February 9, 2022 • 40 mins
A member of the Opossum Press collective talks with Garrison about how they ID’ed the January 6th ‘Ziptie Guy.’
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to It could happen here the podcast we already
recorded and I messed up UM or something happened with
the zoom and we lost the audio. So now we're
recording it again as is, as is the cycle of life. UM.
Thankfully I can. I'm now on my tenth shot of
Espresso of the day and it is eight pm, so
I'm I'm ready, I'm I'm ready this time. Today, we're
(00:26):
gonna be doing another one of our chronicles into open
source and O SENT style research or open source verification
and this kind of side of of generally, you know,
this is kind of a field of like anti fascist
research UM and journalism. So we're looking at one of
these case studies UM. But today I have someone with me,
(00:50):
Alistair from Opossum Press is here to talk about SENT
and UH and this type of research. Hello, Hey, thank
you for being with me again on this on this call,
on the very experience for us. I would actually first
(01:10):
like to talk about how Opossum Press got started as
like a collective of of people dedicated towards this goal
of you know, surveying the fascist creep. UM. I had
an interest in UM and journalism. I have no experience
in it. But I have other friends that are into
(01:32):
writing and stuff, and I just kind of reached out
to friends and like, Hey, would anybody be interested in
doing this? And um, there are several friends that were like, hell, yeah,
let's do this. And that's pretty much it. After we
got it all formed. Um, we set up some open
source intel like workshops and we've about every other week
(01:56):
we get together for two or three hours and learned
stuff that sounds that sounds lovely actually, Um, most of
my stuff is usually done alone in my computer dark
when I'm on my again tenth cup of coffee of
the day. Doing O sent in a group of people
like that sounds like it could be actually kind of fun.
So yeah, we're gonna In our last episode, we talked
(02:16):
about how I tracked down and found out who written
House was the night of of that happening in Kenosha. Um,
and today we're gonna be talking about someone related to
January six, um, the infamous zip tie guy, as he
became known for like two days on the internet before
(02:37):
he got his actual day. Um. First, I I guess
I probably I probably In case you haven't listened to
the previous episode, I did on written house, so probably
kind of explain what open source stuff is and what
like O sent is and verification. So it's about trying
to track down information using open sources UM on the Internet.
So in terms of like nothing is it's it's all.
(03:00):
It's it's it's it's it's already sitting there. Nothing requires
like special access, nothing requires you know, you're to hack
into anyone system. UM, it's it's stuff is just the
stuff that's already sitting there. The data, whether that be
you know, geographical data, personal data, data from social media accounts,
data from every time you've entered your email into a
(03:20):
random website that you maybe didn't know quite what's going on,
but you did it. Some that's that gets stored somewhere
as data and someone can probably find it. UM. So
it's all the stuff about you on the Internet that
is all open if you do the digging. UM. Often
cases this results in going through social media profiles UM.
That is a good portion of Osan's work is learning
(03:42):
how to use Google really well and how to how
to how to go through social media UM. Start using
like Google search operators, start using social media tools that
help you sort through information. Because the information is there,
You just have to learn how to sort through it, right,
because there's just so much of it. Um. So that's
kind of just to what open source stuff is. You mean,
eventually you can get into the stuff like using like Python,
(04:04):
using code and scrapers, like all that stuff is there too,
but for our purposes, we're gonna stick to the more
simplistic stuff because this is an audio format and I'm
I'm not going to start explaining Python code on a podcast, right. Um,
So let's let's let's turn back the clocks a year, um,
a little over a year, and it's January six. What's
(04:27):
kind of you or your collective's reaction just to kind
of watching things unfold? You know, Like as a researcher,
every every time I look at these types of you know, protests,
you know, whether they be big or small, always part
of my brains, like trying to make connections and do
stuff right. So, as January six is unfolding, what's what's
kind of going through? Everyone at a post and press
his head. The first thing that seemed to be collective
(04:49):
in everybody's mind was, oh my god, none of these
people are wearing face masks. Yea, like the immediate thing
is this is probably going to be re really easy
for a lot of people. There's nobody. Nobody is in
any type of like block or trying to hide their
identity in at all, something you see the European fascist
(05:10):
actually doing more often. There was a I think of
a video from Germany of a whole bunch of far
right dudees just to eat in black block because black
blocks a tactic. Um. So yeah, but in the States
they're specifically January six, it was Yeah, no one was
really worried about keeping their identity secret. They really did
not think what they were doing was wrong. I think
(05:30):
the other thing we were a lot of us were
really angry. Um, just like we had been like yelling
that this was gonna happen, screaming it out, like trying
to get people to pay attention, and we got blown
off so much. I remember, just like a few days before,
I got in an argument with a Facebook friend and
(05:53):
like people need to be paying attention, like they're planning something.
