Speaker 1: Welcome to It could happen here the podcast we already
Speaker 1: recorded and I messed up UM or something happened with
Speaker 1: the zoom and we lost the audio. So now we're
Speaker 1: recording it again as is, as is the cycle of life. UM.
Speaker 1: Thankfully I can. I'm now on my tenth shot of
Speaker 1: Espresso of the day and it is eight pm, so
Speaker 1: I'm I'm ready, I'm I'm ready this time. Today, we're
Speaker 1: gonna be doing another one of our chronicles into open
Speaker 1: source and O SENT style research or open source verification
Speaker 1: and this kind of side of of generally, you know,
Speaker 1: this is kind of a field of like anti fascist
Speaker 1: research UM and journalism. So we're looking at one of
Speaker 1: these case studies UM. But today I have someone with me,
Speaker 1: Alistair from Opossum Press is here to talk about SENT
Speaker 1: and UH and this type of research. Hello, Hey, thank
Speaker 1: you for being with me again on this on this call,
Speaker 1: on the very experience for us. I would actually first
Speaker 1: like to talk about how Opossum Press got started as
Speaker 1: like a collective of of people dedicated towards this goal
Speaker 1: of you know, surveying the fascist creep. UM. I had
Speaker 1: an interest in UM and journalism. I have no experience
Speaker 1: in it. But I have other friends that are into
Speaker 1: writing and stuff, and I just kind of reached out
Speaker 1: to friends and like, Hey, would anybody be interested in
Speaker 1: doing this? And um, there are several friends that were like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do this. And that's pretty much it. After we
Speaker 1: got it all formed. Um, we set up some open
Speaker 1: source intel like workshops and we've about every other week
Speaker 1: we get together for two or three hours and learned
Speaker 1: stuff that sounds that sounds lovely actually, Um, most of
Speaker 1: my stuff is usually done alone in my computer dark
Speaker 1: when I'm on my again tenth cup of coffee of
Speaker 1: the day. Doing O sent in a group of people
Speaker 1: like that sounds like it could be actually kind of fun.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we're gonna In our last episode, we talked
Speaker 1: about how I tracked down and found out who written
Speaker 1: House was the night of of that happening in Kenosha. Um,
Speaker 1: and today we're gonna be talking about someone related to
Speaker 1: January six, um, the infamous zip tie guy, as he
Speaker 1: became known for like two days on the internet before
Speaker 1: he got his actual day. Um. First, I I guess
Speaker 1: I probably I probably In case you haven't listened to
Speaker 1: the previous episode, I did on written house, so probably
Speaker 1: kind of explain what open source stuff is and what
Speaker 1: like O sent is and verification. So it's about trying
Speaker 1: to track down information using open sources UM on the Internet.
Speaker 1: So in terms of like nothing is it's it's all.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's it's already sitting there. Nothing requires
Speaker 1: like special access, nothing requires you know, you're to hack
Speaker 1: into anyone system. UM, it's it's stuff is just the
Speaker 1: stuff that's already sitting there. The data, whether that be
Speaker 1: you know, geographical data, personal data, data from social media accounts,
Speaker 1: data from every time you've entered your email into a
Speaker 1: random website that you maybe didn't know quite what's going on,
Speaker 1: but you did it. Some that's that gets stored somewhere
Speaker 1: as data and someone can probably find it. UM. So
Speaker 1: it's all the stuff about you on the Internet that
Speaker 1: is all open if you do the digging. UM. Often
Speaker 1: cases this results in going through social media profiles UM.
Speaker 1: That is a good portion of Osan's work is learning
Speaker 1: how to use Google really well and how to how
Speaker 1: to how to go through social media UM. Start using
Speaker 1: like Google search operators, start using social media tools that
Speaker 1: help you sort through information. Because the information is there,
Speaker 1: You just have to learn how to sort through it, right,
Speaker 1: because there's just so much of it. Um. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of just to what open source stuff is. You mean,
Speaker 1: eventually you can get into the stuff like using like Python,
Speaker 1: using code and scrapers, like all that stuff is there too,
Speaker 1: but for our purposes, we're gonna stick to the more
Speaker 1: simplistic stuff because this is an audio format and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not going to start explaining Python code on a podcast, right. Um,
Speaker 1: So let's let's let's turn back the clocks a year, um,
Speaker 1: a little over a year, and it's January six. What's
Speaker 1: kind of you or your collective's reaction just to kind
Speaker 1: of watching things unfold? You know, Like as a researcher,
Speaker 1: every every time I look at these types of you know, protests,
Speaker 1: you know, whether they be big or small, always part
Speaker 1: of my brains, like trying to make connections and do
Speaker 1: stuff right. So, as January six is unfolding, what's what's
Speaker 1: kind of going through? Everyone at a post and press
Speaker 1: his head. The first thing that seemed to be collective
Speaker 1: in everybody's mind was, oh my god, none of these
Speaker 1: people are wearing face masks. Yea, like the immediate thing
Speaker 1: is this is probably going to be re really easy
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. There's nobody. Nobody is in
Speaker 1: any type of like block or trying to hide their
Speaker 1: identity in at all, something you see the European fascist
Speaker 1: actually doing more often. There was a I think of
Speaker 1: a video from Germany of a whole bunch of far
Speaker 1: right dudees just to eat in black block because black
Speaker 1: blocks a tactic. Um. So yeah, but in the States
Speaker 1: they're specifically January six, it was Yeah, no one was
Speaker 1: really worried about keeping their identity secret. They really did
Speaker 1: not think what they were doing was wrong. I think
Speaker 1: the other thing we were a lot of us were
Speaker 1: really angry. Um, just like we had been like yelling
Speaker 1: that this was gonna happen, screaming it out, like trying
Speaker 1: to get people to pay attention, and we got blown
Speaker 1: off so much. I remember, just like a few days before,
Speaker 1: I got in an argument with a Facebook friend and
Speaker 1: like people need to be paying attention, like they're planning something.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, it's fine, it's fine, and then you know,
Speaker 1: just a few days later, I'm like, oh, is it fine?
