT32ymY)

~~~
kthejoker2
But to the point of faking it seems like it'd be even easier to generate a
fake audio "shift" of your claimed speed.

------
anthonybsd
They mention Bellingcat in the article but what they don't mention is that
their "verification" essentially piggy-backed on top of identical Bellingcat
verification of a the same video that got released 14 hours prior [1]. This
seems strange to me.

[1]. [https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/01/09/video-
appare...](https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/01/09/video-apparently-
showing-flight-ps572-missile-strike-geolocated-to-iranian-suburb/)

~~~
dewey
[https://www.nytimes.com/by/christiaan-
triebert](https://www.nytimes.com/by/christiaan-triebert)

> Prior to joining The Times in 2019, Mr. Triebert worked as a senior
> investigator and lead trainer at the investigative group Bellingcat.

------
marvin
Just an ancillary point: this highlights that free access to group messaging
apps makes it much harder than before to suppress facts about what has
happened somewhere. Especially if there's video. The Iran regime of 1990 would
have had a much easier time keeping this mistake under wraps.

I think the whole "fake news" and related propaganda strategies we see in the
West are what happens when people in power try to adapt to this new reality,
by attacking at the weak spots of the new information infrastructure.

~~~
pjc50
Yes. Rather than attempt to suppress it in the West, we'd see a lot of
conflicting reports, allegations of fake news, unrelated smear attempts,
questioning of loyalties, and attempts to arrest whistleblowers.

The US never did admit liability for shooting down an Iranian jet in similar
circumstances:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655)

~~~
loufe
For flight 655, while they never admitted guilt, they did settle paying the
victim's families "ex-gratia" a non-negligible sum. While it is not the same
as directly admitting you are responible, espcecially to the victims, for most
intents and purposes that counts as an admition in my books.

~~~
iknowalot
After the US commander of the ship murdered 290 people on flight 655, he was
given a Legion of Merit.

Two sets of rules.

~~~
nate_meurer
Throwing the word "murder" about like this is an abuse of language. Nobody,
not even the Iranians, ever suggested that the crew of the USS Vincennes
intended to kill civilians. The crew appears to have exercised piss-poor
diligence, but it's universally recognized that they thought they were firing
on a military aircraft.

------
PinguTS
#funfact: Currently, I am looking for a property to buy myself. Most of the
realtors do not publish the exact address of their listed properties. I have
gotten very good in spotting the properties and finding out the exact address
by basically applying the same techniques.

~~~
Chris2048
Why do they not publish the address?

~~~
a2tech
They want to force you to interact with them. It gives them the chance to sell
you even if the property isn't what you want--they'll always offer to help you
find another property, or they "have another listing that'll be just perfect"
for you. Its a sales tactic.

Or the OP is looking at unimproved land/lots which don't have addresses. I'm
currently looking at properties for a future vacation home and at least here
the electric company assigns addresses--so if the lot doesn't have electrical
service it won't have a real street address. You're lucky if the realtor lists
the tax ID so you can look it up in the county database.

~~~
PinguTS
It is the first reason. It is Germany. By law, the realtor is required to be
paid, if you got first contact through them. With that they want you to
require to sign the required paperwork, that they work for you.

But as another poster pointed out, it costs everybody time when you need to
make an appointment and then at first sight you see that this will not work
out.

------
flippyhead
"Also, there’s the sound. There was a delay from seeing the explosion to the
sound reaching the camera. We knew the approximate altitude that the plane was
flying at from the flight information. We knew the location from the flight
path. So we were able to calculate the distance and the altitude—and,
therefore, the hypotenuse between them and the camera—and calculate how long
the sound of an explosion would take to travel that distance. And it was
roughly what we were seeing and hearing in the video, about 10 or 10.5
seconds."

Neat!

