Open Source Verification

lot of people are that was our second. That was our b pitch for the name. Kind not a great time going on right now. Actually not that far from what was the say. Yeah, I mean it's like, especially especially right now, there's there's a lot of a lot of trials going on, m feet on stuff, and the mud are very trial is happening, the one about you know, Unit Unite the Right is going on, and of course the kindn't his trial as of as of recording is um. People,

the jury is still in deliberation. Um, So no idea what's going to be the result. By the time this episode, I've actually been like not commenting on it or neither to think about it. There's nothing we can do about it. There is nothing you can do. And like a lot of people, there's been discussion about how much civil unrest there's going to be depending on the result of the trial. I know there's been a lot of like National guards

sent to Wisconsin. It's been you know, FBI door Knox and activists tombs trying to scare people so they don't you know, go out and ride or whatever. Discussion online, the people you know, planning protests in response to in response to whatever the result is. Um. I know just today there was a post from I think the Ohio Proud Boys claiming that they we sending like like, uh, was it hundreds or thousands of like people armed with like a RS to Wisconsin or Yeah, there's there's a

fucking post. People are saying, like you should take it seriously because it's from a Proud Boys internal chat and it's like we've got three hundred guys heavily armed heading to and there's already X number of guys there, and we're gonna kill a lot more communists than Kyle Rittenhouse did. And YadA, YadA, YadA, And if I could give you one piece of advice now, and who knows where the world is at the point of which this episode drops.

It's when people talk about say when if you are at a protest and someone starts talking about the Proud Boys and the Proud Boys are coming or the Proud Boys are here, if you don't immediately see uncontrovertible visual proof that they have access to showing it, assume it's nonsense. Okay, Yeah, that is my advice as someone who has heard a thousand times people say versions of the Proud Boys are coming. Okay,

insist on evidence or ignore it. But you know, whenever, whenever these big will you know, unrests and types of stuff happens, there's always an increased chance that there will be some kind of protest related shooting. Especially people are definitely absolutely may have happened by the time this episode drops. Especially people are bringing guns. People people bring firearms under There's been a lot of there's you know, for the

demonstrations outside the courthouse, there's been you know, guns there. Um, there's been you know, an increasing uh in the rate of shootings at protests on the West Coast throughout the past few months. Um, So I'm gonna be kind of talking about you know some things that you can do if you're at home and you feel competent enough in

the aftermath of one of one of these shootings. You know, if if if you know, if a proud boy does bring a bring a gun and shoot somebody at what you can actually do if video, if you're in a situation where you've been following something happening all day, there's a shooting and like low quality footage starts coming out of somebody killing someone or someone's else, here's what to do next if you want to maybe be a positive part of of that, of that process, well not of

that process, but of like the aftermath of it, you know. And and because because the universe is cruel. I I originally wrote this road right up about the written house shooting. Um because the universe is a cruel place and it's gonna, you know, continue to This particular incident is going to continue to be impactful. Even though it's not the first,

it's not gonna be the last one of these. It is still impactful because of how much of a symbol has been turned into So I think a lot of people forget about how how chaotic the night on the Internet was. The day of the Kenosha shooting. UM, like it was. It was wild being online as that was going on. Uh. No, one had no idea what was going on. People could not agree on who the shooter was beforehand. There was a lot of pictures floating around.

It was, it was, it was. It was a nightmare. Uh. We know, we knew that people were shot, we couldn't know how many or who. Like, it was was pretty bad and chaotic. And it is always that way in the wake of a shooting. UM. And it is the in any given shooting. Always keep in mind when you're when you're online or in person and there has been a shooting and people are saying things about said shooting

other than we should take cover from the shooting. If they're saying anything else about it, um, you have to assume they're probably not either wrong or not entirely accurate. UM, because it's hard to be. It happens constantly. I mean, that's not it's something against any of them. I can remember a moment when you and I were out last year Garrison and there was a shooting I don't know,

like forty ft away. Um. Nobody hurt, thankfully, but like the the immediate report from it was some guy had gotten pulled an a R fifteen out of his car and uh, and I think the thing I said to you was I'll bet you right now it's a nine millimeter handgun. And sure enough, within minutes there was a photo. Yeah. It's and it's not that those people were like dumb or bad. It's that, like shootings are scary, guns getting pulled is scary, and people funk up um in in

their recollections. Um. It's the same way in which, like if a bear comes after you, uh, you may exaggerate the size of that bear in your head because you're scared as ship because it's a bear. So So I was home on August um just and I I was, I was. I was actually about to go out to to uh cover a purchase in Portland, but then I saw this happened on my phone on Twitter. I was like,