They're like, oh, it's fine, it's fine, and then you know,
just a few days later, I'm like, oh, is it fine?
Like that is kind of always the curse of surveilling
all of these things, whether they be like a specific
event or some movement in general. Right, people who are
really into q and on before the Libs knew what
(06:13):
Qunan was and we're warning about it for years before
you know it resulted in people dying. Um. Right, That's
that's kind of always the curse of these things is
that it's it's you get. You get the mix of
the shock and horder of the thing finally happening and
a weird relief. It's it's, it's, it's it's it's a
very bizarre feeling to watch these things unfold because you're like, oh,
(06:36):
I'm vindicated, but it sucks that I'm vindicated. Right. I remember,
like the December watching all these groups, like I was
just it was just filled with dread. Yea. I knew
something was gonna happen. I didn't know what was gonna happen,
and it was just so much anxiety. And then like
it's funny, January six after it happened, like it all
(06:58):
went away. I was able to get a dec at
night sleep. Um, just because there was I didn't have
that build up of suspense of what what is it
going to be? What's it gonna look like? How bad
is it going to be? Kind of had that release. Yeah,
Unfortunately they were all like amateur, didn't know what they
were doing, and it wasn't as bad as it could
(07:20):
have been. Yeah. Well, I think as for the open
source stuff, I'm going to kind of walk us through
chronologically and of in terms of the journey of zip
tie Guy because I was doing like archiving on January six,
But zip Tike I was really the only dude I
was interested in identifying. There was there was a lot
(07:41):
of other people doing really great identification work. I was
also generous six. I was going through all the social
media history of Ashley Babbitt, archiving all of her Twitter
and Facebook like years of stuff. I was to chronicle
how she went from like an Obama voter to a
Q and on from proponent. So that was what I
was doing, and I was writing an article with Belling
(08:02):
Cat about that. Um. But the only only other guy
I wanted to identify was zip tie Guy because he
was really interesting. He was one of the few guys
that was masked up. UM. He had what he had
visible weapons on him. He was obviously carrying zip ties.
You know it gives you images of like, oh yeah,
it's like they're planning to capture and execute people. That
was like the general kind of vibe um of that.
(08:25):
So he was the only person that I I was actually
put work into identifying, and I put a decent amount
of work in. Now I I failed where other people succeeded,
and we can talk about like why in a sec
But for like a day at least, all we had
to go on was the picture of the guy holding
the zip ties in a mask. Um. There's a few
(08:47):
other pictures of him around from that day, but it's
mostly mostly one picture and the biggest clue that we
had to start with, Um, what what what? Why? Why
don't you explain what the what the first clue is
and how that maybe piqued your interest. He had two
patches on his vest, and one of them was a
thin blue line patch, but it was in this uh
(09:07):
shape of the state of Tennessee. So so yeah, in
terms of having a decent lead, that is like, okay,
well that that narrows it down to one of fifties
states probably right, Yeah, I should say I'm from Knoxville,
so like it be in Tennessee that I picked up
on that because that's my state. Yeah, that it becomes
(09:28):
a local problem. I And as someone in Oregon, I
definitely understand that feeling of of yeah, when fascism becomes
a local problem of yeah. So that definitely piqued your
interest specifically, but then also gives a really good lead
for like where to look because Ozar, he's not trying
to do a meta thing by tricking us into giving
(09:50):
us a false lead. Generally people don't do that as
often in real life as they do in television. Um
but there's still has plenty of other ways to detect.
