
Using Google Earth to Find an ISIS Training Camp - mmayberry
https://bellingcat.com/resources/case-studies/2014/08/22/gun-safety-self-defense-and-road-marches-finding-an-isis-training-camp/
======
e98cuenc
It makes me super proud that he used Panoramio, a site I created 9 years ago.
Nowadays with the prevalence of Google Street View is less useful than it used
to be for this kind of stuff, but there are still places that the GSV guys
have not (yet) covered.

~~~
kyro
Rachel Maddow, popular American talking head, mentioned this project and your
site on her show tonight.

~~~
hueving
Popular where? I think I've heard her name once over the last year and I live
in the SF bay area.

~~~
PostOnce
MSNBC, left-wing of fox's right-wing talking heads, approximately

except nobody watches MSNBC... Old people and conservatives watch TV, young
people and liberals read the internet, leaving MSNBC a ghost town, in my
estimation

~~~
prawn
I'm not in the US, don't ever watch MSNBC or Fox and I know who Maddow is just
from political blog/story mentions.

I think the original commenter's point was that the project was mentioned to a
large audience. Seems fairly accurate.

~~~
PostOnce
Yes, I didn't mean literally nobody, I just meant that compared to other
markets MSNBC is fairly small so I can understand missing who Rachel Maddow is
if you don't watch MSNBC or follow political blogs, shes not O'reilly or Jon
Stewart, but yes it is a mainstream cable TV channel so that necessitates some
minimum audience size lest the channel go off the air

~~~
CrazedGeek
Her show is also distributed as a podcast, which is relatively popular.

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hemancuso
Anyone who is impressed by this should seriously check out Andrew Sullivan's
view from your window contest. Most weeks a reader submits a photo from their
window, literally anywhere in the world. And people track it down with very
similar techniques, to the exact window. And a lot of the contest photos offer
much less to go off of than this [namely, only 1 photo, low res,
country/context unspecified].

Here is the winners archive.

[http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/vfyw-
contest/](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/vfyw-contest/)

Some of photos aren't too crazy or offer a landmark that is recognizable if
you'd seen it before. But most of them offer very little in terms of knowing
where to start unless you've got a huge body of contextual knowledge you can
draw on.

A couple ones that I had absolutely no idea where to start with:

[http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2010/08/17/the-view-from-
your...](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2010/08/17/the-view-from-your-window-
contest-winner-11/) [http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/08/19/the-view-from-
your...](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/08/19/the-view-from-your-window-
contest-winner-218/)

I imagine the CIA/NSA has a crack team of a couple dozen people doing this
exact job.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_I imagine the CIA /NSA has a crack team of a couple dozen people doing this
exact job._

There is actually an entire Agency devoted to doing this exact job and other
similar activities:

[https://www.nga.mil/Pages/default.aspx](https://www.nga.mil/Pages/default.aspx)

 _A few recent ones that I had absolutely no idea where to start with:_

Those actually provide TONS of identifiable features that make them relatively
easy to track down with relatively simple tools.

~~~
hemancuso
Perhaps I didn't select the hardest from the recent archive. My basic point
was more to show that people have the tools to a lot more digging with a lot
less context.

Hadn't heard of the NGA. Well there you go.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_Perhaps I didn 't select the hardest from the recent archive. My basic point
was more to show that people have the tools to a lot more digging with a lot
less context._

Sure. Not intended to be a slight, more a nod to our Defense brethren doing
this with a lot harder targets!

~~~
hemancuso
Indeed. I swapped in a couple tougher ones :)

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mmayberry
I'm sure the government is on this as well but its pretty incredible what a
citizen journalist can do from his home computer with a few basic web sites.
Some of the other projects that he has worked on (finding a russian training
camp, authenticating an Egyptian revolution movie, etc..) are worth a read as
well

~~~
iaw
Unfortunately once IS gets wind of this they'll be more careful and revise
their strategies for releasing media. Those guys are disturbingly tech savvy.

~~~
brador
Any examples of their tech savvy?

~~~
BrandonMarc
This one's rather chilling.

 _ISIS is employing social media — ‘crowdsourcing’ — to identify Saudi agents.
They’ve even got an Android app just for the purpose. ”U.S. intelligence
agencies monitoring ISIL’s social media communications identified the campaign
as a crowd-sourced effort to gather names and other personal information about
Saudi intelligence officials for the assassination campaign.”_

[http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/08/04/terror-and-
th...](http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/08/04/terror-and-the-sword-of-
justice/)

~~~
im3w1l
Hmm, smartphones are quite easy to pwn right. So, I'd wager US has the names
of lot of civilian ISIS supporters now. I wonder what that will be used for.