I cannot go out. I will be more useful at home. Um. So, with with so much uncertainty online or the details of the actual shooting it was, it was clear that trying to provide concrete information would be crucial in the hours to come. So I spowed it up my computer and started to try to begin to search for you know, information and verifiable stuff. Um. So I spent I spent all night looking looking for details about the shooter, you know, um,

uncovering his supposed identity. Um. Ultimately, about an hour before or the police announced their investigation even started. Um and and twelve hours before the police announced the shooters arrest um and also to my surprise at the time, I discovered that the shooter was the same age as me. Um. Yeah, that was that. That was That was a night so um Because because I mean only use Twitter, and most of the video of the instant was on Twitter, I started,

uh my my investigation by looking at Twitter. Uh. My first goal was to find as as many videos of of the shooting that I could, and collect pictures of all of the alleged suspects, all all the people who were claiming, hey, this is this is this is the shooter. I think I think I got a picture of the shooter. Who's here's what he is. Um so. I I kept my eye on trending terms, so I searched under the hashtags like Kenosha, Kenosha shootings, Kanosha shooting, Kenosha protests, Boogaloo

was trending a lot. A lot of people thought the shooter was a boogaloo boy. Um was not um and also so U hashtag militia. So the search has brought up a lot, a lot of photos of of multiple young men, most of whom were carrying long guns, and a lot of unconfirmed reports that the shooter was a boogaloo boy was trending on Twitter. This was the main the main thing that night was boogloo boy shot. All this stuff that that was the main the main trending topic.

A lot of a lot of conflicting details, and I did not want to kind of add the misinformation, so I decided to not make any posts but whatsoever about the identity of the shooter until I was one pcent confident um that I had the correct idea, which takes a while. It's it's not you know, Twitter wants you to post stuff quickly as soon as you find it out, and it's way better to hold off your information and wait until you were absolutely sure it's the right time

to post it. And because it's correct, correct stuff, because miss mismisidentifying a suspect, you can have a serious, serious consequences for any individual UM involved. It's when the worst things you can do is is mis misidentify any any suspect. So I was looking through all the videos that I collected for kind of unique um or identifying clothing that

that the shooter may have been wearing. The first video I found useful was from a right wing videographer named Drew hernandez Um who a few months later called from bloodshed at the Capitol. He also testified at the Written House trial. This video did not actually show any any actual shooting. It had a wounded person on the ground being treated by a medic, and a man standing over the scene with with with a gun, um and wearing a green shirt, a tan baseball cat jeans, and like

purple latex gloves. He had he had a he had he had a black and orange bag um. The person on the green shirt then runs towards the camera while talking on the phone, and he says into the phone, UM, I just shot somebody or I just killed somebody. It's hard to tell where he's actually saying if it's it's one of those things where if you think about it, you can hear both ones. But but he he says something like I just killed somebody on the phone and

he runs past the camera. So this this this, this was the first kind of really important piece of information personal that was brought up in the trial too, and he he was like, I don't remember what I said. Oh interesting, okay, Yeah, And to be honest, like, even if if this was I don't think any of us believe this was legitimate self defense. But like, even if it was, either of those things would be perfectly acceptable things to say. It's a surprising moment, and you probably

wouldn't remember what you said. I don't necessarily think he's lying about that. It turns out he he was. He was on the phone with the person who bought him the gun of a friend of his. Um So, but but that this was my first important piece of information, you know, the the night of right. This is before anyone's analyzed any of this stuff. So this is the first video that I can find. Its like, Okay, here's

a person admitting on camera that they shot somebody. Um and we're wearing a few potential identifiers, namely the green shirt, baseball cap, and bag. Um. So, now I could search for all of those items together and the rest of the footage collected throughout the night looking over the top

viral videos of the night showing multiple people getting shot. Uh, this is from This is from later on, after the first person gets killed, we can see someone in a baseball cap, black and raunch bag and what could be a green shirt running through a street. Um. Somebody runs over to the individual with the gun and kind of punches them in the head, not knocking his hat off. So now the person running with the gun does not

have a hat. Individual with the gun he keeps running, but trips and falls on the ground before people try to disarm him. Four more shots are fired from the suspect and uh what one more person dies as a result of this. Other person gets their arm nearly blown off. Uh. There is one continuous video of all of this happening.