Speaker 1: Like that is kind of always the curse of surveilling
Speaker 1: all of these things, whether they be like a specific
Speaker 1: event or some movement in general. Right, people who are
Speaker 1: really into q and on before the Libs knew what
Speaker 1: Qunan was and we're warning about it for years before
Speaker 1: you know it resulted in people dying. Um. Right, That's
Speaker 1: that's kind of always the curse of these things is
Speaker 1: that it's it's you get. You get the mix of
Speaker 1: the shock and horder of the thing finally happening and
Speaker 1: a weird relief. It's it's, it's, it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: very bizarre feeling to watch these things unfold because you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm vindicated, but it sucks that I'm vindicated. Right. I remember,
Speaker 1: like the December watching all these groups, like I was
Speaker 1: just it was just filled with dread. Yea. I knew
Speaker 1: something was gonna happen. I didn't know what was gonna happen,
Speaker 1: and it was just so much anxiety. And then like
Speaker 1: it's funny, January six after it happened, like it all
Speaker 1: went away. I was able to get a dec at
Speaker 1: night sleep. Um, just because there was I didn't have
Speaker 1: that build up of suspense of what what is it
Speaker 1: going to be? What's it gonna look like? How bad
Speaker 1: is it going to be? Kind of had that release. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Unfortunately they were all like amateur, didn't know what they
Speaker 1: were doing, and it wasn't as bad as it could
Speaker 1: have been. Yeah. Well, I think as for the open
Speaker 1: source stuff, I'm going to kind of walk us through
Speaker 1: chronologically and of in terms of the journey of zip
Speaker 1: tie Guy because I was doing like archiving on January six,
Speaker 1: But zip Tike I was really the only dude I
Speaker 1: was interested in identifying. There was there was a lot
Speaker 1: of other people doing really great identification work. I was
Speaker 1: also generous six. I was going through all the social
Speaker 1: media history of Ashley Babbitt, archiving all of her Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook like years of stuff. I was to chronicle
Speaker 1: how she went from like an Obama voter to a
Speaker 1: Q and on from proponent. So that was what I
Speaker 1: was doing, and I was writing an article with Belling
Speaker 1: Cat about that. Um. But the only only other guy
Speaker 1: I wanted to identify was zip tie Guy because he
Speaker 1: was really interesting. He was one of the few guys
Speaker 1: that was masked up. UM. He had what he had
Speaker 1: visible weapons on him. He was obviously carrying zip ties.
Speaker 1: You know it gives you images of like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like they're planning to capture and execute people. That
Speaker 1: was like the general kind of vibe um of that.
Speaker 1: So he was the only person that I I was actually
Speaker 1: put work into identifying, and I put a decent amount
Speaker 1: of work in. Now I I failed where other people succeeded,
Speaker 1: and we can talk about like why in a sec
Speaker 1: But for like a day at least, all we had
Speaker 1: to go on was the picture of the guy holding
Speaker 1: the zip ties in a mask. Um. There's a few
Speaker 1: other pictures of him around from that day, but it's
Speaker 1: mostly mostly one picture and the biggest clue that we
Speaker 1: had to start with, Um, what what what? Why? Why
Speaker 1: don't you explain what the what the first clue is
Speaker 1: and how that maybe piqued your interest. He had two
Speaker 1: patches on his vest, and one of them was a
Speaker 1: thin blue line patch, but it was in this uh
Speaker 1: shape of the state of Tennessee. So so yeah, in
Speaker 1: terms of having a decent lead, that is like, okay,
Speaker 1: well that that narrows it down to one of fifties
Speaker 1: states probably right, Yeah, I should say I'm from Knoxville,
Speaker 1: so like it be in Tennessee that I picked up
Speaker 1: on that because that's my state. Yeah, that it becomes
Speaker 1: a local problem. I And as someone in Oregon, I
Speaker 1: definitely understand that feeling of of yeah, when fascism becomes
Speaker 1: a local problem of yeah. So that definitely piqued your
Speaker 1: interest specifically, but then also gives a really good lead
Speaker 1: for like where to look because Ozar, he's not trying
Speaker 1: to do a meta thing by tricking us into giving
Speaker 1: us a false lead. Generally people don't do that as
Speaker 1: often in real life as they do in television. Um
Speaker 1: but there's still has plenty of other ways to detect.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love I love detecting, and there's there's enough,
Speaker 1: there's enough stuff to do otherwise that making it needlessly
Speaker 1: complicated as Honestly, I'm fine with it not being that.
