Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 4d

Bring back WIO! Would love to see it come back!

To be fair, I already struggled writing a monthly. Was going to do a fortnightly but I just found I couldn't get to the depth (or find the time) to commit as much. Don't know how you managed your weeklies!

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Reposted by Benjamin Strick

Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 5d

“We want to send a message to all authoritarian leaders: choose ballots, not bullets.”

Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee on why 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Maria Corina Machado: “She is an extraordinary example of civilian courage.”

youtu.be/2JSAqdkT6z4

Chair of Norwegian Nobel Committeeon why 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Maria Corina Machado

YouTube video by ONEST

youtu.be

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Reposted by Benjamin Strick

Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 6d

New from 404 Media: the Discord hack is every users' worst nightmare. Yesterday the hackers started posting Discord users' selfies, identity documents, email addresses, phone numbers, more. I watched in real time. This is risk of tech storing ID for age verification
www.404media.co/the-discord-...

The Discord Hack is Every Users’ Worst Nightmare

A hack impacting Discord’s age verification process shows in stark terms the risk of tech companies collecting users’ ID documents. Now the hackers are posting peoples’ IDs and other sensitive informa...

www.404media.co

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 5d

Thank you 🙏

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Reposted by Benjamin Strick

Sancho @sancho.bsky.social · 5d

I love me a good newsletter, especially one jam packed with open source investigation goodness. Nicely done @bendobrown.bsky.social 🕵🏽‍♂️

Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 7d

I made a newsletter. I went overboard with detail, but I love sharing #OSINT tips and tricks.

I've covered:
- Innovations & resources.
- Free detailed aerial imagery tool.
- DIY power grid map.
- Analysis of leaked data on mass censorship & surveillance.
osintfieldnotes.substack.com/p/osint-fiel...

OSINT Field Notes #1 - DIY Power Grid Map, Great Firewall Leak & Birds Eye View Tool

Technical teardown on how to make a custom KML for power grids. Plus: tracking tiny ships, detailed aerial views and a case file on the Geedge leaks. Read time: 8 min.

osintfieldnotes.substack.com

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Reposted by Benjamin Strick

bacantor.bsky.social @bacantor.bsky.social · 7d

A great new newsletter. Check out the section on exporting the great firewall.

Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 7d

I made a newsletter. I went overboard with detail, but I love sharing #OSINT tips and tricks.

I've covered:
- Innovations & resources.
- Free detailed aerial imagery tool.
- DIY power grid map.
- Analysis of leaked data on mass censorship & surveillance.
osintfieldnotes.substack.com/p/osint-fiel...

OSINT Field Notes #1 - DIY Power Grid Map, Great Firewall Leak & Birds Eye View Tool

Technical teardown on how to make a custom KML for power grids. Plus: tracking tiny ships, detailed aerial views and a case file on the Geedge leaks. Read time: 8 min.

osintfieldnotes.substack.com

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Reposted by Benjamin Strick

Jack Sapoch @jacksapoch.bsky.social · 7d

NEW: Since October 2023, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has released dozens of 3D animations illustrating alleged Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian sites

The style is now unmistakable: satellite zoom-ins, black & white wireframes, and red-textured houses - a new visual language of war

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 7d

I made a newsletter. I went overboard with detail, but I love sharing #OSINT tips and tricks.

I've covered:
- Innovations & resources.
- Free detailed aerial imagery tool.
- DIY power grid map.
- Analysis of leaked data on mass censorship & surveillance.
osintfieldnotes.substack.com/p/osint-fiel...

OSINT Field Notes #1 - DIY Power Grid Map, Great Firewall Leak & Birds Eye View Tool

Technical teardown on how to make a custom KML for power grids. Plus: tracking tiny ships, detailed aerial views and a case file on the Geedge leaks. Read time: 8 min.

osintfieldnotes.substack.com

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 10d

New from @elisethomas.bsky.social on the laundering efforts of A7, a political and commercial enterprise aimed at enabling large-scale evasion of sanctions levelled against Russia. 👇

Elise Thomas @elisethomas.bsky.social · 10d

New @cen4infores.bsky.social investigation: Sanctions, shell companies and Russian state-backed money laundering.

Here’s how Ilan Shor and the Kremlin are laundering tens of billions of dollars around the world.

www.info-res.org/reports/a7-a...