Extremely useful having having one video of this whole shot. Yeah. Um, so the shooter, who appears to be the same person is the other video because of the green shirt and the hat at the beginning, continues to get onto his feet and runs off again. Uh. And the orange orangine orangine a black bag swings in front of him as he's running, and a purple glove is also visible. UM.

Multiple vehicles drive past, like police vehicles. UM. The shooter then walks up pretty close to police vehicle and he just he just he just with with with the rifle and nothing, nothing happens. He he like he wait, he waves to the cops and they just keep driving and he walks away. So after finding watching these videos, I had, you know, I had no reason to believe the shooter was in custody, um, and I had a good idea

of his clothing and attire. So now it's time to you know, compare this information that I gathered, uh two pictures of the supposed you know, suspects circulating on Twitter. Um. But but first I think, uh, now it's it's the time to listen to people selling new stuff. You know, who doesn't oh boy trampled to another state to show up armed in a community to threatened people. They don't

do it. I'm saying they don't. That's good, Okay, Products and services who supported less Hello fresh black Arple coffeehould patrol. What are you actually a number of our sponsors will show up unwanted in your community armed. I forgot. The Washington State Highway and the FBI have both dropped ads. Now. Also, you know highway patrol. Don't forget about those motherfuckers Like

Kyle Rittenhouse. A number of our sponsors may show up in your home neighborhood with another one also Black Arple Coffee, Kyle's favorite brand of coffee. Remember, well it was until they disavowed him. And here's here's the ads. Here's the ones that pay us do it. We're bad. So there was there was a lot of pictures of suspects on Twitter, some of them who look nothing like the person we now know who shot those people. Um, funny how that happens. It's, uh,

well it's not funny. It's it's pretty pretty, pretty pretty bad. Yeah, yeah, it's it's not great just to share stuff like like that when these things happened. Um, which is why I said I'm not gonna share anything until no. Um I know that it's it's it's actually worth posting about. So in uh, I'm gonna go through go through some some some of the pictures and stuff of of I'm going through at least one of the pictures of one of

the people people claimed to be the shooter. So in one picture circulating you see someone in a green shirt, a baseball cap, and big, big, big black rifle. But this man's also wearing shorts of a black hat, not a tan one, has no bag, appears to be wearing like a tactile vest that is also green. So not the guy. Even though he's wearing a green shirt and hat. Not the same dude. Was be pretty easy to check. Not you don't. You really don't need to share that

kind of stuff. Pretty sure, Pretty sure a lot of people own green shirts. Yea. So two other photos that were circulating, they're claiming to be the guy. We had a green shirt, a tan baseball cap put on backwards, jeans um one of the One of the pictures has a bag in front of which is an orange and black one, where one of them doesn't. One picture has h purple gloves of the picture doesn't. But these dudes

look pretty similar despite the same differences. I'm pretty sure this is this, this is this, This is the same guy. But you know, I'm a decision at the night, so

this is probably the same dude. Um. And he does appear to match the shooter a lot better, and there was a few few clear fixed pictures of his face um here, But honestly, the face of if if you look at all the pictures of the Connection shooting that night, the pictures of the suspect are really unclear because the way that the light hit his face, he looks like

an incredibly generic white boy. Um like extremely generic. It is hard to tell any any I identifying features from his face because they look like he looks like every every white every white boy. It's really hard to say everyone you went to high school with, who I don't know sniffed a girl's chair when he likes that's that's

Kyle rittenhouse visual. Now that I decided that I have, like I have a decent collection of pictures of who I believe the actual actual suspect, is time time time to figure out who the suspects like name actually is and this is This is one of the one of the harder things. But often you can have a lot of help in ways that you might not expect. Um Often, once you can get a good picture of someone you know, it'd be like, yes, yes, this this is actually the dude.

Once it gets shared enough, often somebody knows who this is already. You know, the internet is a pretty big place. I believe. The first I believe the first person to actually like like I was the I was the person to like prove online who who k written that kind of right knows was the shooter. The first person to actually tie Kyle's name to the shooter UM was a neighbor of his on Facebook. Um. They they saw pictures of the shooter on on Facebook and said, Hey, I

think this I think I recognized this guy. I think I think this is my neighbor. UM. So often once you started, once you have like enough pictures and those can spread, people will feel to find names. It isn't as hard as you would think that. The hard part is is finding out what personal connections are making those links and finding out where where where those are. But stuff, stuff spreads in a weird way and right for this, you know, I find I was able to prove that

