We wanted to be unassailable
Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2025 7:04 am
Nothing or almost nothing escapes this human rights activist who makes himself available to editorial offices around the world. "Geojournalism, or geoinvestigation, is a way to verify well-known images, but also to bring to light buried images, in conflicts that editorial staff are unable to cover. Amateur images that would not be broadcastable without our verifications," he says. Somewhere in Cameroon, date unknown. The unbearable video, received by several newsrooms in 2018, shows civilians, women and children, murdered by men in uniform equipped with assault rifles.
The men force the victims to their knees, blindfold them india whatsapp number data 5 million and kill them in cold blood. We hear a commentary in French. Is it reliable? It does not provide any context. Where and when did it take place? Who are the victims, who are the murderers? “There were seven of us. members of the Center for Information Resilience, Amnesty International, journalists from the BBC and Bellingcat, each with specific skills.
At that time, the Cameroonian government said that it was fake news, that it had not been filmed in Cameroon. We started by drawing the mountains in the distance, on the video, which we superimposed, at equal scale, on public images from Google Earth at the presumed location (…) We found an exactly identical relief, in Cameroon, very close to the border with Nigeria. We then identified the convolutions of a dirt road, then each tree, each building.
We had the place. Confused by his shadow But when were these images filmed? “When you have geolocation, you can access the archives ,” Strick continues. “We found that a building visible in the video was built in late 2016. So we had an 18-month range. Then we established the angle between one of the men in uniform walking straight in the middle of the image and his shadow.
The men force the victims to their knees, blindfold them india whatsapp number data 5 million and kill them in cold blood. We hear a commentary in French. Is it reliable? It does not provide any context. Where and when did it take place? Who are the victims, who are the murderers? “There were seven of us. members of the Center for Information Resilience, Amnesty International, journalists from the BBC and Bellingcat, each with specific skills.
At that time, the Cameroonian government said that it was fake news, that it had not been filmed in Cameroon. We started by drawing the mountains in the distance, on the video, which we superimposed, at equal scale, on public images from Google Earth at the presumed location (…) We found an exactly identical relief, in Cameroon, very close to the border with Nigeria. We then identified the convolutions of a dirt road, then each tree, each building.
We had the place. Confused by his shadow But when were these images filmed? “When you have geolocation, you can access the archives ,” Strick continues. “We found that a building visible in the video was built in late 2016. So we had an 18-month range. Then we established the angle between one of the men in uniform walking straight in the middle of the image and his shadow.