~~~
darkwater
Actually the sound analysis doesn't prove it's a real video, it just cannot
prove it is fake. One could totally make up a video keeping sound propagation
times in mind. The most important thing is tracking the footage real location
and checking that the plane or missile weren't edited in.

~~~
aaron695
No one is faking footage.

They are just re-posting old footage of different incidents. IE in the
Australian fires atm.

It's to hard to fake footage.

You are just checking it's the right location, right time. It's entropy. Real
leaks are way easier than fake leaks.

~~~
mamon
>> Real leaks are way easier than fake leaks.

Maybe for the private person. For a certain three letter agency looking to
start a war with Iran it is quite easy to produce fake.

~~~
smabie
I don’t think anyone wants a war with Iran, buddy. Not even the Saudis.

------
deanclatworthy
It's worth pointing out that since the incident Iran has arrested those
responsible for downing the jet - in an attempt to place blame on to
individuals - who I'm certain are devastated at accidentally killing their
countryman. I suspect they will be labelled traitors and never seen again.

They have also arrested the person who filmed this video [2]. Whilst we might
celebrate this investigative journalism, this video changed the course of the
narrative and forced Iran to come clean, we should also be aware of the
consequences of it.

[2] [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-
east-51114945](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51114945)

~~~
chii
> we should also be aware of the consequences of it.

which is that an authoritarian regime is never a good thing.

Society requires that bad actors be publicly visible and called out, as this
creates a pressure for them to act sensibly. The first thing an authoritarian
regime implements is censorship and apply any chilling effect they can,
because they know this is the only way they can hide their acts from the
public at large.

~~~
amiga_500
The West is just better at obfuscating via softer power.

What's happening with Epstien's case now? Who in the press will continue to
follow that up? Some guy might try to keep on it, and then get told at the end
of the year that he's been cut due to a profit warning or whatever. Who's
going to keep on writing about Prince Andrew not being arrested?

Different methods but pretty-much the same lack of visibility.

~~~
nyolfen
bad timing on this one lol:

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/16/jeffrey-
epstein-virgin-islands-lawsuit/%3foutputType=amp)

~~~
amiga_500
Let's see. Nobody went to jail for 2008, they just stonewalled it.

~~~
koheripbal
In fact, people did go to jail.

Here's just one example, but there are others...

[https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/seven-defendants-mortgage-
ori...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/seven-defendants-mortgage-origination-
fraud-scheme-indicted-bank-fraud-conspiracy-along-other)

Also, the CEOs and employees of the banks like Lehman Brothers and Merrill
Lynch in question large portions of their life savings.

The CEO of Lehman, for example, lost 50% of his net worth - over 4 Billion
dollars. ...and obviously destroyed his reputation. Well deserved, of course,
but it's hardly "no punishment".

...the same was true with most if not all senior employees. All of them had
large portions of their compensation in equity stock options. I'm,
unfortunately, speaking from experience.

It's one thing to say the people "responsible" didn't get punished enough -
that's true. But most people at these banks definitely suffered, materially.

~~~
chii
when people argue that they didn't go to jail, i take it to mean that those
who were "responsible" didn't suffer "enough". Where enough is taken to mean
an eye for an eye.

Whether you subscribe to this sort of thinking is up to you - i don't, but the
result is that the people who suffered don't feel they've been vindicated nor
made whole, and the world has moved on since.

------
RandomBacon
The first link in that article has a lot of video of the incident I haven't
seen before, including the missle launch, detonation, and a close-up of parts
flying through the air after the plane impacts the ground:

[https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/1000000069116...](https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000006911696/iran-
crash.html)

------
fapjacks
It's interesting to me that it seems mostly only a very recent trend that
these sorts of basic techniques (which fall under the category of intelligence
known as OSINT -- Open Source INTelligence) of identification and verification
are being talked about by mainstream mass media content producers like the
NYT. Interesting because it must follow at least partly from the intrinsic
network that exists between those people fighting wars and those reporting on
them. Also interesting because these are old techniques that have been public
for decades. Preceding and coincident to this, there has also been a push in
Western militaries to train members in OSINT techniques -- and not just
members in traditional intelligence job specialties -- following recent
doctrinal themes of much more decentralized, individual "generalist"
warfighters (think traditional special forces) than big blocks of maneuver
elements on a sand table. This is a side effect of the messy, multilayered
future of cyberpunk combat.

------
RayMan1
They actually didnt verify anything. Plenty of Twitter accounts verified the
story some 10-ish hours before NYT reported this ground breaking information.
These reporters are sitting behind their desks (like you and me) and are
sifting through Twitter feed and they stumbled upon what was already
geolocated video+ several images of missiles. But this became a story only
when a big media (in this case NYT) published it.

