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Discover the people and organisations working at the frontiers of investigation. Read about their methods, techniques, cases and the investigative mindset that drives them.
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Using Human Stories to Bring Critical Work on AI to the General Public
Investigative journalists are increasingly looking into the use of AI and algorithms in areas...
Many Ways Up the Mountain: The Scrappy, Creative World of Open Source Hacking
As the field of open source investigation matures, the number of
tools developed for OSINT and by...
Hello AI
We need tools that solve real problems we have, not tools that are
desperately looking for...
What Can The Digital Services Act Do For You? Tips For Navigating Platform [In]Transparency
The article discusses the tools and resources provided by the EU's
Digital Services Act (DSA) to...
The Persistent Problems Of Digital Resilience
Tactical Tech's Executive Director and co-founder Marek Tuszynski
shares key lessons learned...
How Ukrainians Use Crowdsourcing to Document the War
Crowdsourcing has been increasingly used by journalists,
activists, human rights defenders and...
Find Your Way: Creative Approaches To Sharing Investigation Findings
Many investigators are searching for new ways to reach a wider
public and create impact, as the...
OSINT Tools for Online Political Research: the Context of Argentina
This article was developed by the team of EdiPo (Equipo de
Investigación Política / Political...
Greenwashing or Greenbashing: Investigating Claims of Environmental Sustainability
How can we distinguish between authentic and insincere green
initiatives and claims? Who is...
"Investigation is Collaboration" Booklet: tips, methods and inspiration
Following our "Investigation is Collaboration" conference in August 2021 - and in order to leave...
The Depth of Your Virtual Purse: What do fintech apps know about you?
Caring for our personal data requires as much effort as managing
our finances, maybe even more. A...
Are You Listening? Basics of Investigating (with) Sound
This article is an introductory journey intended for anyone with
an interest in listening – yes,...
Data at First Sight: Telling the human story through numbers
Good stories are relatable. They speak to the reader. Stories that have data at the centre are no...
Investigative Initiatives in the Americas – Meet the “New Digitals”
The digital media-sphere has been thriving over the last few years
in the Spanish- and...
A project to engage, train and connect civil society investigators in the EU
In September 2020, our Exposing the Invisible (ETI) team started a European Commission (DG...
No Disaster Is Natural: How investigating climate change adaptation could make a difference
Floods, cyclones, wildfires, etc. Climate disasters and the damage
they cause are increasingly...
La Technologie Est Stupide : Comment choisir la technologie pour le travail à distance
Cet article aborde les questions de savoir quelle technologie est
bonne, sûre et appropriée à...
Communicating with a Purpose: Investigative Storytelling
“Communicating and narrating our investigation is key, it is one of
the pillars of our work as...
Investigative Commons: A new era of human rights investigation
The Investigative Commons was launched as a collaboration between
the European Center for...
The Archive as Activism: Lessons from Mnemonic and the Syrian Archive
Mnemonic, the non-profit that runs Syrian Archive, Yemeni Archive
and Sudanese Archive uses its...
Getting Creative with Geolocation
Take a dive into the world of geolocation, visual analysis, and the
importance of creativity in...
Risk Assessment Is a Mindset, Not a Checklist
Conducting investigations is risky. Unfortunately, individual
investigators rarely have...
The Savvy Investigator’s Toolkit
The Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) has been
developing a massive list of online...
An Arena for Climate Collaboration: "My climate issue is your climate issue"
“Is there a link between your local river drying up and European
policies on climate and energy?...
How a Chance Collaboration Exposed Secretive Government Actions in China
This is an example that proves how, with curiosity, hard work and
an openness to collaboration,...
“It Takes a Crowd...”: Tips and examples of using crowdsourcing to collect information
Crowdsourcing is increasingly used by journalists, activists, researchers and citizen...
“Stronger Together": Creating a plan for collaboration
"In an increasingly complex social, political and economic
environment, and in times of lurking...
How to Build a More Diverse Newsroom, for Real
This brief article gathers tips on cross-border collaboration as
learned from Editor-in-Chief...
How do we know things? - The Investigator’s Dilemma and Working with Absent Evidence
“Do we know things? How do we know them? Philosophers have been
asking these questions for...