it was Kyle pretty quickly. Um for a few reasons. So after I was doing my my my clothing comparisons to figure out this is to prove, like he said, this is the actual person who who did these things? UM. The other thing I I found that was not it was not viral at all, UM, but just because I was digging through so much stuff, was this meme shared by uh I by some like small Boogaloo account. Um,

it was a picture of the shooter. UH compare right beside a collection of Blue Lives Matter pictures of someone who looks kind of similar, linking to a Facebook page or not not linking it was it was it was screenshot from the Facebook page. And I can tell because of the font. And it was, like I said, like a written houses photos. So this was the first This is the first thing I saw on the like buried

deep inside like Twitter's, Twitter's, Twitter's images. But by using all of like these a hashtag terms was this meme and and and and then the meme said, so y'all think he's still a boogaloo. No, no, he wasn't. But because because of all of the pro police stuff, because boogle is generally are not not that fon fond of police. Yeah.

So so yeah, um, given given. So you know, if someone was to look at this, you know, look at this meme itself, it's like, okay, you know the job was done, you know, information this dude looks vaguely similar ish to the guy on this written house Facebook. Um, the gun looks kind of similar because one of the pictures of the Facebook was was a guy holding was a guy holding in a r um. But you know, just something looking similar or even holding a similar gun

in one picture from a Facebook account. That's not enough to be sure about publishing a positive I d that there's's there's there's no actual really, there's no like definitive proof there because honestly, if I was to look at these two guys faces, they don't look incredibly similar because faces can distort it with lighting and compression that it's it's,

it's it's. It can be really difficult. And this is where you know, trying to ide a shooter is hard and requires complex judgment calls and posting an accurate information or like incomplete information um can have you know, extremely harm effects. And there's there's a lot a lot of examples of this happening in the past. You know, probably the biggest example or the most notorious one of false

identification is the Boston bombing incident. UM. So, you know, right after the right after thirteen bombing, you know, thousands of users on sites like Reddit and four chan became combing through footage to try to identify potential suspects. Screen caps of the people they deemed suspicious went viral online on on various social media sites. Unfortunately, the slew thing work done on four Chuan and Reddit was incredibly shoddy UM and seemingly had way more to do with like

racial paranoia than actual detective work and evidence gathering. The New York Post subsequently published a picture on front page that that originated on Reddit that users had declared that that was showing the two suspects with without doing any further verification. So it's it's it's real bad how stuff can spread from Reddit like this that's completely unverified to you know, a newspaper, even as one as unreputable as

the Post that's still a very popular paper. The Post also claimed that the law enforcement we're looking for those two too, uh two individuals in that picture. UM. One of the one of the people identified by the post was harassed online. UM police police later told him just to delete his social media accounts entirely because there was no use at that point. UM. When the FBI did officially release photos of the unnamed suspects, Reddit users again

the false he identified these people. What One of the people they false he identified went went missing for weeks Priorum. His his family received media inquiries about the false, unverified rumors of their son's involvement. UM, and rumors of of of involvement were spread by reporters from Politico News, Squeak Newsweek, NBC News, and BuzzFeed. UM. Eight days after the bombing, this guy was actually eight of the bombing. This guy was actually found dead and his family said it was

a suicide. UM, he was not not one of the shooters and not one of the bombers. UM. Even more than the tactics you could use to try and you know, verify things online, the most useful thing you can take out of this is if there is a mass shooting or other active violence and people on social media are saying it is this person, don't share it. Don't just don't share it, just wait, especially sharing it if they have don't have anything to verify this at all. So yeah,

like I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna don't again. That is the overwhelming thing. We were not gonna, you know. That's why you know I'm not gonna share this, Kyle Rittenhouse, UM, googloom me, because there's no proof for it. It's it's not there now. Eventually, after digging, I would realize that this memeu comes from his neighbor saying that she thinks the suspect is him. So that's that's what this meme was created. Um But still like the there there was no no proof for it, so I don't I didn't

share it. So all the Boston bombing stuff was like going through my mind as I know found this and was trying to dig for dig from my details. So yeah, I could not post a name on the social media um or any info until I until I could prove it like without a shadow, but doubt that this is the same person, because a lot a lot of times it is possible. It just requires work in time, you know.

And a big part of doing this on Twitter is like you want to get it out fast so you're the first person to do it, so that you know you can go vital on your thread of identifying this killer, And like, no, that's not the reason to do image verification. It's not to go viral on a thread. It's because whenever that's your goal you're gonna do, you're gonna do shitty fast work that is gonna end up causing some kind of horrible consequence, like in the case the Boston bombing.