A7 Abroad: Sanctions evasion as a service

A7, led by convicted fraudster Ilan Shor and backed by sanctioned Russian banks, claims to have moved over $86 billion in less than a year. CIR’s investigation details how A7 uses shell companies and ...

www.info-res.org

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Reposted by Benjamin Strick

Elise Thomas @elisethomas.bsky.social · 10d

New @cen4infores.bsky.social investigation: Sanctions, shell companies and Russian state-backed money laundering.

Here’s how Ilan Shor and the Kremlin are laundering tens of billions of dollars around the world.

www.info-res.org/reports/a7-a...

A7 Abroad: Sanctions evasion as a service

A7, led by convicted fraudster Ilan Shor and backed by sanctioned Russian banks, claims to have moved over $86 billion in less than a year. CIR’s investigation details how A7 uses shell companies and ...

www.info-res.org

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Reposted by Benjamin Strick

Laura Bassett @lebassett.bsky.social · 12d

Is everyone appreciating how utterly sick this is

Aura Bogado @aurabogado.bsky.social · 13d

Shelters that house unaccompanied minors are bracing for "Freaky Friday," the start of an ICE operation that will first issue letters to children, seeking to pressure them to return to the countries they've fled in exchange for a cash payment. If they decline, their parents will be targeted by ICE.

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Reposted by Benjamin Strick

Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 12d

Pam Bondi's DOJ now running interference for far right influencers arrested by local cops in Portland. Opens investigation into arrest of Nick Sortor www.kgw.com/article/news...

Conservative influencer Nick Sortor among those arrested after fights break out at Portland ICE facility

Sortor posted Friday morning about his arrest on social media, telling PPB to "lawyer up." The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into his arrest.

www.kgw.com

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 12d

Great job! 👏

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Reposted by Benjamin Strick

Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · Jul 21

🧵Introducing the Trump Action Tracker website!

Today I’m launching www.trumpactiontracker.info - a live, searchable list of authoritarian‑style actions from Trump’s second term (over 740 actions so far). 1/14

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 12d

Investigating War Crimes: The Global Arms Trade.

Great resource from Global Investigative Journalism Network & Iain Overton gijn.org/resource/gui...

Investigating War Crimes: Arms Trade

This chapter is designed to assist journalists investigating arms sales that may have crossed the line into fueling national and international crimes or systemic human rights abuses.

gijn.org

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Reposted by Benjamin Strick

Dr Emma L Briant 🐸🎃 @emmalbriant.bsky.social · 13d

You don't need to share location to weather apps, choose one that allows you to add forecasts for different locations. Also don't share location with dating apps - Bumble etc shouldn't need it and it doesn't make you safe or help you find a match for them to know your exact location.

Article identifies games and weather forecasters as ways location is tracked.

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 13d

The example of how this looks in practice can be seen on our map of fire events in Sudan, which we have been running since April 2023. felt.com/map/Map-of-F...

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 13d

You can visit the Burnscar github repo here where the pipeline has been open sourced github.com/Centre-for-I...

GitHub - Centre-for-Information-Resilience/Burnscar

Contribute to Centre-for-Information-Resilience/Burnscar development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 13d

This matters not only for research on Sudan, but also for the future of event detection as this pipeline is just the start to identify incidents more rapidly.

We hope this work will enrich data globally, across Ukraine, Myanmar and other areas where burn scars are an indicator

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 13d

Using a third layer, building footprints, allows the data to be enriched to count how many structures are affected by intersections between the previous data and the building polygons

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 13d

The extraction of those likely burn areas gives a binary map to allow for a more clear detection of what was not burned vs what is newly burned. This is like turning up the contrast in an image.

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 13d

The second data source is Sentinel-2 imagery, which validates two images of an event (before and after) to highlight detection of change. In this image for example, we can see the dark spot in the bottom right indicating a burn scar.

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 13d

This tool saves an incredible amount of time in the detection of burned civilian areas.

It uses well-known tools in the industry. The first of which is NASA FIRMS, a tool to detect heat signatures on the earth's surface

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 13d

Our open-source pipeline for detecting war crimes from space is live. Built by our Sudan team at CIR with BigData Republic, it uses NASA FIRMS & Sentinel-2 data to flag burn events near civilian sites, turning satellite imagery into evidence. Full details: bigdatarepublic.nl/articles/det...

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 15d

Want to see when changes pages are made to a website? There’s a cool function on the @archive.org that lets you track those changes, like where NASA edited out some interesting lines from their site in 2025.

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