------
joelrunyon
Interesting that as it's getting easier & easier for "normal" people to do
stuff like this - our media is getting worse and worse at it. They've
essentially given up on reporting or investigating anything original and
simply spew back "opinions", "tweets" or PR releases.

~~~
narrator
The more cynical among us would say that one of the media's main jobs is to
reinforce pre-approved narratives by cherry-picking examples that fit that
narrative. Look how much attention the mediocre punk rock band"pussy riot" got
because they happened to reinforce a narrative that the west was pushing about
Russia.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I don't know if I'm being less or more cynical, but I have simpler explanation
- the main job of the media is to make as much money as possible. This means
optimizing for number of readers, and nowdays (because people interact with
news on per-article, not per-site basis) pageviews. More pageviews = more ad
dolars.

Optimizing for profit is a strong force, and initially it helps any new
industry make huge leaps of quality. But at some point, it starts to be more
profitable to sacrifice human values. We're far into this part in case of
media. What sells is linkbait, controversy, "reinforcing pre-approved
narratives" (or more generally, reinforcing what people already believe), fake
"thought provoking" content that is actually repeating established beliefs.
Investigative journalism, good news, well-thought pieces don't sell _enough_ ,
so they get left behind.

~~~
Bulkington
Should one -- moi, specifically, a journalist -- upvote the approved anti-
narrative? In terms of making a modest living, I don't see much middle ground.

Both sell newspapers/pageviews. There's all the room in the world between
approved objectivity and calculated dissent. It just don't pay.

The recently butchered James Foley said he'd cover local planning commission
meetings if that was his last professional option.

Idealist? Chump?

Who else is going to do it, and do it well -- who informs the polis, so that a
half-ass democracy can at least pretend to function?

Crowd-sourced event coverage is cheap and easy and sexy. But it doesn't
provide context.

Sadly, for-profit media seems determined to capitalize on free YouTube and
Twitter feeds at the expense of paying professionals to pay attention and make
sense of complex issues.

Nothing new here. Move along. News at 11.

Did I say that out loud? Again?

(Edit: I'm also a big fan of The Dish View From Your Window Contest, which
leads this discussion. Interesting media model at The Dish: curate/create
great content/commentary, and ask readers to pay. So far, so good.)

------
jebus989
I like this, but probably worth mentioning that this isn't a covert group so
it seems somewhat akin to reporting where the Donetsk separatists are.

~~~
ctdonath
Being active combatants with numerous enemies, they still need to consider
operational security.

The Donetsk separatists are more like a political party than a combat force.

~~~
jebus989
I'm not saying IS _are_ the Donetsk separatists, just that they're not hiding
in mountain ranges or tunnels and there's never been a question of "where are
these guys".

------
DrSayre
This is pretty awesome! I wanted to do something similar with the video of
James Foley, but I figured there was people smarter than me already doing that
and I really didn't want to watch that video.

~~~
nikcub
Finding where James Foley was executed is less interesting. It is most likely
just outside Raqqa. Not much you can do with the location (and they likely
know it).

When they were AQI, the beheadings were conducted in homes and buildings in
areas under US control as part of an insurgency - so finding where they were
was essential.

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qstyk
What an odd introduction: "Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go
through training as an ISIS terrorist? Or better yet, where you would go to
find such advanced training?"

Nope.

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moskie
This is cool and all, but I can't help but be reminded of the hunt for Boston
Marathon bombers. Sure, maybe the author's heart is in the right place, but
Random Person On The Internet could easily have gotten something wrong, that
seems intuitively correct to the author and a general audience (us), but is in
fact incorrect. Which makes me inclined to instead leave stuff like this up to
the professionals. (appeal to authority, i know, but... getting this stuff
right is important.)

~~~
Bluestrike2
I think the difference between the two scenarios is largely dependent upon the
source materials and the quality of the analysis. The author knew that the
photographs were authentic because they were sourced directly from ISIS. It
wasn't a matter of determining who--out of many potential matches--might have
fight a given profile (young male, bomb and backpack as people were searching
for after Boston), but comparing the photographs to others in order to find
matching geographical points of reference.

The bridges in the photographs weren't going to change their looks. Even if
you grant the possibility of a false positive in one instance, the use of
multiple source photographs and different angles all combine to increase the
accuracy of the analysis. This analysis in this blog post was thorough,
precise, and clear. Professional. The responses to Boston, on the other hand,
lacked such rigor and amounted to little more than a witch-hunt, despite the
fact that most of those going through photographs were simply trying to help.