And to be even extra clear, the primary use for this that kind of what you're teaching people image verification, which is something that like like Belling Cat, which is has been like kind of a part time employer of mine. UM is an open source journalism collective that's broken some of the biggest stories in the last couple of years. And in the classes, we teach a class on image verification.

And the point is just whenever someone is airing a piece of what is like supposedly breaking news based on video or images that have been taken at the side of a whatever, image verification tactics can help you to know whether or not it's whether or not either it's true or false, but also just whether or not the image the information they're presenting gives you any reason to believe it, Like it's you might be full of shit,

Like that's super important. Yeah, Like there's there's a thing that happens like and any time there's something that looks like a war starting, there's like this video of a bombing from two thousand fourteen in Gaza that goes around. Yeah,

it's like every time. Yeah, um, there's there's actually five or six different kinds of things that are like that Chris, that are like, oh, this is there's actually footage from like a Russian video game that people keep keeps getting like mistaken for action combat footage, and it's like, no, it's fucking from a video game. This has been on,

this has been three Wars. Now, there's this famous footage of like a fucking um an air soft battle at night with glowing with the glowing pellets and it it kind of it kind of looks because it's black and white and not a great camera, it kind of looks like tracer fire. And it's there's like three Wars that people have said like, look, this is still combat footage

from It happens all the time. And again grant account to follow is a hoax I On Twitter, they do really good work pointing out just like kind of more like more like less high stakes kind of image image verification stuff. Um So, but before I get into the actual like verification work of like proving, hey, I can actually prove that that by by not just someone's face, I can prove that this shooter is the same guy

from from from the Facebook page. Um I'll explain that next first short short ad break and then we will fit finish up with this actual proving section. Yeah, you know who is not Kyle? Why? How do you have really dropped the ball out all of the transitions today? Yeah? I am not proud of myself or my place in society at the moment um. Here's ads, We're back. I feel terrible Garrison. And So even even though the boogloo meme was not hard evidence, uh it did, it did

provide a lead. So after seeing the meme, I did the first most obvious thing that I could see was compare the gun in the two frames. Uh they do look similar. Uh they're not. They're not identical. Uh the optics are different for each rifle um, But the rest of it, but the stock, the grip um, and the barrel do do seem? Do seem to be? Do seem to be, if not, if not identical, at least extremely similar. Again, don't lot enough to make a positive idea on an

individual basis, like this person is this person? So that the next step is to scour the actual Facebook account itself that is alluded to in this meme and see what I can find there, the goal obviously being to find statements or pictures that will tie this person in the images of the shooter to the person on the account. So that's you know, clothing, location, intention, you know, all these types of things that could tie the pictures of

the shooter the pictures of person on on on this account. Um. So. Kylera houses old public Facebook profile was mainly made up of Blue Lives Matter and pro police images going back as far as um with a few uh then recent pictures of him holding his Air fifteen style rifle. Uh. Those the the rifle pictures were like from June. The

shooting happened in late August. Um. It appears I think it came out in the trial that he got his rifle around like may um So, Yeah, a lot of a lot of a lot of pro police stuff, a lot of them blue lining, blue Lives matters type things. Um. His public his his public page is real is relatively sparse. Um. And there was no public friends list to look through. Um. One one noteworthy piece of information was that he did he did list another name for himself as Kyle Lewis

believe his mother's maiden name. But uh. But even so, even though I wasn't able to view a friends list and there wasn't many public posts. Uh, this is his page is by no means a dead end. I could still see everyone that has commented on, shared, or liked his public posts, because like so, he did not have he he did not many have any pictures himself on his page that that that I could use for verification. He didn't have like not nothing that I could tie

to the shooting besides the actual guns. So not not tons of useful not tons of useful stuff. But there's perhaps there's still other other leads to look through, Like everyone who's liked, shared, or uh commented on his posts, So I opened up new tabs for every single person

that interacted with Kyle's posts. While looking over their pages, I was searching to see if any of them had listed Kyle as a relative, with a focus on anyone with the last name of written House or Lewis um and and you know, ideally was looking forward to see if anyone had pictures of Kyle or someone who seems to be Kyle. Uh. One post from May eighteen eventually eventually proved useful. One comment read, Kyle, you sure do

look look like a Louis. So there's the alternate last name and two people had liked that comment, Kyle himself and and UH and someone who is his mom, which or would would later find out is his mom. Um. Uh, so she said that lived. She said that she lived in uh is it anatok Illinois? Probably Antioch, Illinois, which matches uh with Kyle's UH Illinois based pro police posts. He made a lot of like Chicago blue Lives Matter posts,

so I assumed that Kyle was from Illinois. And also, um, uh Antioch is that you said whatever Antioch to to Wiscon's Antioch to Kenosha is only like three minute drive, so that is also like okay, that's that's that's that's pretty close. That is that is doable. Um so it was the next I went. I went through a lot of the relatives pages, but I'm gonna focus just on the person who I found out who was um Kyle's mom, because they're the one that had the most useful information, right.

