Victims names and nationalities are expected to be released as they are identified. Now on bbc news, Hardtalks Stephen Sackur speaks to Eliot Higgins, founder of the open source investigations website bellingcat. Welcome to hardtalk, with me, stephen sackur. What is the truth behind the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight mh 17 or the poisoning of the former russian spy, 01 poisoning of the former russian spy, or the recent assassination of a Chechen Rebel fighter in berlin. My guest today thinks he can piece together truths from the World Wide Web. He is Eliot Higgins, founder investigative website bellingcat in an age beset by fake news, as he really found a way to distinguish fa ct. Eliot higgins, welcome to hardtalk. I want to start if i may with the self definition. Would you describe yourself as a journalist or a data a nalyst yourself as a journalist or a data analyst or some sort of on line detective . I like on line detective. We do acts ofjournalism and some of the work we are doing but really, the work we are doing but really, the way we work with bellingcat uses open source investigation on a whole range of topics that go beyond journalism. Ifind it very range of topics that go beyond journalism. I find it very difficult to define what we do beyond saying we do investigations. Do you have to bea we do investigations. Do you have to be a specialist in terms of your use of the World Wide Web . Do you need special analytical skills. Not really. Im completely personally self taught, i have no background in any kind of investigational journalism and i slowly started piecing together tidbits from videos from syria at first. You have any in anything . For example, we will talk about your different acts investigations. You run detailed investigations. You run detailed investigations into munitions, the kind of impacts they have, what you can tell from the impact side of various different shells and bombs. Do you have any expertise in that . When i started seven years ago, i had no background or expertise in it but gradually over time, with syria, because i didnt speak arabic, the all these videos from syria showing bombs and weapons being used, figuring out what they were. There was a lot of information on line already about weapons. As i continue to publish stuff ijust kind of build my knowledge up on that. You built a body of knowledge and thats important but also, the underlying mindset that you brought to this. You set up bellingcat around 2014 but before that, you had your own blog site, brown moses, which was digging deep into stories that interested you in the news but im interested you in the news but im interested in a sense of mission that you mightve to this. Did you have a sort of mission in mind. When i started, it was more frustration, content being shared from these conflict zones which is bringing ignored by the mainstream media. It was hard to verify, cases in the past when people had claimed to be sharing authentic information which turned out to be taken. 0ne sharing authentic information which turned out to be taken. One example was a blogger in which damascus turned out to be a white guy in america and they were very widely cited and was embarrassing for the Media Organisations which sighted that and i became interested in telling if something was authentic. I understand that and that is partly about just curiosity and i understand that and that is partly aboutjust curiosity and piecing things together but ijust wonder again if there is something deeper, whether, in a world which is increasingly polarised and we see liberalism challenged in many different ways by different strands of authoritarianism around the world, do you see yourself as a fighterfor any world, do you see yourself as a fighter for any sort of values and would liberalism be a part of it . |j think it would be. When i started offi think it would be. When i started off i didnt really have those motivations but over time working with people in different countries, some of them in this conflict zone, seeing how misinformation was being shared and targeted personally, it really drove me towards that kind of area of seeing this is important work which can have real impact and positive effect on society and justice and accountability. Positive effect on society and justice and accountabilitym anything really came to sort of symbolise your breakthrough to national and international consciousness, will be your work on the alleged chemical weapons attacks on syria, the first of which occurred in 2013 but you continue to follow the secular story in later alleged attacks as well and it seems to me its interesting to talk about that because weve already talked about your lack of specific expertise. You have come into conflict not just with expertise. You have come into conflict notjust with officials representing the government of syria which have accused you of peddling lies but also some academic experts for example in the united states, im thinking of Theodore Postel because hes written about your work, he is at the Massachusetts Institute of technology and says the problem with the work youve done on evidence around these Chemical Attacks is, to quote him, Eliot Higgins has no scientific training, he knows no science and is not interested in learning any of the sites. Does that leave you feeling vulnerable . What we do with our work is when, were looking currently into the chemical attack and theres been a number of whistleblower leaks about the 0pc w report on what weve done there. The organisation for the prohibition of chemical weapons. This has been used by people who claim that the duma was a false flag to draw the us in. Journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed unnamed sources within the former 0bama administration is pointing to this possibility that the americans had couudedin possibility that the americans had colluded in what went on. What we do thenis colluded in what went on. What we do then is as i mentioned earlier, a lot of people have expertise in these areas and we built this network of individuals who have expertise. We have an article we are writing on this 0p cw duma report we have chemical weapons working together to actually examine the whistleblower lea ks and see together to actually examine the whistleblower leaks and see if the criticisms are legitimate so whenever we feel, we reach out to the community that developed, and we can ask other people. Because of your work, it brought you into conflict in a larger sense with the russian moscow agenda. Russia is the biggest backer of president assad. All the digging deep in the other data points suggest that this was an attack launched by the syrian military. That is what moscow didnt wa nt to military. That is what moscow didnt want to hear. 0fficials began to raise questions pretty early on about the credibility of bellingcat. Is that why you made a specific decision to go after the russians . No. I think its partly because of how investigations developed as a field because initially it was around conflict in syria with this community informed around it and thenit community informed around it and then it was an age 17 in 2014 which had a russian element and because that leading to questions about russias involvement in ukraine which already existed but because its an open Source Community focused on the conflict in Eastern Ukraine which wouldnt have happened ifan age 17 ukraine which wouldnt have happened if an age 17 wasnt shot down, more and more stuff was discovered, it was a cornucopia of information. Lots talk about the way in which you uncovered this stuff, much of it exists on line and you talk about open source investigation and many might not understand what that means, use all sorts of sources, from social media posts to pictures on line to databases which you are able to access often quite surprisingly, but you find ways of accessing them without breaking the law. Just explain to me what you see is the mechanics of open source investigation. Its really driven by two separate factors. The launch of things by the iphone in 2007 onwards, a lot of people are more connected and you could share information and that led to the rise of apps like twitter and other social media sharing apps sorts of people sharing information about the world around them and in parallel, you had the development of Technology Like earth, satellite imagery that you could use to cross reference social media posts services really where it all came from and then the arab spring acted asa from and then the arab spring acted as a catalyst for verifying information in conflict zones which was often inaccessible to people on the grounds of those were really kind of the driving factors but its really about how much information people are sharing about themselves and how easy it is to access that if you know how to do it and its not complicated. Its not complicated but its terribly time consuming because there is so much out there anew began literally in your bedroom in the english midlands using your own computer but im imagining now bellingcat because it so many investigations mustve taken on a huge number of staff. Its not really huge. We expanded a lot in the last year and we went from six employees to 20 and we have a lot of volu nteers employees to 20 and we have a lot of volunteers but one thing thats important for bellingcat and makes it unique is the use of crowdsourcing because we have a large number of people who engage in social media, often we ask our audience, do you know where this photograph was taken. Example, in 2016, there was an ice s social Media Campaign which basically asked their followers in europe to take a photograph of paper with a hashtag on itand photograph of paper with a hashtag 00 12 12,697 4294966103 13 29,430 on it and in some