You're right, in a sense, that it's easy for this type of analysis to be
mishandled. But that's dependent upon the analyst and the materials they're
working from. Rather than fret in this case, I'm happy to support it. Good
examples should always be highlighted and praised, if only in the hope that
such examples might help prevent poor examples in the future. A bit of a pipe-
dream, but it's a nice one to imagine.

------
carlob
Honest question: what's the advantage of using FlashEarth over Bing maps
(which appears to be the source of the data)?

~~~
runjake
Typically an analyst would use both.

They tend to compliment each other for multiple reasons: Bing has imagery from
a different time period (most of the time newer than GMaps, but some of the
time older, which can be useful).

Bing also has the Bird's Eye view, and different aerial imagery in general,
which can help with clarification and image artifacting.

So basically, we're using all of our available options. BTW, this is all run
of the mill stuff in mil/int circles, but with better resolutions and
light/electromagnetic bands.

~~~
magicalist
I think you misunderstood the question? FlashEarth[1] appears to just be a
Bing Maps imagery viewer.

[1] [http://www.flashearth.com/](http://www.flashearth.com/)

------
misiti3780
I read an interesting article a while ago about who they have tried
(unsuccessfully) to track

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_al-
Zawahiri](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_al-Zawahiri)

from land artifacts. I supposed it is a bit more difficult as google maps
didnt make it to Waziristan yet.

It sort of reminds me of this article from a while back

[http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/03/crowdsourced-amateurs-
outp...](http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/03/crowdsourced-amateurs-outperform-
cia-at)

------
MrJagil
Such an interesting analysis, and seemingly a very nice site too. A shame the
comments are so headless.

It's a travesty communities and discussions devolve so quickly on the internet
(though I of course know from PGs eternal struggle how hard it is to prevent).
Whoever can solve this problem (nice try disqus etc) will certainly claim
fame.

Up and down votes won't cut it. It will require a serious inquiry into
psychology, sociology and behavioural studies I believe.

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jqm
Western governments didn't know this already?

I have a hard time believing they didn't. There are (in my opinion) strategic
reasons ISIS was allowed to get as far as it did. And reasons they were
allowed to appropriate large amounts of cash and US weaponry.

~~~
nailer
Governments are slow and stupid.

Also they got the weaponry from the Iraqi army, who were given it by the US.

~~~
jqm
Some parts of government are slow and stupid.

Other parts are exceedingly clever and ruthless.

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AnonJ
What totally shocks me here is the whopping ignorance and lack of even the
least bit of effort of understanding shown in the pathetic comments. Are
really so many Americans brainwashed to such a crazy extent? Well anyways it
makes me sick.

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magicalist
Wait, so is the "new construction" around the tower the training camp? The
article doesn't seem to say explicitly. Or is this more finding where they do
training marches?

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lolryan
When looking for new apartments in NYC, a combination of Google Street View
and the Flyover feature in Apple Maps does wonders to validate how truthful
brokers are in their listings.

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maouida
But isn't the place already mentioned in the video footage? "State of
Naynawa", which is a well known place.

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bmmayer1
Way to crowdsource ours and Iraq's military intelligence! I'm sure someone
will find this useful.

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Too
I bet this guy is good at [https://geoguessr.com/](https://geoguessr.com/)

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notastartup
Absolutely amazing investigative work. This is very good intelligence from
using everyday resources and a keen eye from the determined.

------
justplay
this man deserve a huge applauds. He is our sherlock holmes.

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IBCNU
Nice work.

------
kelukelugames
_applauds_

What are the next steps?

~~~
bmmayer1
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YqpAEA3wYE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YqpAEA3wYE)

Forgive me...

~~~
known
LOL

------
known
You don't need great weapons. Just Drop A "Heat bomb" In Antarctic Ice
Shelves. You'll Drown The World.

------
elleferrer
We need more bellingcats' \- this was a great find - can we expect a planned
airstrike in this location any time soon?

~~~
davidrusu
> can we expect a planned airstrike in this location any time soon?

I hope your not serious

~~~
tzs
Is that because you think ISIS should not be fought militarily, or because you
think tactically a ground strike would be a better approach, or what?

~~~
rcthompson
Maybe something to do with the location being in the middle of a city full of
civilians.

~~~
xorcist
It would indeed be the perfect weapon for a terrorist. Just post a picture of
something on the Internet and have foreign military blast it to the ground.
Create terror _and_ blame americans, and anyone can do it.