I mean, I love I love detecting, and there's there's enough,
there's enough stuff to do otherwise that making it needlessly
complicated as Honestly, I'm fine with it not being that.
(10:10):
Um So, yeah, we had we had that to go
off initially, So starting looking for like far right activity
in Tennessee. You know, I was an outsiders. I didn't
really know where to start in terms of specific rallies,
but I know, used, Uh, at what point did you
start looking trying to like go through pictures of specific
(10:30):
rallies to try to like match clothing or stuff. I
think it was probably it may have been that day
or the day after when I started going through the
notebooks that I had, like names of just people we
suspected may become problems, um, and I started looking at
their profiles again and you know, didn't find anything. And
(10:56):
in our research that we had already done, we didn't
see anything on Yeah, I mean that was kind of
the case for me as well. With just the picture
of the zip tie, a guy with the patch, I mean,
it's it's a lead, but there wasn't tons to go on.
But thankfully, thankfully are are good friends. At January six,
we're giving us more clues as because as the Simpsons
(11:19):
meme goes, videotaping this crime scene was the best idea
we ever had. Um. So, like January I think seventh,
there was a live stream video that was kind of
circulating through like anti fascist group chats um. It was.
It was posted like publicly to get everyone's attention on
it on January eight, um, but for like a day
it was kind of passing through back channels and throughout
(11:41):
in this live stream, which is yeah, there was so
many people were live streaming that night and it is
a kind of surreal thing to watch of them. This
this this live stream in particular, it is the zip
Ti guy if you was friends, um, I think his
mom and a few and just ranting the people from
January six all hanging out at a hotel room, um
towards like it's it is. It is the night of
(12:02):
the sixth, and they're all just hanging out again totally
like no masks, they're they're they're in a hotel lobby,
no masks, um, and they're just like hanging out on
chilly like sitting on the couch and chatting for like
half an hour. It's one of the weirdest videos to watch.
All all of the live streams from that night are
so surreal because it is like this transitionary period of
(12:22):
like after the capital attack but before every before like
people like go down on them, so they don't really
know how to behave They still think what they did
was kind of fine, even though at this point, like
I think like four or five people are dead. Um.
But it's so weird just watch them just interact like
such normal people in this moment like after they did
this thing, then they go in this hotel room and
(12:42):
they are acting completely normal. So it's it's just a
weird video in general. But what it does have is
someone in the same outfit as Zip Tie guy with
no mask on. You actually actually can see his full face. Ye.
Getting to see his full face was a big make
it big help, big help, because we ever, everyone was
(13:03):
looking for pictures of this guy without his mask all
like for the entirety of the day. So now having
a whole video where we gonna see like all of
the angles of him was great. It was perfect. The
best the best thing that was really the beauty of
of all of of all of all the January six
documentation is how many people were live streaming themselves doing
crimes and their friends. Um it did. It did make
(13:24):
the archiving and uh well not the archiving part. Archiving
is always painful and tedious, but it made the actual
research afterwards a lot easier because there was so much
the documentation of it. So yeah, we we got we
got this video. I'm gonna explain how I kind of
took this video and failed to reach the conclusion, and
then we can talk about how you succeeded. But first,
(13:45):
but first we're gonna hear some ads from our lovely
products and services. Robert was here for our previous recording,
uh that we tried to end I failed, and he
made some very good jokes uh and very good segways
about how all of our sponsors support insurrection, just like
January six, And if I tried to repeat the jokes,
(14:06):
it will be stupid. So I'm just gonna I'm just
gonna give you the sense there was a joke, and
now you're gonna be left with that dissatisfaction. So bye, goodbye.