~~~
tyingq
Are you saying they didn't do the analysis they said they did, but copied it
from someone else? I agree the analysis doesn't "verify", but it did lend more
credibility to the (then) suspected root cause. It had value.

They weren't claiming they were the source of the posted videos.

~~~
rvnx
Yes the flight path + sound analysis and all these things were already on
Twitter. So, NYT article should be more "how we copied Twitter users without
crediting them"

------
makomk
Iran then appparently arrested the person who they thought filmed this video:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-
east-51114945](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51114945)

~~~
tyingq
_" But an Iranian journalist based in London who initially posted the footage
has insisted that his source is safe, and that the Iranian authorities have
arrested the wrong person."_

Ugh. Even worse.

~~~
csunbird
or the actual source is the one being arrested and the journalist is trying to
trick the government to release the person.

~~~
frandroid
I thought about that too but media have a lot to lose in terms of credibility
if it gets exposed. I'd bet you there was a NYT lawyer in touch with that
journalist ASAP when they published that tweet if the journalist hadn't been
in touch with legal beforehand.

------
catacombs
The Times kept saying they "obtained" the video, as if it was leaked to them
by a confidential source. That's not the case. They found it, like many
others, including Bellingcat, on a Telegram group. I'm glad they reported the
video, but to make it seem like _they_ were the ones to find it first is
misleading and grandstanding.

~~~
mzs
No NYT was able to track down the person that posted that video on telegram
and that individual got them in contact with the original videographer and the
NYT verified those people.

[https://twitter.com/trbrtc/status/1215397996545835010](https://twitter.com/trbrtc/status/1215397996545835010)

------
mzs
There was an NPR story that mentioned US has satellites which can detect RADAR
and I wondered about that, so I asked on twitter. Here are two nice threads of
explanations I got in response:

[https://twitter.com/M_R_Thomp/status/1217510002723893250](https://twitter.com/M_R_Thomp/status/1217510002723893250)

[https://twitter.com/gbrumfiel/status/1217506180303663104](https://twitter.com/gbrumfiel/status/1217506180303663104)

------
shusson
I did not realise how close the impact was to the airport. It looks like the
plane took a normal flight path. I thought Iran said the plane entered a
restricted area. Does anyone know if that was true?

~~~
SiempreViernes
I think it's simply an accident due to the ground crews being _very_ nervous
and expecting an attack at any moment, followed by the inevitable attempts to
cover it up by those most directly responsible.

Entering a restricted area might simply mean entering the airspace visible to
a particular AA battery.

~~~
saberdancer
Ground crew is on a mobile SAM vehicle and was posted to reinforce Tehran
area. Probably reason why they did not know it is a regular flight path from
an airport.

Everything else is smoke and mirrors by Iran trying to find excuses for the
shootdown.

------
spyspy
I highly recommend following Malachy Browne on Twitter[0] for more
investigations like this. He's also the narrator on other NYT video
investigations[1]

[0] [https://twitter.com/malachybrowne](https://twitter.com/malachybrowne) [1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krr4u6uGdzc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krr4u6uGdzc)

------
chiefalchemist
The headline is deceptive or perhaps poorly worded. The NYT evidently verified
the plane was shot down by a missile fired within Iran's borders. That's it.
Whether Iran itself was an active participant iss not something the NYT could
have verified.

I'm being selective because this involves journalism, and words matter.

------
martin_a
Somewhat offtopic, but I'd be interested in an answer.

Do non-military planes have some kind of missile detection capabilites?

Like: Did the pilots know what was about to happen or that something was
approaching them with high speed and whatnot or were they just blown out of
the sky without the slightest idea?

