The Truth Is Out There

Bellingcat’s founder Eliot Higgins talks about why people need an intelligence agency, how internet investigations work and how we can fight misinformation

- Daniel Bennett

Bellingcat, the investigative journalism site, has broken some of the biggest stories of the decade. Their investigators proved that Bashar al-Assad fired chemical weapons at his own people, they discovered who downed flight MH17 and, most recently, they put Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on the phone with one of the men sent to assassinate him. They’re not spies, and they’re not trained, so how do these laptop-wielding ‘amateurs’ hold power to account?

What is Bellingcat?

Eliot Higgins We’re a small, non-profit NGO. We have about 20 staff members and we carry out online open-source investigation. We use material that’s available online – from social media posts to satellite imagery from Google Earth – to investigate different incidents, like war crimes in Syria, Russian poisoning, and wildlife trafficking. The name is from Belling the Cat, a fable about a group of mice who are scared of a large cat. They come up with the idea of putting a bell around its neck, but they don’t know how to do it. So, we’re teaching people how to bell the cat.

How did you start out?