Hello im Richard Gaisford youre watching a special edition of the listening post on a new kind of reporting open source journalism citizen journalism allows anybody with a mobile phone to document a news story to produce content that is now routinely used by news organizations open source journalists often start with that kind of material and then they apply some of the same investigative techniques that are used by police and intelligence agents so this is a growth industry partly because of declining press freedom in some hostile place. In china for instance open Source Researchers have proven the existence and the location of socalled reeducation camps for muslims in the province of shin jack and they broke those stories long before Mainstream Media outlets to open source reporters have also proved valuable on the story in syria where at least 10 media workers were killed in 2018 and they did so without having to go there and take the risks that come with that a sign. Weve had 2 producers working on the story of open source journalism tarik now and daniel tory daniel youve looked at how open Source Research has shed light on the camps in sindh jiang will see that report a bit later on but briefly what have you learnt while for a long time richard chinese officials were actually flat out denying that these counts even existed and at the same time the government was doing its best to make sure that journalists on the ground and didnt find it and thats where open Source Research is made. And mock was the evidence that they are uncovered which ultimately gave the lie to those denials that have been coming out of beijing tarik your report on syria will be coming up 1st that war has been described as the worlds 1st you tube conflict and its produced a goldmine of material for these kinds of research absolutely because so many people have been documenting that war or at least trying to consider this its estimated that there are more hours of footage of this wall than there are actual hours of the war in real life and only as images and information weve been thought trace it with is wrong with syria for open Source Research is but to understand whats really going on in syria all of that media needs to be analyzed interpreted and authenticated and thats what the 2 investigators i interviewed for this piece had the wise men are doing in different ways in Different Countries on the same story. It is the most documented war in history producing millions of images and videos that shape how we see the carnage inflicted on syria the conflict that has been open season on civilians humanitarian workers and reporters. Even atrocities open to subjective interpretation and control of information is used as a weapon where the age old folk of war is not just the byproduct but arrived at by design. When an incident occurred today immediately smartphones are switching on sometimes dozens even hundreds of videos around a single incident where are those people filmy what can we see in their images how can we make sense of all this material that otherwise seems completely counter when it comes to syria there is more tendency on depending on. You is rated content videos photos because of the end. Disability and the security situation that journalist him alas organizations and news agency face what opensource. Give is information that could be verified in order to understand more incidents of human lives donations. From a Compact Office in suburban len. As building an archive of serious revolution and subsequent well has 30 an archive of the huge database more than truman in videos more than 5000 sources utilizing open source tools like google earth qatif team pinpoint the exact facts of an attack using geographical landmarks a practice known as geo location location of thing corroborated with satellite imagery you documented more than 200 different chemical weapons how does that work so weve collected 816 videos about the use of illegal emissions chemical and those were collected from 190 sources photos and videos that were published by either human attending groups that are working in syria or rescue groups or just normal citizens that where document thing the incidence and publishing that on social media and we placed it on a market like this here we can see this has been used to drop in this additional areas and it contains chlorine we are able to see also like the impact sides of where this incident happened and this case it happened. In a hospital called. The Surgical Hospital of. The syrian archive takes the role material produced from syrias war the millions of hours of footage and tries to get to the truth behind some of the most contentious episodes in this conflict however its just one location where open source is being used to try and understand whats happening inside syria in london a group of research is easing some of the same technique for personal testimony Investigative Journalism and theyve combined it with one of spatial modeling to reconstruct the stories behind some of the atrocities that have been committed in syria. So i imagine you find online 56 videos of an incident. All of them a shaky you dont know exactly where theyre filming from and what is being captured in the videos and weve figured out of it by building architectural models we can actually locate each one of those video sources and see the relationship between them as you can see they are wiseman is an architect by trade hes also the founding director for in the caucus actually for us the architectural model is like an optical device and we can navigate from one point of view to the other and understand what it is that we see and understand also very importantly what cannot be seen in those videos. There are some places cameras cannot go. From the carcass texture is used a different kind of open source human to reconstruct and the tourists here in prison said. Thousands of syrians have been imprisoned and killed there. I missed the International Call that an architectural instrument of torture of evidence. By tapping into the experiences into the memories of the few who escaped from the carpet texture has been able to build a model of a prison that with portals is impenetrable. Now is like a black hole there is no photographs there are no videos the only evidence that you have for what happened inside now is the memory of those detainees and they havent you the worst kind of torture deprivation hunger and conditions that are inhumane would be extreme together with amnesty we met 5 survivors of the supply a prison we built a model of the prison starting from what was in front of them starting from the floor tiles i dont have it but. I got some good facts and i know come out and sit in the moment and really be an issue in and measuring the floor tiles we figured out how big the room was out off the floor tile the room in the corridor or we figured out the architecture of the building and for the 1st time we have recreated the model of how this place looks like how it operates how torture was an acted there. One of the unique things they used is acoustic. New kind of a little bit about what and now find out about the prison so effectively prisoners were led in blindfolded and they could remember the building for the sound for its acoustic correct arrestees i think they leave