“Killing one is easy, killing a network is impossible”: The Power of Collaboration
"Ten years ago, collaborative journalism was something unusual,
quite often weird – why to share...
Technology Is Stupid: How to choose tech for remote working
This article addresses questions about which tech is good, safe and
appropriate to use in these...
"Investigation is Collaboration" Conference Materials
Here you find the agenda and a rich selection of materials - videos, articles and presentation...
(Closed) "Investigation is Collaboration" - Online Conference, 2-6 August, 2021
On 2-6 August 2021 Tactical Tech’s 'Exposing the Invisible' project hosted a 5-day online...
Living Under Drones: The aftermath of drone attacks
A website centered around a report by Stanford/NYU, based on interviews with drone strike victims...
Mikel Maron: Crowdsourcing satellite imagery to document deforestation
Mikel Maron has a long history in open source, open-data and
mapping. He is a founding member of...
Mapping Arms Data: A visualisation
This award-winning data visualisation from Brazil's Igarape Institute (together with the Peace...
Investigating Instagram: More than meets the eye
A case-study focused on gathering geo-location data from images posted on Instagram to tell...
Busting the Viral: Fact-checking on social media
An interview with three groups and organisations working on fact checking: Africa Check, Stop...
Postcards from Google Earth
Nicholas Mirzoeff shows us what happens when Google Earth's and Street View's process of...
Treasure Islands: Uncovering offshore banking and tax havens
In his book Treasure Islands, Nicholas Shaxson attempts to challenge the preconceptions people...
No Spyware for Dictators
You can read further details on this on this website created by The Greens/EFA in the European...
Assad Debunkation
A blog is attempting to unravel two years' worth of Internet propaganda, leading to what they...
Satellite orbiting
Featuring a project from Quarz that visualised hundreds of active satellites orbiting the Earth...
Brown Moses: Exposing the real story behind arms in Syria
Introducing Eliot Higgins, who, having sifted daily through hundreds of YouTube videos coming out...
The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)
By publishing freely-accessible, groundbreaking investigative articles in English and Russian,...
The Civil Contract of Photography: A book on the power politics of the image
Author Ariella Azoulay argues that the act of photography describes the set of power relations...
B'Tselem Camera Project: Palestine-Israel
Featuring a project that distributes video cameras, and provides training to Palestinians living...
Journalist's Resource: A research database
A website providing academic reports on subjects that make the news.
James Bridle: Seamless Transitions
A project by artist James Bridle looking to recreate the ‘invisible’ spaces around the detention...
An Atlas of Radical Cartography
A book containing ten essays and ten maps displaying social issues ranging from globalisation to...
Measure of a Life: A documentary on drone strikes
A powerful 8-minute documentary that brings you face-to-face with survivors of one of the most...
Dirty Wars: A film exposing covert drone warfare
A film released by investigative journalist and activist Jeremy Scahill that tells the stories of...
Classified Information: A review of current legislation across 15 countries & the EU
An in-depth review of security classification legislation of 15 countries, such as Germany, New...
James Bridle
A profile of James Bridle who defines himself as a writer, publisher, artist, and technologist...
The Art of Data Visualization: A video homage
An 8-minute video depicting the emerging art of data visualization from its early stages up to...
Breaking the Silence: Testimonies of Israeli soldiers
A website created to give a voice to Israeli soldiers who have served in the West Bank, Gaza and...
Crowdsourcing: What it is and how it can be used
Crowdsourcing has taken many forms and been adopted in various
businesses as a profitable model....
5,000 Feet Is Best: Filming a former drone operator
A film based on an interview carried out in a Las Vegas hotel room with a former Predator drone...
Nohomophobes
A real-time interface collecting data from Twitter and designed to track casual homophobia in our...
Naming the Dead: Data on drone strikes in Pakistan
This project builds on two years of work tracking US drone strikes in Pakistan, which found that...
Harlo Holmes: Metadata or it Didn't Happen
An interview with digital security trainer Harlo Holmes about CameraV, e-evidence used in courts,...
Mapping territorial control in Syria
A young student maps out the territorial control of Iraq, Libya, and Syria as it evolves and...