Speaker 1: Um So, yeah, we had we had that to go
Speaker 1: off initially, So starting looking for like far right activity
Speaker 1: in Tennessee. You know, I was an outsiders. I didn't
Speaker 1: really know where to start in terms of specific rallies,
Speaker 1: but I know, used, Uh, at what point did you
Speaker 1: start looking trying to like go through pictures of specific
Speaker 1: rallies to try to like match clothing or stuff. I
Speaker 1: think it was probably it may have been that day
Speaker 1: or the day after when I started going through the
Speaker 1: notebooks that I had, like names of just people we
Speaker 1: suspected may become problems, um, and I started looking at
Speaker 1: their profiles again and you know, didn't find anything. And
Speaker 1: in our research that we had already done, we didn't
Speaker 1: see anything on Yeah, I mean that was kind of
Speaker 1: the case for me as well. With just the picture
Speaker 1: of the zip tie, a guy with the patch, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a lead, but there wasn't tons to go on.
Speaker 1: But thankfully, thankfully are are good friends. At January six,
Speaker 1: we're giving us more clues as because as the Simpsons
Speaker 1: meme goes, videotaping this crime scene was the best idea
Speaker 1: we ever had. Um. So, like January I think seventh,
Speaker 1: there was a live stream video that was kind of
Speaker 1: circulating through like anti fascist group chats um. It was.
Speaker 1: It was posted like publicly to get everyone's attention on
Speaker 1: it on January eight, um, but for like a day
Speaker 1: it was kind of passing through back channels and throughout
Speaker 1: in this live stream, which is yeah, there was so
Speaker 1: many people were live streaming that night and it is
Speaker 1: a kind of surreal thing to watch of them. This
Speaker 1: this this live stream in particular, it is the zip
Speaker 1: Ti guy if you was friends, um, I think his
Speaker 1: mom and a few and just ranting the people from
Speaker 1: January six all hanging out at a hotel room, um
Speaker 1: towards like it's it is. It is the night of
Speaker 1: the sixth, and they're all just hanging out again totally
Speaker 1: like no masks, they're they're they're in a hotel lobby,
Speaker 1: no masks, um, and they're just like hanging out on
Speaker 1: chilly like sitting on the couch and chatting for like
Speaker 1: half an hour. It's one of the weirdest videos to watch.
Speaker 1: All all of the live streams from that night are
Speaker 1: so surreal because it is like this transitionary period of
Speaker 1: like after the capital attack but before every before like
Speaker 1: people like go down on them, so they don't really
Speaker 1: know how to behave They still think what they did
Speaker 1: was kind of fine, even though at this point, like
Speaker 1: I think like four or five people are dead. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's so weird just watch them just interact like
Speaker 1: such normal people in this moment like after they did
Speaker 1: this thing, then they go in this hotel room and
Speaker 1: they are acting completely normal. So it's it's just a
Speaker 1: weird video in general. But what it does have is
Speaker 1: someone in the same outfit as Zip Tie guy with
Speaker 1: no mask on. You actually actually can see his full face. Ye.
Speaker 1: Getting to see his full face was a big make
Speaker 1: it big help, big help, because we ever, everyone was
Speaker 1: looking for pictures of this guy without his mask all
Speaker 1: like for the entirety of the day. So now having
Speaker 1: a whole video where we gonna see like all of
Speaker 1: the angles of him was great. It was perfect. The
Speaker 1: best the best thing that was really the beauty of
Speaker 1: of all of of all of all the January six
Speaker 1: documentation is how many people were live streaming themselves doing
Speaker 1: crimes and their friends. Um it did. It did make
Speaker 1: the archiving and uh well not the archiving part. Archiving
Speaker 1: is always painful and tedious, but it made the actual
Speaker 1: research afterwards a lot easier because there was so much
Speaker 1: the documentation of it. So yeah, we we got we
Speaker 1: got this video. I'm gonna explain how I kind of
Speaker 1: took this video and failed to reach the conclusion, and
Speaker 1: then we can talk about how you succeeded. But first,
Speaker 1: but first we're gonna hear some ads from our lovely
Speaker 1: products and services. Robert was here for our previous recording,
Speaker 1: uh that we tried to end I failed, and he
Speaker 1: made some very good jokes uh and very good segways
Speaker 1: about how all of our sponsors support insurrection, just like
Speaker 1: January six, And if I tried to repeat the jokes,
Speaker 1: it will be stupid. So I'm just gonna I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna give you the sense there was a joke, and
Speaker 1: now you're gonna be left with that dissatisfaction. So bye, goodbye.