Here's some ads. Okay, we're back, and I'm going to
(14:27):
give an extremely brief rundown and how I failed to
do uh well, I didn't fail to do research. I
did research. I just didn't reach a proper conclusion. Um
and I knew that. So the the the other the
other thing about Zip Tie Guy he had he had
the patch of like the thin blue line in Tennessee
and then that's at Then I soon after got the
(14:48):
video of his face and uh interacting with people. And
the the other thing is I think, um we the
hat he was wearing in the Zip Tie Guy photo
was I think was tracked back to be um our
favorite coffee company, Black Rifle Coffee merchandise. It was it
was like what was what was one of the hats
(15:09):
they sell. So me, being clever, I'm like, Okay, here's
this Black Raffer Coffee hat, this patch in Tennessee. I
know Black Ripe of Coffee is based out of Tennessee.
I'm gonna go look through everyone who works for Black
Raff of Coffee, which you mean isn't a bad instinct
as an outsider. But it did not. It did not succeed.
But the funny thing is is that while looking through
(15:30):
all the employees at Black Apple Coffee, all of them
do look identical to Zip Tie guy. They all same characteristics.
They all look exactly the same on their their beards,
their nose, their forehead, their hair, all of them identical,
every single one of them, to the point where the
only way I could tell that it wasn't a Zip
Tie guy was being like, Okay, no, he has a
mole here, he has like a birthmark here. This way
(15:53):
his like his eyes are his eye wrinkles are different.
So it's like it's going down to the very like
fine tuned facial features because all of their face shapes
are like I tentical. I think there's a point that
I had the same instinct. I think I know there's
a point that I went through, um the black Coffee Rifle,
all of their people look, Um, I don't know if
(16:16):
it was for Eric Wntel or if it was like
maybe around the written house stuff. I don't know. Uh. Yeah,
So that that's that's what I spent my time doing,
is going through everybody who works there of Uh. But
but by the time I kind of gave up on that,
(16:36):
the identity was already discovered, um and posted by your
team at a possum press. So how how did you
get from you know, this zip Tygi picture than the
light the archived livestream video of him without without a mask,
to to the point where you could say, hey, this
is his name? Well I was, I wasn't even really
(16:59):
in cont hacked with Like we as a group weren't
messaging each other trying to figure this out together, but
we were, like it turns out a few of us
were working separately. So while I'm going through social media, UM,
a friend in Nashville was um going through pictures of
the protests from there over the summer, and they ended
(17:23):
up finding about five different pictures, I think, and we
knew we knew most of the people in the pictures
that are maybe like one or two that we did
not know, and one was always Eric Munchell and he's
wearing the exact same gear he wore January six. Um,
I say, Eric Munchel, we didn't know his name yet then,
(17:43):
so um, from there, we kind of we went ahead
and posted what we had to Twitter, and then we
went back to the social media and I started looking
through the profiles that were the people we knew, and
sure enough, one of them, Kurt Dennis, had a live
(18:03):
stream that was telling the story, um, the same story
that Eric Mutchell told him, that thirty minute video and
he actually while telling it, he's like, yeah, my buddy Eric.
So at that point we go to his friend's list
and sure enough, he only has one Eric there and
(18:25):
it's Eric Mutchell. And there we go to that page
and find some of the same gear in the background
of the pictures that he has publicly posted. Yeah, he
like puts the pictures of him and his gear with
like guns, and yeah, you can you can track all
of his like facial like like like like birthmarks and stuff.
They're all the same. So yeah, you and that that's you.
You definitely got him of Yeah, their own mistakes Yeah,
(18:50):
that's that's my favorite part. Like they they gave us
his identity. They often, if not handing themselves to you
on a silver pilatter, they at least have a platter. Um.
They they often there's often enough bread, right. The reason
why these things are solved because there are enough bread
comes to follow and often they kind of leave pretty
big chunks of bread. Um. Just the fact that again
(19:12):
added to the surreal aspect of that whole live stream video,
the fact that he's like you matched it by telling
the same You can hear them someone tell the same story.
It's just such a weird, weird, surreal thing. Yeah. So
I think in terms of like oas and stuff, what
this case study in particular really highlights is the importance
(19:33):
of archival stuff. Right. The reason why you were able
to solve this and not me because I wasn't. I mean,
I did my own archival thing for archiving, like the video.
