Why I will not help you find where a soldier lives
OSINT is a method. Doxxing with good intentions is still doxxing
Contents
After my geolocation post I got several DMs. Most were nice. Three asked the same thing: there is a video of a Russian soldier, can you find his home address, his family, his mother's page. One person wrote "you are Ukrainian, you should want this more than me".
I understand the feeling. I have it too. My answer is still no, and here is why, so I do not have to write it in DMs again.
1. You will get the wrong person
Face matching from a blurry video is unreliable. Same name, same city, similar face, and suddenly a random man and his kids are getting messages. This has happened many times. The famous example is the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, when an online crowd "identified" a student who had nothing to do with it, and his family suffered for it. The crowd was confident. The crowd was wrong.
2. Even if you are right, the address is not only his
His mother lives there. Maybe children. Neighbours. Publishing a home address is not justice, it is an invitation for someone else to do something you will not control.
3. Evidence has a proper place
If a video shows a crime, the useful thing is to preserve it properly and give it to people who build cases: national prosecutors, international investigators, documentation groups. Not a Telegram channel. What I do instead:
- Save the original file, not a screen recording. Record where and when you found it.
- Hash it:
sha256sum video.mp4, and keep the hash with your notes, so later you can show the file was not changed. - Archive the page (Wayback Machine, archive.today).
- Geolocate and date the event, not the person.
If you want to learn how this is done seriously, read the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations. It is free and it is written exactly for this.
4. In this topic, it is a ban
Rules say no doxxing. This includes "just public info put together". Compiling it is the act.
I know some of you will say this is soft. Fine. I would rather be soft than be the reason an innocent man gets hurt because he looks like someone in a video.
Written by
Marta Kovalenko
Backend dev (Python, Postgres) and OSINT hobbyist. From Zaporizhzhia, in Kraków since March 2022. Geolocation, satellite imagery, verifying before sharing. Post a claim without a source in my topic and I will ask for one. Слава Україні.
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