Speaker 1: Here's some ads. Okay, we're back, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: give an extremely brief rundown and how I failed to
Speaker 1: do uh well, I didn't fail to do research. I
Speaker 1: did research. I just didn't reach a proper conclusion. Um
Speaker 1: and I knew that. So the the the other the
Speaker 1: other thing about Zip Tie Guy he had he had
Speaker 1: the patch of like the thin blue line in Tennessee
Speaker 1: and then that's at Then I soon after got the
Speaker 1: video of his face and uh interacting with people. And
Speaker 1: the the other thing is I think, um we the
Speaker 1: hat he was wearing in the Zip Tie Guy photo
Speaker 1: was I think was tracked back to be um our
Speaker 1: favorite coffee company, Black Rifle Coffee merchandise. It was it
Speaker 1: was like what was what was one of the hats
Speaker 1: they sell. So me, being clever, I'm like, Okay, here's
Speaker 1: this Black Raffer Coffee hat, this patch in Tennessee. I
Speaker 1: know Black Ripe of Coffee is based out of Tennessee.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go look through everyone who works for Black
Speaker 1: Raff of Coffee, which you mean isn't a bad instinct
Speaker 1: as an outsider. But it did not. It did not succeed.
Speaker 1: But the funny thing is is that while looking through
Speaker 1: all the employees at Black Apple Coffee, all of them
Speaker 1: do look identical to Zip Tie guy. They all same characteristics.
Speaker 1: They all look exactly the same on their their beards,
Speaker 1: their nose, their forehead, their hair, all of them identical,
Speaker 1: every single one of them, to the point where the
Speaker 1: only way I could tell that it wasn't a Zip
Speaker 1: Tie guy was being like, Okay, no, he has a
Speaker 1: mole here, he has like a birthmark here. This way
Speaker 1: his like his eyes are his eye wrinkles are different.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's going down to the very like
Speaker 1: fine tuned facial features because all of their face shapes
Speaker 1: are like I tentical. I think there's a point that
Speaker 1: I had the same instinct. I think I know there's
Speaker 1: a point that I went through, um the black Coffee Rifle,
Speaker 1: all of their people look, Um, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was for Eric Wntel or if it was like
Speaker 1: maybe around the written house stuff. I don't know. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that that's that's what I spent my time doing,
Speaker 1: is going through everybody who works there of Uh. But
Speaker 1: but by the time I kind of gave up on that,
Speaker 1: the identity was already discovered, um and posted by your
Speaker 1: team at a possum press. So how how did you
Speaker 1: get from you know, this zip Tygi picture than the
Speaker 1: light the archived livestream video of him without without a mask,
Speaker 1: to to the point where you could say, hey, this
Speaker 1: is his name? Well I was, I wasn't even really
Speaker 1: in cont hacked with Like we as a group weren't
Speaker 1: messaging each other trying to figure this out together, but
Speaker 1: we were, like it turns out a few of us
Speaker 1: were working separately. So while I'm going through social media, UM,
Speaker 1: a friend in Nashville was um going through pictures of
Speaker 1: the protests from there over the summer, and they ended
Speaker 1: up finding about five different pictures, I think, and we
Speaker 1: knew we knew most of the people in the pictures
Speaker 1: that are maybe like one or two that we did
Speaker 1: not know, and one was always Eric Munchell and he's
Speaker 1: wearing the exact same gear he wore January six. Um,
Speaker 1: I say, Eric Munchel, we didn't know his name yet then,
Speaker 1: so um, from there, we kind of we went ahead
Speaker 1: and posted what we had to Twitter, and then we
Speaker 1: went back to the social media and I started looking
Speaker 1: through the profiles that were the people we knew, and
Speaker 1: sure enough, one of them, Kurt Dennis, had a live
Speaker 1: stream that was telling the story, um, the same story
Speaker 1: that Eric Mutchell told him, that thirty minute video and
Speaker 1: he actually while telling it, he's like, yeah, my buddy Eric.
Speaker 1: So at that point we go to his friend's list
Speaker 1: and sure enough, he only has one Eric there and
Speaker 1: it's Eric Mutchell. And there we go to that page
Speaker 1: and find some of the same gear in the background
Speaker 1: of the pictures that he has publicly posted. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: like puts the pictures of him and his gear with
Speaker 1: like guns, and yeah, you can you can track all
Speaker 1: of his like facial like like like like birthmarks and stuff.
Speaker 1: They're all the same. So yeah, you and that that's you.
Speaker 1: You definitely got him of Yeah, their own mistakes Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's my favorite part. Like they they gave us
Speaker 1: his identity. They often, if not handing themselves to you
Speaker 1: on a silver pilatter, they at least have a platter. Um.
Speaker 1: They they often there's often enough bread, right. The reason
Speaker 1: why these things are solved because there are enough bread
Speaker 1: comes to follow and often they kind of leave pretty
Speaker 1: big chunks of bread. Um. Just the fact that again
Speaker 1: added to the surreal aspect of that whole live stream video,
Speaker 1: the fact that he's like you matched it by telling
Speaker 1: the same You can hear them someone tell the same story.
