It's hard to imagine a fact-checker or investigator who doesn't regularly consult Bellingcat's list of OSINT tools. Until 2018, it was a Google document, then a Google spreadsheet, and since September 24, 2024, an updated toolkit available on the Gitbook platform. We'll tell you how it works, what you can find in it and how to use it.
Programs and platforms appear and disappear, stop working, and go from free to paid, so finding the necessary tool to solve a specific problem sometimes takes a lot of time. Bellingcat surveys in 2022 and 2023 showed that up to 85% of investigators surveyed had difficulty finding the right technical tools. There are hundreds of programs and scripts and thousands of articles and collections talking about them, but the completeness and relevance of the instructions, as well as the effectiveness of the solutions, is always a big question - in order to keep any list up-to-date, significant effort and time are required.
From the very beginning, the mission of Bellingcat's Online Investigations Toolkit has been to make online investigative tools easier to find. And now this task looks adequately, conveniently and effectively solved. Including because to process a document from a Google spreadsheet into Gitbook, a survey of 40 investigators was conducted and their wishes were taken into account, the most important of which was regular updates and relevance of information.
On the one hand, the new toolkit is built according to the same compositional scheme as previous. As before, most of the tools included in the list are free and divided into the same main categories: maps and satellites, geolocation, analysis of photos and videos, searching for data on people and companies, transport, military conflicts, website analysis, archiving, etc. However, if the table that investigators used for about six previous years described only the basic functionality and distribution model (paid or free), in the Gitbook format investigative programs, platforms and scripts are commented on much more in detail.
The page for each list item contains a link to the tool itself, information about the price, level of difficulty of use, system requirements, restrictions (for example, whether authorization is required), the availability of guides in different languages, known cases of use in investigations, information about the creator of the tool, and the presence or absence of advertising trackers. And also an important block dedicated to the ethical aspect: if the use of a platform, program or script may raise any ethical issues (including issues of impact on energy consumption and the environment), this will be indicated in the description.
Not all tools are currently accompanied by such detailed comments, but the Github community has already joined the work on the project. Among other things, this means that the Bellingcat toolkit will be constantly updated under the control of “guardians” from the investigative team itself.
Bellingcat's Gitbook also includes collections of OSINT instructions, guide on safety and list useful newsletters. All of the above makes this the most complete and accessible list of tools for online investigations in 2024.