Walls That Speak
A 47-minute video showing the power of the visual in Beirut's public spaces, and how the graffiti...
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: A drone strike visualisation
A dynamic visualisation created by California-based Pitch Interactive, charting the number of...
Subjective Atlas of Palestine
A collection of intimate and subjective images of life in Palestine, curated by Dutch designer...
Visualizing Palestine
A bank of creative data visualizations describing a factual-based narrative of Palestine and Israel.
Taxodus
A web-based game created to more accurately represent the reality of tax havens today.
The Rules.org
A decentralized movement of activists campaigning around the world against poverty.
Tax Justice Network: Resources on tax evasion
An independent network that advocates against tax evasion and undertakes research and analysis on...
From Tails to Whiskers: How We Created a Secure Investigation Framework
At Tactical Tech we sometimes experiment with creating tools and software that we think are...
Investigating Google's revolving door
Over the past ten years, at least 80 people have been identified to have moved jobs between...
Regret the Error
Craig Silverman looks at the damage done by 'screw-ups' in eroding public confidence in...
Finding Neverland: The story behind Peter Thiel’s secret citizenship revelation
How a journalist uncovered a surprise citizen of New Zealand: US tech tycoon Peter Thiel.
Amnesty International on small tasks, big data and massive engagement
Milena Marin demonstrates how Amnesty International uses micro-tasking, the process of splitting...
Switching perspectives
An interview with Swiss artist Lea Schaffner about her focus on mass media images, how people...
The Virtual Watchers
A project that looks critically at an online platform of 203,633 volunteers surveilling the...
Seeing the world through Google's eyes
An article that looks at Google's various platforms and technologies and how they capture...
Tracking flights in real time with Flightradar24
A tool that enables users to see real-time information about
thousands of aircraft around the world.
Michael Kreil: An Honest Picture of Metadata
An interview about a series of projects based on the information and digital traces that we and...
Libra: The landsat imagery browser
A tool to browse, sort, and download more than 275 Terabytes of
open Landsat imagery for free.
Panama Registry of Companies
A useful resource for journalists and activists tracking corruption
and tax avoidance across...
Yanukovych Leaks
Journalists and activists rescued and digitalised the documents
which led to the impeachment of...
Ecosystem of Corporate Politicians
Interactive visualisation showing the relationships between
Portuguese politicians and private...
Dronestagram
Making drone strikes locations more visible, a little closer and more real.
The Land Matrix
A set of data visualisations and a public online database on land grabbing deals.
Eliot: Breaking down the Syrian conflict
UK-based blogger Eliot Higgins, aka Brown Moses, tells us how what began as a hobby led to him...
Eliot: Finding the story among the details
Eliot takes us through the tools and processes he uses to gain
insight from video footage,...
Rajwa: Exposing a system
Rajwa tells us more about how she looks for evidence that exposes the very foundations of the...
Investigative Reporting on the Rise
Paul Radu about a new breed of journalists learning investigative techniques from artists and...
The Investigator's Backpack
Paul Radu talks about the Investigative Dashboard, an online resource he co-developed to fill a...
The Reporter
Investigative journalist Paul Radu introduces himself and his work of tracking organised crime...
Alice: Documenting the strikes
Reporter Alice Ross talks to us about how she and her colleagues collected data from both public...
James Bridle: Uncovering hidden landscapes
James is a London-based writer, artist and publisher. He talks to us about the physical and...
Public Lab: DIY mapping tools
A community, which develops and applies open-source tools for
environmental investigation.
Disclosures of a Hashtag
Showcasing the possibilities of using hashtags for investigations.
Corpwatch: A website publishing and aggregating investigations on corporations
CorpWatch is a non-profit project, whose aim is to expose malfeasance and to advocate for...
Kings of Coal
An interactive website that can help you stop harmful energy
projects financed by the European...
Google Earth Outreach
Tools to create visualisations and tell their stories using Google Earth.
Trevor Paglen
Profile of an American visual artist and geographer who has been documenting the "state of...
Rise Project: Investigating corruption in Eastern Europe
A community of journalists, hackers, designers and activists dedicated to accurately depicting...
The Migrants Files
A database that contains information on 27,000 migrants who died on
their way to Europe since 2000.