Speaker 1: It's just such a weird, weird, surreal thing. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I think in terms of like oas and stuff, what
Speaker 1: this case study in particular really highlights is the importance
Speaker 1: of archival stuff. Right. The reason why you were able
Speaker 1: to solve this and not me because I wasn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: I did my own archival thing for archiving, like the video.
Speaker 1: But um, the way that you were able to really
Speaker 1: crack this open and everyone else who worked on it
Speaker 1: is because you had like those lists of connections of
Speaker 1: people who are already kind of active in this like
Speaker 1: al right far right scene within your local community, Like
Speaker 1: you already had documentation of the major players who they
Speaker 1: interact with, or you already had pictures of this guy
Speaker 1: in gear with other known people. So the fact that
Speaker 1: there was already previously work archived really made the success
Speaker 1: of this so much more possible. That's what they uh
Speaker 1: People's Plaza and Nashville during their protests, they were really
Speaker 1: big on documenting. Um they documented everything with the police
Speaker 1: and um any counter protesters they would. They had professional
Speaker 1: photographers out there making sure we had good, clear quality
Speaker 1: pictures of like everybody on the other side as well,
Speaker 1: and that definitely helped us a lot. Yeah, because especially
Speaker 1: before January six, they there was they did a decent
Speaker 1: job of archiving themselves, well not not archiving, but like
Speaker 1: filming themselves and documenting themselves. And then you know, it
Speaker 1: takes takes other research to then archive that. So not
Speaker 1: only important just to like look at the research and
Speaker 1: look at like the documentation of the that people do
Speaker 1: of themselves, but then make sure that you have a
Speaker 1: source for that that's not their own uploading of it. Right. So,
Speaker 1: like a great example is like all of the live
Speaker 1: streams from January six, including like this one from this
Speaker 1: hotel room. Pretty soon it was deleted by the person
Speaker 1: who posted it because they realized, oh maybe I shouldn't
Speaker 1: have this living record of my crimes. Um. But at
Speaker 1: that point people already saved the video. They already like,
Speaker 1: I already ran it through a video of saving program
Speaker 1: that I had. UM. So it's it's important not only
Speaker 1: to get archiving, having having having previous documentation of people
Speaker 1: and known players, but then as new information is coming out,
Speaker 1: make sure you make separate copies of that for your
Speaker 1: own sake so that you actually have it and then
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be stuck looking for something that's gone. Right.
Speaker 1: The worst case scenarios to like you know that there
Speaker 1: was an important thing, but you just don't have access
Speaker 1: to it anymore. It's like you you remember seeing it,
Speaker 1: you didn't say it, and now it's gone. That's a
Speaker 1: horrible feeling to do when you're trying to get this
Speaker 1: kind of research done. UM. And like it happens, we all,
Speaker 1: we all make mistakes like this. UM, I definitely have
Speaker 1: it happened to me actually this week. Yeah, it happens
Speaker 1: all the time, and it happens to be. It happens
Speaker 1: to be all the time. I'll look at something to
Speaker 1: be like I should probably save this. I get distracted
Speaker 1: or I just don't want to because archindague is boring
Speaker 1: and tedious, and then I check again that's gone. I'm like,
Speaker 1: well that's should I should have archived it. Yea. So
Speaker 1: on top of all of the archiving stuff, which in general,
Speaker 1: anti fascist research is really that that's the thing that
Speaker 1: really excels at even like um above above journalism is like,
Speaker 1: you know, getting like traditional journalism is like getting a
Speaker 1: good documentation of like key fascist players in your area,
Speaker 1: key people who are kind of pushing far right stuff
Speaker 1: and far right violence. Actually getting like a good a good,
Speaker 1: a good idea of who they are and having that
Speaker 1: knowledge always handy. Um is something that this type of
Speaker 1: research is is really that that is really what it
Speaker 1: excels at, or like what what the what those researchers
Speaker 1: excel at? This is the thing that they do very well.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us probably started doing it
Speaker 1: just out of curiosity looking into people, and that that
Speaker 1: is certainly how I started, Like I've been doing it
Speaker 1: long before. I just didn't know that's what it was called,
Speaker 1: because like I'd see somebody make a messed up common
Speaker 1: online I'm like, who is this person? And then you know,
Speaker 1: trying to find as much as I can about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that is certainly how I got started with this
Speaker 1: type of thing, because it can be fun to look
Speaker 1: for bad people. It is, it is. It is kind
Speaker 1: of pleasurable UM and one of one of the again
Speaker 1: another big contributing factor. And how you got Zip tie guy,
Speaker 1: How how I got and how how a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff works UM is uh the beauty of Facebook
Speaker 1: as a research tool because often in order in order
Speaker 1: in order to do the archiving, you need to have
Speaker 1: stuff to archive, and a lot of the stuff that
Speaker 1: gets posted from these things by the people doing them
Speaker 1: UM is done on Facebook, or at least it used
Speaker 1: to write the past five years, really, Facebook has been
Speaker 1: the main main source of this UM. Now it's maybe
Speaker 1: now people are kind of getting wise and maybe some
Speaker 1: STU is moving to telegram. Facebook is becoming a little
Speaker 1: little bit less important of a platform for this type
Speaker 1: of research. And I know Facebook has changed the way
Speaker 1: that they um that you can use their service, so
Speaker 1: it does make research kind of harder in some ways,
Speaker 1: but but even still it is it is one of
Speaker 1: the better tools to UM to dig into certain types
Speaker 1: of people, because there is certain types of people who
Speaker 1: are going to be more likely to use Facebook. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, in terms of how getting Facebook was the method,
Speaker 1: it's not where the place where you're able to make
Speaker 1: the link between the fascist you already knew and and
Speaker 1: eric um because of because you are you already you
Speaker 1: you already knew who the players were, and that Facebook
Speaker 1: had the visualized network to actually make those connections. So
Speaker 1: Facebook itself and social media in general is really is
Speaker 1: really useful. And then in terms of how this operate,
Speaker 1: it's like going through friends lists is really easy. Um,
Speaker 1: but oftentimes a lot of people will not maybe have
Speaker 1: those public um and what what Then there's again it's
Speaker 1: not a dead road. You can still look through likes,
Speaker 1: you can still look through shares, you can still look
Speaker 1: through like, um if you like people are tagged in photos.