A lot of other information I looked through just didn't turn out to be useful, right, So I'm not not including all of that here. Um uh. One post from from uh Wendy's mom UH featured a younger Kyle wearing a police outfit. Um, I'm sure people have seen this picture online before. I think I was probably I was.

I was probably the first person to share this photo of Kyle in this in this younger Kyle wearing this this police this police costume, an unbelievably cringe e photo, like either side of the fact that he took two lives, Like just yeah, I mean we all have photos we took when while an r OTC, Like, so yeah, ideally we would we would give there There's actually there's actually a lot more of these photos. There's photos of him

touring so this is this stuff. I also found that night photos of him like touring a target with police as he's in a police uniform. He was part of like a police Young Cadets program. He he was like twelve, Um, so that that's where he got this outfit, and he like tagged around with police for like a day or something. And this photos of him like in a target with police, even when I was like a shitty, right winging kid,

that sounded like a nightmare. So so yeah, so Kyle's the person who I figured out was Kyle's mom posted this this photo of of her and Kyle, which which Kyle liked, and then in another picture of another picture from from Kyle's mom, I found, Uh, it's a family picture including Kyle wearing what I would say is like an army green shirt kind of similar, but it's a green shirt like I have. I have shirts that are

pretty similar to that. I'm not gonna that's not gonna be anything so super definitive until we got there's one one picture that that proved to be much much more, much more useful. Uh, of Kyle on or someone who assumed was Kyle. You don't you don't you don't actually see his face, but he is wearing horribly cringe e American flag crocs, which which Kyle? Which which so and

and and on. On Kyle's page, there was also pictures of him wearing those same crocs, So like, even even though I can't see the person's face, the crocs the same, probably the same guy. He's also wearing a tan baseball cap. Um, and on this I can actually see that it has an American flag on the front of the cap, which I did not notice on anything else before. So that's, you know, that's something different, But again not that that's that's not that's not that's not like a red flag.

That's just you know, a thing to a thing of note um because the baseball cap is tan um and it has like white mesh on the sides. Um. The one. The one thing I did, I did make one post before I actually did any kind of I claiming to do I identity stuff. I did ask my Twitter followers if there's any pictures of the back of the Shooters cap um, and I got them to to send me those. And then I got one picture of of the back

that actually has uh. I couldn't see, like, Okay, the back of the Shooters cap also has the flag on it, so I was able to actually show that. Okay, so the baseball cap on the back of it, uh. But they're both Tanna based ball caps, they both have white men in the side, they both have to have an American flag. And then I got another picture that was even closer that showed a tear on the brim of the hat. And if you zoom in on one of the beach pictures, you could also see a tear on

the same position on the hat. So this is this hat is the hat is the same hat? The hat was definitely it was definitely in both locations. So at this point, based on the gun, based on the hat, based on the location being very close to kenosha um and being closed on the rough facial similarities, um, there was there was enough enough to enough to to um enough to put put stuff together to be like, Okay, I I think I think this is this is probably this is probably fine in saying I think this is

probably the dude. UM. So at this point I wasn't. I wasn't. Again, I'm not gonna post this immediately and and gonna post something by saying this is who it is without providing the evidence. So instead of like running a thread tweet by tweet, I read the whole thread out and then tweet the whole thread at the same time. UM so, so I I put to the thread documenting

my relevant stuff. Um I. I wrote the first eight posts the same time and posted them together with all the evidence of uploaded um and then and then uh, as I was writing the threat, I came across another piece of evidence. There was one I was going through one of the live streams of of that night from a channel called the Rundown Live, which I've not heard

anything of before or since. Then. UM, but you know one of the many streamers that were out UM, and you can see you can see Kyle inside the frame and then like pans away, but the people are still talking. UM. So so Kyle Kyle is actually off camera now, UM, but he I think someone like asks him his name and he and the person who I think is Kyle replies Kyle. Now, of course it's off camera, so it's not you can't be totally sure. There's there's enough context