Information is Our Currency
Paul Radu about how a small group of investigative reporters can outperform a major law...
LittleSis
A free database of who-knows-who at the heights of business and government.
They Rule
A website offering interactive visualisations on the biggest
American corporations.
WikiLeaks
An overview of the WikiLeaks library, launched by Julian Assange in 2006.
OpenCorporates: the largest open database of the corporate world
OpenCorporates is a database which aims to gather information on all the companies in the world....
Mapbox
Create your own user generated maps
Automated sectarianism and pro-Saudi propaganda on Twitter
The discovery of thousands of fake twitter accounts in the Persian Gulf results in an...
CameraV
A mobile app by The GuardianProject and WITNESS that captures and
preserves the metadata of...
Trackography
A Tactical Tech project that aims to increase transparency about the data industry by...
Maltego
A tool that helps to identify relationships and real world links
between people, groups,...
Tails
The operating system designed to preserve your privacy and anonymity.
Drone Updates: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Monitoring the impact of drone warfare on civilians to hold powers accountable.
PATTRN: A tool to map events
A tool that can be used to collaboratively build a database of
information that enables users to...
Quantum GIS
A free and open source tool to create, edit, visualise, analyse and
publish geospatial data.
Tor Browser
A tool to browse the web securely.
Infogram
An online visualisation tool that allows you to create interactive
charts from your data.
Tableau Public
A free tool for visualising data.
GlobaLeaks
An adaptable platform to acquire information from anonymous sources
and whistleblowers.
Visual.ly
A place to showcase your work and find inspiration.
OTR: A tool to anonymize your communications
Off-the-record messaging (also known as OTR) allows you to have
secure conversations with other...
Investigative Dashboard
The Investigative Dashboard was created by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project...
GPG Encryption for Your Emails
A tool allowing you to encrypt the content of your emails if the
person you write to also uses it.
Mapknitter, a tool for "stitching" aerial images together
Mapknitter is a free, open source tool for combining and
positioningimages into a composite image...
Eliot: Global arms flow uncovered
Eliot Higgins (founder of the Brown Moses blog) tells us how, although from a remote location in...
Hagit: DIY mapping and reclaiming the territory above our heads
Hagit talks about her mapping work with local communities, and about how aerial photography with...
Hagit: Photography, mapping and power
Hagit tells us how she accessed the evidence she needed (about East Jerusalem house demolitions)...
Hagit: Seeing Jerusalem with new eyes
Activist and artist Hagit tells us the story of how her activism developed from childhood growing...
Rajwa: Building a discourse with data
Rajwa talks about how she navigates the polarised and corrupted world of Lebanese politics by...
Rajwa: The sea is mine
We meet Rajwa, a Lebanon-based activist and member of the Mashaa movement. Her campaign began...
Follow The Money
Paul Radu talks about how financial evidence helps journalists expose organised crime, and how...
Investigations
Paul Radu about how he and his home organisation the RISE Project have exposed shady business...
Risky Business
Paul Radu about how information activists manage the risks and make ethical judgements.
Tackling Organised Crime
Discover how investigative reporter Paul Radu and his colleagues have engaged with criminal...
The Impact of Investigations
Paul Radu talks about setting goals as an investigator and measuring the impact of your work.
Things that Matter
Investigative journalist Paul Radu speaks about how investigators find the motivation to work in...
James Bridle: Power in a networked world
James speaks about his background in publishing, the development of his activism, his political...
Noortje: The myth of information
Sociologist Noortje Marres speaks to us about how information that lacks efficacy does not dispel...
Sadaf: The story of FATA
Sadaf Baig talks about the FCR (Frontier Crime Regulations) in the tribal regions of Pakistan,...
Safdar: Journalism in the tribal belt
Safdar Dawar from the North Waziristan Agency tells us about the “day and night” difference...
Taha: Between international media and tribal journalism
Independent journalist Taha Siddiqui explains the very real dangers for operating as a journalist...
Kill Your Phone
Enclose your phone into a Faraday cage to block all incoming and outgoing signals!
Google Fusion Tables
DISCONTINUED - A web application by Google allowing you to gather, visualise and share large...