~~~
pjc50
No - and in any case there isn't anything they can do if they are targeted,
they don't have active countermeasures, the airframe can't handle evasive
maneuvers, and they have a huge heat/radar signature.

It's .. not a problem the civilian manufacturers should be attempting to
solve.

~~~
kijin
Air Force One is based on a civilian airframe. Of course the Hollywood movie
was full of exaggerations, but I wouldn't be surprised if the actual Air Force
One was reinforced in some ways to afford a certain level of protection for
its precious cargo.

How much could Boeing, for example, modify one of their civilian airframes to
support active countermeasures and make it capable of withstanding more
stressful maneuvers without altering the outside too much? Quite a lot, I
would think.

~~~
avh02
air force one and some El Al planes were/are fitted with countermeasures.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al#Onboard_missile_defense_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al#Onboard_missile_defense_systems)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_VC-25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_VC-25)

>All wiring is covered with heavy shielding for protection from a nuclear
electromagnetic pulse in the event of a nuclear attack. The aircraft also has
electronic countermeasures (ECMs) to jam enemy radar, flares to avoid heat-
seeking missiles, and chaff to avoid radar-guided missiles

~~~
rvnx
I think the best countermeasure in Israel is the heavy interrogation you get
when leaving the airport

~~~
jrockway
People on the ground with missile launchers don't go through airport security.

------
jliptzin
Anybody who is in the unfortunate position of deciding whether the target
they’re aiming at is a missile or passenger plane needs to do the following
simple calculus: if you are even slightly unsure, don’t do anything
(especially if the object is not even threatening your life). If it turned out
to be a hostile missile, your country then goes on the offensive against
whoever fired it and it’s just another attack. No one is going to come after
you for being cautious (maybe you get dishonorably discharged but that’s it).
But if you go the other way and accidentally take down a passenger jet, not
only do you kill a bunch of innocent people, the international community will
be out for your blood.

~~~
shaabanban
The thing is, the probable first set of targets in a war with Iran would be
air defense targets. “If it turned out to be a hostile missile” that could
mean imminent death. It’s very possible the air defense operator panicked and
acted out of perceived self preservation.

~~~
zaroth
Two missiles. Fired approximately 30 seconds apart. Hitting a 737. Which was
_ascending_. On a registered flight path.

They are supposed to be a trained military employing lethal force. What they
are in fact is a failed regime playing with Russian hardware.

This wasn’t panic, or an accident. This was pure utter incompetence compounded
by total apathy for the civilian population.

------
uncoder0
This was verified by online communities within 3 hours of the footage being
known to western forums. NYT just copied the math or they did it themselves
much later.

------
sbmthakur
I guess the page is taking time to load due to hug of death.

[https://archive.ph/TXyXV](https://archive.ph/TXyXV)

------
russfink
Why was someone shooting video of the sky at that exact moment, unless they
were somehow connected to the strike?

~~~
lolc
I assumed it was the second strike. So after the first missile, an observer
would have started recording and managed to catch the second.

~~~
saberdancer
No need to assume it. There is a surveillance video that shows both launches
and hits. When you cross reference it with the other video you can confirm
that the video with the dog was filmed after first missile already hit the
aircraft (and knocked out the transponder).

------
briandear
The video was unnecessary, just looking at the crash photos of the wings —-
and the holes in them, were indicative of a shoot down. The video was icing on
the cake and helps sell the story’s truth to those who don’t know much about
airplane damage.