lose and that plus only other evidence. I'm like, Okay, this is enough to add to the thread because it again it's it's not enough proof by itself, but it combined with everything else completes a much fuller picture. So I posted my like niner yeah like eight or nine thing thread on being able to prove its Kyle via you know, comparing stuff like the gun, the hat, the shirt, and demonstrating my work tracking across Facebook and how it's

able to like link these two people together. Um. Twenty two minutes after I posted the threat identifying Kyle, Kosia police adounce that they were that they were starting an active investigation. UM. I soon added a court document to my thread about a traffic violation by someone named cow written House filed a few days before the shooting. The traffic violation thing also included stuff like address, which I I blacked out the addressed for that just because sharing

the sharing for reasons I'll soon explain. Because again, if if it's if it's a it's a track of violation, if people really want it, they can find it themselves, right it's it's not making impossible to find it. And this was able to confirm it. It was in the same location, um antioch Um. And also this this proved that Kyle was seventeen at the time. Uh. This is how we knew that he was seventeen years old at the time of the shooting was because of this traffic

violation document found online. So the the address on the violation document was the same one I had linked to Kyle's mom. By doing other like osan address work, I was able to find out where what what her address was. UM. So so yeah, that was that was most of my work that night. Uh. It took about I don't know, like too sh maybe you know it. It's hard, it's

hard to break up. Uh, it's timing it. It took about half an hour to get from the boogaloo meme to finding the matching baseball cap on Kyle's mom's Facebook page. About another half hour to write out the thread, and you know, about an hour of work previous to that about you know, trying to find out the actual you know, footage and categorize it. And Okay, this is the clothing

he's wearing. Here's the clothes I need, I need to look for on social media right see see see see if I can find these shoes, these pants, this, this shirt, this hat, this bag, that kind of stuff. Um. And I was able to find enough of those items to make it pretty pretty clear that it was it was, you know linked um. And that makes you, Garrison, one of the first people in the world to get to no way more about kyle rittenhouse than you ever wanted to know. Yeah, a lot more. This nightmare has been

going on longer for you. Yeah, and so, and I want to know a few of the ways to do image verifications specifically on Kyle that that I didn't do, but other people did after after I after I said, hey, this is part of the guy. So afterwards people found other kind of evidence on Kyle's TikTok um and snapchat So it turns out Kyle was snapchatting his night in Wisconsin, um, which we would find out later, So he was that

he was snapchatting from kenosha Um and Garrison. First off, I do feel as the representative of zoomers in in this call. Wait, why are you Why are you guys all using the snapchats? Huh, I don't use I don't use the snapchats. Um. Well, I'm making you answer for the crimes of your generation, the crimes like the snap Now, well, technically speaking, I have one friend who I only talked to you through Snapchat, and we both only use it

for that and we don't know why we use snapchat. Yeah, there's a few people who are like snapchat, people who only text or snapchat, and I don't. I don't get it. Yeah, except neither of us are like that. We just specifically there got signal anyway, So yeah, the Snapchat. There's also uh TikTok Um. There was a footage of of Kyle att thing a Trump rally at TikTok Also him like assembling and testing out his gun was on a Snapchat.

I believe eclipse that it were also shared on TikTok So I could have got a lot more closer details of the gun if if I looked on if if on Snapchat or or TikTok um, and I think, if this is this is a good advice that I've taken since then, and for other people looking to do this stuff. If if a suspect looks as young, um, you know, Snapchat and TikTok might be, or and and Instagram might be apps that are worth are worth checking out for

information as opposed to like Facebook. Right, lucky, lucky enough, there was enough stuff on Facebook on this instance, typically probably because No, Kyle's family was conservative so and he was conservative, so higher chance of being on Facebook there. But you know, in general, if someone's younger and maybe look on younger apps. Um. But yeah, so you know, good thing to think about. You know. Whenever these like chaotic Panis moments happen, you know, misifforation can spread very

very quickly. Um. Cannot stress enough how dangerous and irresponsible it is when a suspect is named without proper verification. Um. You know. Uh. Last last September, uh Ian Miles Chung falsely identified a suspect in the shooting of two l A police officers This resulted in the falsely accused got a man and receiving many death threats online. I think emails. Chalnging did this like again a few months later. He was doing this a lot. Last year he was doing it.