But um, the way that you were able to really
crack this open and everyone else who worked on it
is because you had like those lists of connections of
(19:53):
people who are already kind of active in this like
al right far right scene within your local community, Like
you already had documentation of the major players who they
interact with, or you already had pictures of this guy
in gear with other known people. So the fact that
there was already previously work archived really made the success
(20:14):
of this so much more possible. That's what they uh
People's Plaza and Nashville during their protests, they were really
big on documenting. Um they documented everything with the police
and um any counter protesters they would. They had professional
photographers out there making sure we had good, clear quality
(20:35):
pictures of like everybody on the other side as well,
and that definitely helped us a lot. Yeah, because especially
before January six, they there was they did a decent
job of archiving themselves, well not not archiving, but like
filming themselves and documenting themselves. And then you know, it
(20:57):
takes takes other research to then archive that. So not
only important just to like look at the research and
look at like the documentation of the that people do
of themselves, but then make sure that you have a
source for that that's not their own uploading of it. Right. So,
like a great example is like all of the live
streams from January six, including like this one from this
hotel room. Pretty soon it was deleted by the person
(21:19):
who posted it because they realized, oh maybe I shouldn't
have this living record of my crimes. Um. But at
that point people already saved the video. They already like,
I already ran it through a video of saving program
that I had. UM. So it's it's important not only
to get archiving, having having having previous documentation of people
(21:40):
and known players, but then as new information is coming out,
make sure you make separate copies of that for your
own sake so that you actually have it and then
you're not gonna be stuck looking for something that's gone. Right.
The worst case scenarios to like you know that there
was an important thing, but you just don't have access
to it anymore. It's like you you remember seeing it,
you didn't say it, and now it's gone. That's a
(22:01):
horrible feeling to do when you're trying to get this
kind of research done. UM. And like it happens, we all,
we all make mistakes like this. UM, I definitely have
it happened to me actually this week. Yeah, it happens
all the time, and it happens to be. It happens
to be all the time. I'll look at something to
be like I should probably save this. I get distracted
or I just don't want to because archindague is boring
and tedious, and then I check again that's gone. I'm like,
(22:24):
well that's should I should have archived it. Yea. So
on top of all of the archiving stuff, which in general,
anti fascist research is really that that's the thing that
(22:44):
really excels at even like um above above journalism is like,
you know, getting like traditional journalism is like getting a
good documentation of like key fascist players in your area,
key people who are kind of pushing far right stuff
and far right violence. Actually getting like a good a good,
a good idea of who they are and having that
(23:05):
knowledge always handy. Um is something that this type of
research is is really that that is really what it
excels at, or like what what the what those researchers
excel at? This is the thing that they do very well.
I think a lot of us probably started doing it
just out of curiosity looking into people, and that that
is certainly how I started, Like I've been doing it
(23:28):
long before. I just didn't know that's what it was called,
because like I'd see somebody make a messed up common
online I'm like, who is this person? And then you know,
trying to find as much as I can about them. Yeah,
that's that is certainly how I got started with this
type of thing, because it can be fun to look
for bad people. It is, it is. It is kind
(23:50):
of pleasurable UM and one of one of the again
another big contributing factor. And how you got Zip tie guy,
How how I got and how how a lot of
this stuff works UM is uh the beauty of Facebook
as a research tool because often in order in order
in order to do the archiving, you need to have
(24:12):
stuff to archive, and a lot of the stuff that
gets posted from these things by the people doing them
UM is done on Facebook, or at least it used
to write the past five years, really, Facebook has been
the main main source of this UM. Now it's maybe
now people are kind of getting wise and maybe some
STU is moving to telegram. Facebook is becoming a little
(24:32):
little bit less important of a platform for this type
of research. And I know Facebook has changed the way
that they um that you can use their service, so
it does make research kind of harder in some ways,
but but even still it is it is one of
the better tools to UM to dig into certain types
of people, because there is certain types of people who
are going to be more likely to use Facebook. Um.