Speaker 1: Um it really it really is a is a great
Speaker 1: is a great system that is good at making you
Speaker 1: not have privacy. That is the thing. It really it
Speaker 1: really excels it. Yeah. And even even if people don't
Speaker 1: have like an active social media presence per se um,
Speaker 1: it can still be really useful in getting specific names
Speaker 1: of people or or just make or just having a
Speaker 1: connection be known like this. This was mostly how I
Speaker 1: was able to identify the all the anonymous UM riot
Speaker 1: cops in when when the Portland Police Bureau took took
Speaker 1: away their badge numbers and names. UM, is that I
Speaker 1: could get like a list of cops and we could
Speaker 1: start figuring out like, okay, this is probably this is
Speaker 1: this is this is pre cops previously on the right team, right,
Speaker 1: and start doing facial matching UM. And then if I
Speaker 1: want to learn out, if if I want to if
Speaker 1: I want to learn more information about like their first name,
Speaker 1: and more information about them in general, even if they
Speaker 1: don't have a social media profile, often their wife might
Speaker 1: or their mom might. You know, there's a UM And
Speaker 1: in terms of fun sentences to say, really learning how
Speaker 1: to exploit people's family as a weakness is is is
Speaker 1: wonderful um for this type of stalking stalking bad people. UM.
Speaker 1: Because Yeah, because a lot of a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of the riot cops were smart enough to not
Speaker 1: to at least to either not have their presence at
Speaker 1: all on the internet UM or to have it very
Speaker 1: locked down in terms of you know, no one can
Speaker 1: see their posts, no one can see their friends. No
Speaker 1: one can see anything, but still their wife will occasionally
Speaker 1: tag them in photos or uh maybe not even photos
Speaker 1: of them, but like they'll they'll just take them in
Speaker 1: a photo of like their kid or something. And then
Speaker 1: this just creates more ways to make connections so that
Speaker 1: you can, you know, learn more about these specific people. Um,
Speaker 1: because sometimes that's fun and interesting. I've noticed some people
Speaker 1: with socks that I've found their identity. It's by going
Speaker 1: through the likes and seeing, um, you know, the same
Speaker 1: woman is always the first to put a heart react there,
Speaker 1: and you can go to their pages. Sometimes it's a
Speaker 1: little if you go through their pictures and you see
Speaker 1: a picture of the guy there with they'll have like
Speaker 1: somebody in the comments, oh Mark looks really good, they're something.
Speaker 1: You know. Naming the husband from thery you can get
Speaker 1: the last thing you know, you've know the wife's last name,
Speaker 1: you have a good chance of that being their last name. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So family families really is really great pro finding people
Speaker 1: because because like all of the other research is is
Speaker 1: learning how to make these open source connections, right, A
Speaker 1: lot a lot of it is connections and networking, and
Speaker 1: people usually always have an innate connection and networking and
Speaker 1: that that that is their family. UM. And often this
Speaker 1: like extends out in terms of you know, political organizing,
Speaker 1: whether you're part of you know, militias or just kind
Speaker 1: of smaller groups. Yeah, that is another network. Um friends
Speaker 1: is another network. But you know, for people who are
Speaker 1: kind of are are more locked down, it is possible
Speaker 1: to find the information about people, um, you know, especially
Speaker 1: if if they have like if they have like a
Speaker 1: not very common last name, you know, that can make
Speaker 1: finding information about them much easier if using tools like Facebook. Um.
