
Finding McAfee: a case study on geoprofiling and imagery analysis - danso
https://medium.com/@benjamindbrown/finding-mcafee-a-case-study-on-geoprofiling-and-imagery-analysis-6f16bbd5c219
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jacquesm
There was a thread on Twitter by someone who figured out where that storage
locker was of the guy that tried to corner the market on hand sanitizer for
profiteering:

[https://twitter.com/EmilyGorcenski/status/123930677615307161...](https://twitter.com/EmilyGorcenski/status/1239306776153071618)

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Scoundreller
Wasn’t there a case where a guy put up a webcam at his « He Will Not Divide Us
» flag, so 4chan narrowed it down by flight patterns and celestial navigation,
and had someone drive around town honking his horn until they heard it. Then
took the flag down and posted it on 4chan.

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sigwinch28
Yes, The Internet Historian on YouTube has made a series of videos about this:
"HWNDU" (He Will Not Divide Us).

It started with a flag outside in a public place [0], followed by being moved
to a flagpole in the middle of nowhere (the one you're thinking of) [1]. The
flag was then moved into a museum in Liverpool [2], and finally it was moved
indoors with a camera pointing at a plain white painted wall [3].

Beware: lots of memes and occasionally offensive language.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p4h3jwJob0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p4h3jwJob0)

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw9zyxm860Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw9zyxm860Q)

[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aZuj_SDqDo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aZuj_SDqDo)

[3]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_ldHq3NzC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_ldHq3NzC0)

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ubercow13
For another example of doing this, see this one from a couple of years back:

[https://twitter.com/BBCAfrica/status/1044186344153583616](https://twitter.com/BBCAfrica/status/1044186344153583616)

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Hitton
This one is actually impressive deserving to be called "case study", unlike
the Medium article.

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xioxox
If you like the idea of trying to identify a location from a photo, take a
look at a competition that regularly tried to do this, View From My Window:
[http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/vfyw-
contest/](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/vfyw-contest/) . Some of it was truly
impressive detective work.

~~~
detaro
[https://twitter.com/quiztime](https://twitter.com/quiztime) also has
(probably easier) challenges like this.

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ukoki
If you want to see this taken up a few levels check out the incredible work
done by Bellingcat to identify times and locations where minors were sexually
abused in Cambodia. Includes consideration of Mango tree growth speeds, among
other things I definitely would never have thought of.

[https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2019/12/17/two-europol-
stopc...](https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2019/12/17/two-europol-
stopchildabuse-images-geolocated-part-ii-cambodia/) (SFW)

~~~
ukoki
Also related is the recent three-part Netflix documentary Don't F __k with
Cats on the
Internet[https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81031373](https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81031373)

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ackbar03
So did you get that beer?

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AndrewStephens
This is interesting and mirrors a very old short story I read when I was a kid
about some futuristic detective that never left the house, instead just solved
missing persons cases by analyzing details in photographs. This was all pre-
internet so the author (whom I've long since forgotten) was very prescient.

But this is John McAfee we are talking about - how soon can we lose him again?

~~~
hguant
>some futuristic detective that never left the house, instead just solved
missing persons cases by analyzing details in photograph

Your futuristic detective has the same M.O. as Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's
older and reclusive brother who stayed at home or at his club where no one was
allowed to speak (except in a small antechamber and then in no more than a
whisper); Holmes the Younger would occasionally visit when he was stumped, or
needed some bit of information he hadn't written a monograph on. If I recall
correctly, the point was that while Sherlock was all about deductive reasoning
(here are all my little clues, what do they add up to), Mycroft was a master
of inductive reasoning (here is my thesis, if this thesis is true, here are
all the details that must exist _somewhere_).

Tangentially, Mycroft was the full name of the computer that gains sentience
in Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_; very smart, but by nature of
being a multi-ton computer system, something of a recluse.

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pontifier
It's surprising how much you can tell from videos or images like this.

I often get a sense of familiarity when watching videos online. If a picture
or video was shot outside, anywhere along the Wasatch front in Utah, I'm
almost guaranteed to be able to pinpoint the location. It's kind of a fun
game.

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ColanR
I think there was also a time the folks on 4chan managed to locate a terrorist
base, which Russia then followed up on. I don't remember the details.

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blantonl
Some of these exact techniques, but far more in-depth, have been used to track
down and locate child predators who have uploaded images to the internet.

~~~
raxxorrax
There was also this feet fetishist on reddit that could clear up that an image
was clearly a fake since he already knew the feet in particular from another
photo. He even got praise from the press for his specialist knowledge that was
able to close the case. Don't know the details on the story and why it was
important to determine an image fake or not, but I liked the ambivalent praise
he got for his skills.

~~~
2038AD
I believe this was in regards to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's feet.

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afpx
It would have been even more interesting if they could locate the place of the
photo without knowing the general area where he was.

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qtplatypus
I bet that this guy is very good at geoguesser

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netsharc
So it's "locate someone by seeing what's in the background of his pictures and
tweets" but make it sound sophisticated? IMINT? Geoprofiling? Pretentious
much?

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zenexer
It’s a real, professional skill used in intelligence, among other industries.
It’s not as easy as the author makes it sound.

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Hitton
It's skill, but I would hardly call it professional. Anons on 4chan do
regularly much more impressive stuff. The gas station in this case made it
particularly easy, anyone with a bit of experience from stuff like geoguesser
and similar quizzes can find it easily. That's why I too consider calling this
a "case study" pretentious.

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ShorsHammer
The 4chan instance with Shia Lebouf was an amazing read.

After months of harassment over the _He Will Not Divide Us_ art project Shia
moved it to a livestreamed flagpole with nothing but the sky as the
background. In under 48 hours they mapped various contrails to flight lanes,
matched up star constellations at night using celestial navigation and
correlated weather to pinpoint the flags location. Then they went and stole
it.

Ignoring the childishness of it all, it was some impressive crowdsourced
investigative work given nothing but an empty sky to work with.

~~~
Scoundreller
I thought the last step was driving around town honking their horn until they
heard it on the webcam stream.