us a little on the side of the. For a number of doors opening and closing. Footsteps in the corridor coming in to take out those condemned to death to the place of execution. So this is a sophisticated sound software that allows the building not only as to what youd see but to what you would hear in. April 28th seen one of the most contentious stories of the conflict the chemical weapons attack on do much. Thing you know hes going to. Produce as many narrative as this actor. I know joining us now to. Spread around. Russian news channels took the lead casting the atrocity of the false flag attack staged by the theory and Civil Defense of the white house. From. Philly. There are accusations that activists may have tampered with the scene of the attack for dramatic effect however internet detectives also revealed that Russian Media interviews with this. Evidence that the attack with staged was actually filmed at a syrian army facility in damascus in the presence of Russian Military advisers. The story with an amplified in some. Western journalism and left to fester in the darker conspiratorial corners of the internet. Was a case study in confusion the manufactured kind and open Source Research is working from a distance. Of closer to the truth. Immediately after the yellow canisters in the room. Images of those canisters appearing online the next day the syrian. Military is there and the only news channels that are being brought in are russian news channels who start filming that area and claiming that the entire attack has been staged so the forensic problem was rather simple did those canisters come from the air we know that the air was exclusively controlled by the Syrian Air Force and the russians or from the ground did the rebels place it were working here like archaeologists but archaeologists that have no access to material ity only to the media and from the Media Building the closest possible proximity to the object of the canister so we could measure all its the formation that pointed to us to the fact that a canister is actually being dropped from the air because only a force of a drop could actually create such bombs at the front part of the canister and untangling all this twisted metal that we saw at the background of the images helpfully provided to us by the Russian Media who didnt know that in that mess there is actually quite useful information. Taking a skeptical approach to war porting is not only healthy but necessary history has taught us that while much skepticism is directed primarily or governments with their agendas and track record of producing propaganda the work of reports of an open Source Research of mike wiseman could see it also come to critical. Theyve been questioned on their qualifications their methods and their motives think we need to be always tune to criticism of our work however there is a difference between criticism and denial and especially in the field of syria there are people whose work is more to obs for k. And in fact. Literally motivated attacks on the very fact and possibility of verification much. As you are trying to. Write back to protect the public and. The white house in this is part of truth environments and i think the answer to this need to be in the meticulous systematic way which we work in showing how it is that we arrive at our conclusions are in fact most or far analysis is showing how we know what we know if you look at the videos its mainly a methodology as long as people risk their lives to post videos online we will be there to look at what we doing is writing the history of that conflict and at some point in the future not now well be able also to call to justice and accountability those responsible then to National Courts have used for the 1st time in history the social media material is published on on facebook in order to assure wanted to fullest against or come in for us in syria this is a huge milestone our work is focused on making sure that this material is preserved for the next 30 years and more i mean interior shows lots of things in some cases and so is the perpetrator that were responsible for these attacks and shows buildings and hospitals and schools and big trees that were targeted. In order to force people to want to migrate thats why this archive is really important for the future of syria this is why we keep doing this work. And as we are covering the war the revolution is about so much more than just telling syria story. Right now its about collecting the evidence upon which this conflicts history will be written ok thanks to our daniel your report on open Source Research of the jang story in china how does the work there compared to what weve just seen on syria the main difference is in the method in the case of research as a relied mostly on official documents as opposed to video as investigators in syria have before the reeducation camps became the global story they are now chinese officials have been putting government tenders online were talking here about potential contracts for private companies to build and stuff the cap. A couple of researches adrian zens a german academic who i interviewed in stuttgart and sean john with the Chinese Student based in canada they found the documents and before long they were using google earth to actually locate photograph and provide evidence for hundreds of scams. In the most heavily surveilled province of one of the most surveilled countries on earth. Most every movement is monitored whether you are a local or a journalist on assignment. The 1st thing you notice is the extreme level of Police Presence on every intersection on every block there is often a multistory Police Building there are security checks everywhere and if you add to that that there are also surveillance cameras on every Street Corner get it out with facial Recognition Technology and then you very quickly get to feel the sense of being surveilled being watched wherever you are. According to a report published by the Foreign Correspondents Club of china last year 9 in every 10 foreign journalists working in shin john spoke of interference from the or thirties some were detained by Police Others forced to delete data remember phones and other devices almost all the reporters 96 percent say they were visibly followed. Then there were the fog grave dangers that face local sources in 2018 journalist james palmer formerly based in china spoke about his personal experience trying to cover the shin jack all of my weaker sources of. Cash. I dont talk to people because i think of. Them when we look at the lists of reasons theyve been given for people to be sent to concentration camps having had contact with foreigners is the single most common reason i have certainty of one of my sources being sent to a camp with the others i dont know whether they. Just cut off contact for their own safety or whether theyre actually imprisoned i stopped trying to reach weaker sources in the middle of last year because the risk to them was much greater than any possible benefit of talking to them. China says there is no such thing as. Growing body of evidence suggests otherwise with reporting inside shin jang stunted by surveillance and intimidation news outlets have relied heavily on outside help to cover the camps. Now i cant find it. Much of the media reporting