Speaker 1: And then it's you know, just a matter of doing
Speaker 1: all the other you know, open source research of you know,
Speaker 1: comparing clothing, um, you know, and comparing to what other
Speaker 1: kind of information you already know about the person, email addresses,
Speaker 1: phone numbers, if you can, you know, get that, get
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff as well. But I think that's
Speaker 1: all he had on zip tie guy out mostly. M Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's a really easy one. There's not a whole lot
Speaker 1: to really dive into their Yeah. No, for for someone
Speaker 1: for someone who was one of the few people masked up,
Speaker 1: wasn't was not was not that hard to find. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, the fact that he was found by local
Speaker 1: people in his area. Not surprising. Um. That's another thing
Speaker 1: anti fascist research is really good at, is that type
Speaker 1: of local research because you know they they have they
Speaker 1: have all those local connections, they have those local um
Speaker 1: documentation of like a political events that have happened in
Speaker 1: their area. So again it's the the importance of of
Speaker 1: having stuff archives and having stuff like sorted and having
Speaker 1: stuff organized well so you can access your archived information
Speaker 1: is really important. It's it's it sucks that it's it's
Speaker 1: the part of OS and I hate the most. Everyone.
Speaker 1: Everyone hates. Everyone hates. I'm I'm sure there's some sick
Speaker 1: of out there who likes it, but everyone else, everyone
Speaker 1: else hates all of the We hate all this organizing
Speaker 1: and sorting. And I find archiving to be tedious. Archiving videos,
Speaker 1: live streams, it's tedious, it's difficult. Um, it's done, it's
Speaker 1: time consuming, it's repetitive, it's not generally not a good time,
Speaker 1: but it is so useful and in the long run
Speaker 1: of trying to get these like a list of of
Speaker 1: like established players in your area, this is how you
Speaker 1: start seeing patterns. Right. You need to have this information
Speaker 1: already laid out so you can actually watch the patterns unfold.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it's just a whole bunch of chaotic information that
Speaker 1: means nothing. So it's it's super important, as as much
Speaker 1: of a bummer as it may be. Yeah, let's see, UM,
Speaker 1: is there anything you've been working on since then that
Speaker 1: you like that you would like to talk about, or
Speaker 1: any upcoming research projects? Right now, I'm really focused on
Speaker 1: our local UM school board, and you know, like many
Speaker 1: towns across the country, we have fascists trying to take
Speaker 1: it over and going to the meetings, and so I've
Speaker 1: been watching that group very closely for the last several months,
Speaker 1: since probably about October. Our school year, we started out
Speaker 1: without a mask mandate UM and a couple of parrots
Speaker 1: UM who's children need like they're there, I mean a
Speaker 1: compromise like their their kids need the everybody else to
Speaker 1: wear a mask. So their parents sued the school board
Speaker 1: and our governor UM to have a mass band aid.
Speaker 1: The judge issued an injunction and like the next Monday,
Speaker 1: all the schools had to wear a mask, and the
Speaker 1: anti mask crowd is like losing their ship over it.
Speaker 1: Still UM trying to figure out how to fire the judge. Um,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, we have a member of Patriot Church
Speaker 1: who's involved in it, and you know they're the ones
Speaker 1: with the Church of plan Parenthood. It's Ken Peter too.
Speaker 1: I think he's from Washington, yes, spoken, I believe, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's he's moved down here. Um. I think he
Speaker 1: still goes up there to the to the church stuff,
Speaker 1: but most of his time is spent down here in
Speaker 1: Tennessee and causing just as much trouble as he does
Speaker 1: up there and his followers. So I'm curious to see
Speaker 1: how how does a research project like this school board
Speaker 1: thing differ from like the research surrounding you know, trying
Speaker 1: to identify someone at January six. Oh, for one, this
Speaker 1: is local. It's you know, I'm going to the school
Speaker 1: board meetings. Um. I know it's easier to know where
Speaker 1: to look for this because like I'm watching it as
Speaker 1: it happening where you like, you know, January six. Most
Speaker 1: of those people you have no clue where to even
Speaker 1: start from. Um. So this more now, it's it's monitoring
Speaker 1: and documenting as we've you know, figure out who these
Speaker 1: people are, like linking Telegram names with Facebook names and
Speaker 1: all of that. So I guess now, it's more record
Speaker 1: keeping and getting that documentation done early, so when one
Speaker 1: of them goes too far, we have and we haven't ready.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's that's the sad part where it's
Speaker 1: like you're watching innevitive inevitability almost as it can mean.
Speaker 1: But that's yeah, that's also how like January six works. Right,
Speaker 1: We were able to identify these people because there was
Speaker 1: a lot of documentation of a lot of major players already. Right,
Speaker 1: So a lot of the work in between these big
Speaker 1: protests and events is is the is this is the slow,
Speaker 1: tedious documentation because we have to do it now so
Speaker 1: that it's a useful later. Let's you know, a big
Speaker 1: part of research is like, yeah, trying to spot potential,
Speaker 1: you know, issues and archiving it and then if the
Speaker 1: issue ever becomes a bigger issue, you already have information
Speaker 1: on it, right, whether that be you know, watching someone
Speaker 1: online who you might think is who like, watching someone
Speaker 1: who's like a Nazi who you might be worried that
Speaker 1: like they're posting and plans about how to kill people.
Speaker 1: You're like, okay, so probably look into this dude, because
Speaker 1: he's doing this in case he does something in the future.
