Briefing: A new tool to explore satellite imagery

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Craig put 10 username enumeration tools to the test, sorting the reliable finders from false-positive generators. The result is a username search playbook anyone can use to enhance their investigations.

We welcomed Sam Rabiyah and Lam Thuy Vo of Documented on Show & Tell, our podcast showcasing standout investigations and the methods behind them. Sam and Lam walked us through their two-part series Decoding Immigrant TikTok and the associated pipeline they published on GitHub. Check it out on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

📍 An internal EU assessment obtained by Reuters revealed that the Russia-aligned Operation Overload used social media to exacerbate online tensions about last month’s riots in France. The operation reportedly pushed the narrative that the riots were caused by uncontrolled migration and that the government had lost control.

📍 Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court fined Meta 7.5 million reais for failing to comply with requests for information during the recent presidential election. The court did not rule on claims by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign that the company intentionally interfered in the election. Meta denied the accusations, saying there is “no evidence that Meta ranked or distributed content in a politically biased way in this campaign.”

📍 Late last week, the US Department of Justice charged three men with using deepfake audio and video to impersonate executives and trick employees at companies worldwide into wiring funds for nonexistent deals. The men allegedly stole more than $129 million from victims including hospitals, financial firms, and a Florida pet food company.

📍 ControlPlane security researcher Chris Nesbitt-Smith used Claude to scan UK public sector repositories. He found, among other things, that the UK government’s Planning Inspectorate had committed Microsoft Entra ID credentials to a public GitHub repository that could have given “god-tier” access to its SharePoint and employee OneDrive accounts. The Inspectorate says it revoked the credential within about 20 minutes of the report and found no evidence of a breach.

📍 Far-right activist Laura Loomer has been paid to publish political posts on X without disclosing it, according to Trump 2024 campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz and three others who spoke to The Washington Post. Records reviewed by the Post show more than $60,000 in payments. Loomer denies selling posts. The New Yorker has made similar allegations in prior reporting.

📍 An AI Overview result on Google falsely accused an Auckland anesthesia technician of having drunk-driving convictions.

📍 A five-part investigation by Maldita into TikTok’s role in hosting and spreading child sexual abuse material has become a topic of debate in Spain’s electoral campaign. Even more interesting is this explanation by Maldita’s assistant director Carlos Hernández-Echevarría on why the nonprofit chooses not to share lists of problematic content with platforms directly:

Planet AI is a new, free tool that allows you to use natural language prompts to navigate through a decade of satellite imagery. I played around with it and like how easy it is to pull up imagery and test hunches.

From the announcement:

I ran one of the suggested queries to “Show me solar farms in Australia” and it showed a map with several labeled. (See above.)

Then I asked it to find scam compounds in Myanmar. It pulled up Shwe Kokko, a “city built on scams.”

It also gave me a slidey tool to compare imagery from October 2018 and last month in order to view how the city developed.

I imagine it’s more difficult for the tool to find lesser-known structures and areas. But it offers an easy and intuitive interface for exploring satellite imagery.

The chatbot offered a helpful caution about what it can and can’t find. It said it can only “focus strictly on satellite Earth observation, so I do not offer street-level imagery, real-time weather, or turn-by-turn directions. My imagery has a resolution of about 3 meters per pixel, so small objects like cars, people, or signs may be hard or impossible to make out.” — Craig

📍 The latest edition of the OSINT Newsletter looked at “MW Geofind; an online OSINT tool that helps you discover YouTube videos based on geographical location.”

📍 In other satellite imagery news: Ollie Ballinger and Zach Toombs recorded a video op-ed for The New York Times about restrictions on satellite imagery imposed by the US government. “The U.S. government is pressuring private companies to censor satellite imagery. And that limits the public’s view of what’s happening in some of the most critical parts of the world.”

📍 Myriam Redondo Escudero and Yvonne McDermott published an academic paper, “Building Consensus on Satellite Imagery in Human Rights Investigations across Epistemic Communities: Insights from Journalism and Law.”

📍 Benjamin Strick published the latest edition of Field Notes. He demonstrated some exercises from his new course, The Art of Open Source Analysis, and more.

📍 Jemma Ward of OSINT Combine wrote, “Beyond Google: Alternative Search Engines for OSINT.”

📍 Toddington International wrote, “When Bias Derails a Report.”

📍 DEFCON posted videos from a variety of presentations at this year’s conference. Here’s Nico Dekens’ talk, “OSINT Still a Thinking Game Surviving AI w-o Losing Tradecraft.” (via Brad Snyder)

📍 Correctiv and The Insider reviewed a leaked archive of documents belonging to John Mark Dougan, the Florida sheriff’s deputy turned Russian disinformation peddler. The documents outline some of his self-reported wins — such as getting a false narrative about biolabs in Ukraine picked up by then-US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — and his everyday frustrations with what he viewed as his host country’s stinginess in supporting his efforts. NewsGuard, which has covered Dougan’s work over the years, found that the archive shows he also made extensive use of AI tools such as Claude and Qwen to create content.

📍 The Guardian’s Michelle R. Smith found that “dangerous medical misinformation is flowing freely on Facebook in groups like Crunchy Moms – now more than 490,000 members strong.” Smith reported 55 posts, comments, and replies from the group that appeared to violate Meta’s policies. These included claims that “vaccines cause autism” and “The MMR vaccine CAUSES measles.” Nearly all were still live when Smith reached out for comment. Meta told the Guardian that neither its health misinformation policy nor its enforcement has changed since 2023.

📍 According to the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, “after an initial post-election lull, election rumors of ‘suspicious statistics’ surrounding vote counts gained traction over the weekend.” These include the so-called “15% band.”

📍 Columbia’s Tow Center published a Guide to Information Warfare Reporting, drawn from the class Emily Bell and Michael H. Keller co-teach. Indicator readers might be particularly interested in chapter 2: “‘Who’s Behind This Website’: Tricks and Tips for Digital Investigations.”

📍 Scam detection startup InfoHawk found 820 domains impersonating 35 US restaurant chains. Some reverse-proxied the real websites, showing the genuine menu but swapping in a fake checkout form to steal card details and bank SMS verification codes.

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