He was really bad about trying to identify people. Um. But you know, doing solid solid arification work is possible, but extreme caution needs to be taken. Um. I need to be very mindful of the consequences of your actions when when you're doing this work. I also want to put out Garrison is very good at this. That's that's why it took two hours and a half hours. It's going to take it takes a lot longer. Yeah, Like honestly, like I was surprised like it. Finding Kyle was just

the right mix of things in one moment. Often it doesn't. Often it doesn't go that fast, and it doesn't need to be right like a big big The problem is that if people think about it needing to be like a fast paced thing, that's where that that's where the mistakes happen. I was just lucky to have enough like dominoes fall in the right place too. I identify how the night of having having his neighbor say, hey, this

guy looks similar to my neighbor. Extremely useful in in in in the long run, right like that that happened faster than that happens in a lot of cases, and so not really accelerated things. Sometimes it will be easy. Sometimes like a good example of when it's harder. We have a decent amount of footage about the individual who placed bombs outside of the capital bombing before the sixth um. That person has not been identified and the FBI seems

to have no goddamn clue. But also what they were way more intentional, and they're very smart whoever they are, They're very capable. They were. The only things that have on them is their shoes, basically those are those are kind of the polls of this right on one. Like that with with Rittenhouse, you've got this situation where it's like all of the information you need to identify them

is there openly online um. And part of ops sex if you're doing things that are crimes um is to make sure that is to limit that that that whatever it is you are going to to the to the crimes in um. There nothing exists on the internet that connects that to your name and face and that that doesn't that doesn't always mean black block. That can mean other clothing, especially if you've been photographed in black block

a book. I think like if you look at if you look at, um, the guy who dropped off bombs a January six, he's not wearing black block because black block draws attention. He's wearing like grays. He's he's wearing like that guy that well, that individual person is either a former FED or former Special Forces. They were very capable, leaning towards FED who showed up in clothing they had never weren't worn before and paid for used in cash, probably from a variety of places. Um. That clothing was

burned as soon as they got away. They were out of the state as early as it was possible to do so, plant them and then immediately get out like um, and you know, by the time the capitol, right by the time their bombs had been found, they were they were if they were smartly gone, you know, like that's how anyway whatever, like like oftentimes it can be if someone knows what they're doing this this process can be a lot harder, like in the case of the people

of of the guy who left the bombs at the capitol. Um. You know, Kyle it was not you know, wasn't wearing much identified clothing, wasn't even wearing a mask because COVID was for cox UM. So you know, there's a lot of these things that that made this process, um, you know, easier than a lot of a lot of other verifications. But like I said, there still was a lot of false ideas going around that night, um, and so it

kind of still happens. I'm kind of on the fence myself as to whether or not it would have been safer like for our country or the society or whatever you want to call it if, um like, how much more damage or less damage would have been done if Kyle Rittenhouse had been someone who showed up in impact couple like clothing that he could not be identified from fucking ran off and was never caught and we just knew there was the shooting of protesters in Kenosha um

by somebody. UM Like, I don't know how much better or worse that is for society if that happens. I don't know. I'm thinking about terrible things. But sorry, but first off, I want to apologize. Sometimes talking about this stuff winds up seeming like advice for how to commit crimes. That's not the intent. It's just when you talk about what makes something difficult to identify, your kind of by default talking about like here's how to here's how to

get commit a crime and get away with it. Um. And it's the kind of thing like if you're doing verification work, one of the things that helps is to kind of put yourself in the mindset of somebody who, Okay, if I'm in this situation and I do this, um, what are the decisions that I might make afterwards? Um? And you can kind of try to, uh think through this person. Like it can be helpful, especially if you're

trying to like track someone through a day. So you know, someone was at this point at a protest at X hour because they shot somebody. Um, you know, think through, Okay, what else happened that day? Where their other protests, where their other gatherings, like or is this one in a series of events? Can I go look for, you know, videos from other things in the area that this person might have also been at and might have warned the same clothing? Um, there's anyway Image verification is fun. Catch

the fever. It is it is a fun thing to do. It's good to if if if you're not able to attend in person demos for like like physical reasons or whatever, or like mental reasons, doing the stuff from home is is another way of getting involved, especially already out tracking down bad people after they after they do bad things. Yeah, so you can, you know, if you want to learn more about this with you know the benefit of also visual aids um belling Cat has if you just type

image verification belling Cat. There's beginners and advanced guides to verification. Um. There's talk about like manual reverse image search tools and like how well they work. There's quizzes, so go go there if you if you find this interesting, Um, it can be quite a hoot. Um. But you know what else is quite a hoot Ending a goddamn podcast, which I'm doing. Now we're done, goodbye. It could happen here

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