Speaker 1: Um it is that is kind of it sucks because yeah,
Speaker 1: you are watching this thing where you feel kind of helpless,
Speaker 1: but you know that documenting it is worthwhile. Um they ye. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing where like you don't want to
Speaker 1: be vindicated, but if it does been, it's better to
Speaker 1: be prepared because I don't think people realize like how
Speaker 1: much anti fascist research, how much of this type of
Speaker 1: like ohs and stuff like my journalism, Like most of
Speaker 1: the work that you put into it is never seen.
Speaker 1: Even if you do complete investigations. Sometimes by the end
Speaker 1: you're like it's getting getting them, getting them out in
Speaker 1: enough time for them to be useful. Sometimes it isn't
Speaker 1: even worth it. Um. So you know a lot of
Speaker 1: it is you know, writing stuff and doing research that
Speaker 1: never actually sees the light of day for a long
Speaker 1: long time. Right with Eric Mountchell, we had like probably
Speaker 1: twenty people we had on our list too, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't even one of them. Yeah, so you do all
Speaker 1: this and like on one hand, it almost felt in
Speaker 1: a moment like all of that we did was really
Speaker 1: for nothing, But now it did lead to Yeah, it
Speaker 1: did lead And even when you do find the correct answer,
Speaker 1: sometimes sometimes could via circumstances. You know, it's not something
Speaker 1: you need to put about immediately. Sometimes it's worth just
Speaker 1: you know, hanging onto um and not being super super
Speaker 1: public about every horrible thing you find. It's not like
Speaker 1: you don't need to post every time you find a
Speaker 1: horrible thing on Telegram. You don't. You don't need to
Speaker 1: tell Twitter that. It's like it's it's about collecting these
Speaker 1: things and keeping them there for future use. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on to talk with
Speaker 1: me again, um, after after already already discussing, uh, mostly
Speaker 1: the same things. Where can people follow your stuff online?
Speaker 1: We're on Twitter at um at a possum press really easy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're on Facebook. We don't actually do much on Facebook. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed now, you probably probably shouldn't like in
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, a lot of like fashions
Speaker 1: organizing that used to be done in primarily like Facebook
Speaker 1: groups or just even just like through the like incidental
Speaker 1: organizing through just through like posting and cross posting. A
Speaker 1: lot of that has been moved over to Telegram. At
Speaker 1: this point. Telegram is kind of the new main nexus,
Speaker 1: whereas Facebook and like the days of the early alts right,
Speaker 1: Facebook was a pretty big nexus for like the more
Speaker 1: normalis right. You know, it's there, there is actually fascist
Speaker 1: forms that we're doing organizing, but as a place for again,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people in January six who didn't
Speaker 1: really know what they were doing was wrong. They were
Speaker 1: mostly you know, make America Great Again people or Q
Speaker 1: and on people. A good portion of like most of
Speaker 1: them were not you know, swastika waving Nazis. Um. They
Speaker 1: may they may agree with fascist ideas, but they don't
Speaker 1: they don't self describe as Nazis. So like um. But
Speaker 1: we're even seeing after after January six with you know,
Speaker 1: um Facebook like cracking down on these groups, other platforms
Speaker 1: like Partla going offline, a lot of these normies themselves
Speaker 1: or even migrating onto Telegram. Um. So you know, Facebook
Speaker 1: used to be a really great read research tool, and
Speaker 1: I'm using it less and left less and less often
Speaker 1: now unfortunately, because I mean it really didn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of strong suits. Telegram does have his own strong suits,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it's still it's still different. I
Speaker 1: think the normans moved into Telegram is troubling though, because
Speaker 1: a way easier time that is there. That is the
Speaker 1: obvious thing is Yeah, now that those groups are in
Speaker 1: closer proximity, it's easier for one to seep into the other,
Speaker 1: whereas before there was more of that distinction. Um. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is a worrying thing that I believe we've talked
Speaker 1: about before and we'll talk about again um in the
Speaker 1: future in terms of having this like fascist milieu or
Speaker 1: cultic milieu, UM of a place where the the amount
Speaker 1: of the amount of overlap between you know, your uncle
Speaker 1: who's a regular Conservative and you know a member of
Speaker 1: Adam often or you know someone who wishes they remember
Speaker 1: of Adam often, UM is very small. It's a very
Speaker 1: these they are, they are very close together. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for talking about all of these things on
Speaker 1: our on our second osand case study episode. Like guess
Speaker 1: big big big takeaways is uh, archiving is great, archive
Speaker 1: live streams, archived things because it's better to have them
Speaker 1: um and not use them than not have them and
Speaker 1: need them. UM. And then you know, archiving and documenting
Speaker 1: local fascists is really great, even for things beyond your locality,
Speaker 1: like in January six. Um. So those are those are
Speaker 1: my main takeaways from this and uh, you know, also
Speaker 1: everyone in Black Life Coffee, they all, they all look
Speaker 1: like everyone at Day six, all of them do they
Speaker 1: do all right? That doesn't for us. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I can follow the metoposs and press um. Good bye, everybody.
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