Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 9h

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 · 2d

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 · 2d

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 · 2d

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 · 5d

Is everyone appreciating how utterly sick this is

Aura Bogado @aurabogado.bsky.social · 5d

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 · 5d

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 · 5d

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 · 5d

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 🇬🇧 in 🇺🇸 @emmalbriant.bsky.social · 5d

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 · 5d

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 · 5d

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 · 5d

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 · 5d

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 · 5d

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 · 5d

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 · 5d

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 · 5d

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 · 8d

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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Reposted by Benjamin Strick

Cyber Detective @cybdetective.bsky.social · 15d

"Top 5 hacks to find deleted websites, posts and secret changes"

Guide to advanced use of the Internet Archive by Benjamin Strick:

How to track changes made to websites
How to view collections of archived sites
How to search through TV News archives

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwuX...

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 15d

Reddit post with more details www.reddit.com/r/GoogleEart...

From the GoogleEarthFinds community on Reddit: Insanely Detailed Images of US Carriers

Explore this post and more from the GoogleEarthFinds community

www.reddit.com

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 15d

Bing Maps 'birds eye' view has a crazy amount of detail, like this US Navy base - open for the world to see.
www.bing.com/maps/?cp=36....

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 16d

This was an Israeli strike on a residential tower in south Rimal, Gaza City on 10 September, 2025.

It is just one of the 1800+ verified incidents we have mapped across Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon & Israel, which we have updated today: www.info-res.org/israel-gaza-...

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 16d

As @ineiversen.bsky.social points out, Russia has rebuilt some areas in Mariupol to stage to stage propaganda.

After bombing this field, they rebuilt it with the Russian Navy flag and slogan "ДОЛГ ЧЕСТЬ ОТВАГА" (Duty, Honour, Courage) - there's no honour here.

bsky.app/profile/inei...

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 16d

Google Earth has updated imagery of Ukraine's Mariupol - which has been under Russian occupation since May 2022.

This is the Drama Theatre, bombed by Russia in March 2022, where hundreds died. All evidence of the strike has since been wiped away. Location: 47.0960, 37.54871

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Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social · 18d

Geolocation proof 👇

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