is the result of investigations done from a distance independent research is using the simplest of open source methods for instance the chinese Search Engine by do had struck digital gold a trove of official documents detailing chinas mass incarceration program. Making sense of these documents requires a specific skill set for start you need to be fluent not just in mandarin but in the jargon of chinese officials you also need to know what to look for adrian zens is a german academic and hes one of the pioneers of open Source Research about the camps. In early 2018 he began annotating the documents and we publishing them online so youre one of the 1st researches to use ok. Unsourced method to investigate these counts in changing what made you think that you would succeed using these tools where conventional journalists had failed the big advantage of this open Source Research is that you can uncover documents that speak of systematic policy where the government itself says we are doing this and every local government under us is also supposed to be doing to us and often times i was able to find this kind of document. Was this particular dog so this was the main suppose it earlier foundation for reeducation so when the chinese say we have established the extremist cation centers based on the law this is the document to refer to another document that i found talks about the goals of transformation through education and even very blatantly says that transformation through education and chinese joey trying why are cleanser still brain from evil thoughts from the thought of religion thats a piece of evidence that speaks as much or more than 100. 00 newspaper articles because it basically proves that this is a systematic policy. The document that sends uncovered evidence of state policy but proving the camps had actually been built enough of them to hold hundreds of thousands of people required another open source tools satellite imagery. Thats where sean john a Chinese Student based in vancouver came into the picture. Was. Started by searching a few keywords online and found lots of information such as government tender notices for the camps to be built these documents contain the addresses of nearly 100 camps. So i searched on google earth and found the satellite images. Look very different from civilian facilities for example there were barbed wire fences the watchtowers structures that youd expect in prisons i found more and more information and so published on my blog. Satellite information collected by a researcher and. Construction documents found by mr. Psychological counseling the children of parents taking to the camps a lot of Mainstream Medias coverage has built upon adrian or from work you see in the paper it is using government documents and hiring information to show the extent to which the Security State has grown and changed. And sean has used satellite imagery to show the compass being built almost in real time the Financial Times weve also used satellite imagery to look at the location and size of accounts weve also used research by interns and on the contracts that governments are using to buy new materials for other counts and i think the really important thing about these kinds of Research Collaborations is that because the data is open the journalist can also check what the research is looking at and if needed you know challenge whether the data theyre seeing is representative of the region or how the data was chosen. Communist Party Officials not usually known for their transparency gave open Source Research is a helping hand by leaving the evidence in plain sight now beijing is in damage limitation mode trying to delete documents before investigators in stuttgart bank and elsewhere in repose that an online game of cat and mouse over one of the worlds biggest stories. The set of documents that disappeared basically described the details of the cams the security features. How big they are and what they cost a lot of that disappeared and so on we were a few versions starting to archive websites and spent almost entire days archiving hundreds of links but i think in some sense they put it too late we already had the information. By staying one step ahead of beijing open Source Research on earth the evidence about the camps that journalists on the ground and could not. But going up against the superpower magnifying scrutiny of an already notorious human rights record comes with consequences. All the more so in this case if you are chinese citizen. Since i started my research i felt a lot of pressure from the Chinese Government for example theyve contacted my family in china so in the near future i think ill avoid going back home despite all this i think doing this work is worth it because there are so many we get people to think theyve lost contact with their families at least my research can raise awareness of this problem and help pressure the Chinese Government into finding a peaceful solution for counseling. And even if the chinese authorities are successful in shutting down an individual like sean jang there are more open Source Researchers like him out there and thats beijings challenge on this story as it is for the Assad Government in damascus its not the reporters doing this kind of work its the technology that makes this kind of work possible and thats a much more difficult if not impossible thing to suppress youve been watching a special edition of our program on open source journalism well see you next time here at the listening post. Its a tough time for the Afghan Security forces taliban attacks have increased their suffering heavy casualties and the prospect of a withdrawal of u. S. Forces hangs over them yet young men are still joining up some for reasons others is the only way to get a job despite the risks midways karimi was an Army Bomb Disposal engineer in Helmand Province he knew the risks he was blinded in both eyes and lost a leg when a roadside device exploded as he tried to defuse it always aware of the danger of seeing friends wounded while working on mines i wasnt scared to lose an arm or a leg is to sacrifice we have to like to serve this country was the last time you were out on the streets protesting whether on line you feel the weight of the system when you walk through each and every level or layer further and further into the jail or if you join us on say entry has to start from day one whether again you and attention or youre incarcerated this is a dialogue everyone has a voice so far there are studies that support crush coverage will be varying accounts but i want to give people the reason for joining the call over to come to say so on how does iraq. Hello norm Taylor Nandan the top stories around to 0 reports are coming in of multiple attacks across iraq just a day after the assassination of one of irans top commanders same sort of money in a u. S. Airstrike as his funeral took place in baghdad iraqs Prime Minister declared 3 days of National Mourning it comes as diplomatic efforts are underway to try to resolve the growing crisis got as foreign minister has met iranian president in tehran and called for a peaceful solution as i binge of aid reports from baghdad. He told up in their thousands and somber for the killing of their leaders by the united states. Counting on the u. S. Slogans