(24:55):
And yeah, in terms of how getting Facebook was the method,
it's not where the place where you're able to make
the link between the fascist you already knew and and
eric um because of because you are you already you
you already knew who the players were, and that Facebook
had the visualized network to actually make those connections. So
(25:17):
Facebook itself and social media in general is really is
really useful. And then in terms of how this operate,
it's like going through friends lists is really easy. Um,
but oftentimes a lot of people will not maybe have
those public um and what what Then there's again it's
not a dead road. You can still look through likes,
you can still look through shares, you can still look
(25:37):
through like, um if you like people are tagged in photos.
Um it really it really is a is a great
is a great system that is good at making you
not have privacy. That is the thing. It really it
really excels it. Yeah. And even even if people don't
have like an active social media presence per se um,
(26:01):
it can still be really useful in getting specific names
of people or or just make or just having a
connection be known like this. This was mostly how I
was able to identify the all the anonymous UM riot
cops in when when the Portland Police Bureau took took
away their badge numbers and names. UM, is that I
(26:23):
could get like a list of cops and we could
start figuring out like, okay, this is probably this is
this is this is pre cops previously on the right team, right,
and start doing facial matching UM. And then if I
want to learn out, if if I want to if
I want to learn more information about like their first name,
and more information about them in general, even if they
don't have a social media profile, often their wife might
(26:46):
or their mom might. You know, there's a UM And
in terms of fun sentences to say, really learning how
to exploit people's family as a weakness is is is
wonderful um for this type of stalking stalking bad people. UM.
Because Yeah, because a lot of a lot of a
lot of the riot cops were smart enough to not
(27:06):
to at least to either not have their presence at
all on the internet UM or to have it very
locked down in terms of you know, no one can
see their posts, no one can see their friends. No
one can see anything, but still their wife will occasionally
tag them in photos or uh maybe not even photos
of them, but like they'll they'll just take them in
a photo of like their kid or something. And then
this just creates more ways to make connections so that
(27:28):
you can, you know, learn more about these specific people. Um,
because sometimes that's fun and interesting. I've noticed some people
with socks that I've found their identity. It's by going
through the likes and seeing, um, you know, the same
woman is always the first to put a heart react there,
(27:48):
and you can go to their pages. Sometimes it's a
little if you go through their pictures and you see
a picture of the guy there with they'll have like
somebody in the comments, oh Mark looks really good, they're something.
You know. Naming the husband from thery you can get
the last thing you know, you've know the wife's last name,
you have a good chance of that being their last name. Yeah. Yeah.
(28:13):
So family families really is really great pro finding people
because because like all of the other research is is
learning how to make these open source connections, right, A
lot a lot of it is connections and networking, and
people usually always have an innate connection and networking and
that that that is their family. UM. And often this
(28:35):
like extends out in terms of you know, political organizing,
whether you're part of you know, militias or just kind
of smaller groups. Yeah, that is another network. Um friends
is another network. But you know, for people who are
kind of are are more locked down, it is possible
to find the information about people, um, you know, especially
if if they have like if they have like a
not very common last name, you know, that can make
(28:57):
finding information about them much easier if using tools like Facebook. Um.
And then it's you know, just a matter of doing
all the other you know, open source research of you know,
comparing clothing, um, you know, and comparing to what other
kind of information you already know about the person, email addresses,
phone numbers, if you can, you know, get that, get
that kind of stuff as well. But I think that's
all he had on zip tie guy out mostly. M Yeah,
(29:21):
here's a really easy one. There's not a whole lot
to really dive into their Yeah. No, for for someone
for someone who was one of the few people masked up,
wasn't was not was not that hard to find. I mean, yeah,
of course, the fact that he was found by local
people in his area. Not surprising. Um. That's another thing
(29:44):
anti fascist research is really good at, is that type
of local research because you know they they have they
have all those local connections, they have those local um
documentation of like a political events that have happened in
their area. So again it's the the importance of of
having stuff archives and having stuff like sorted and having
stuff organized well so you can access your archived information
(30:05):
is really important. It's it's it sucks that it's it's
the part of OS and I hate the most. Everyone.
Everyone hates. Everyone hates. I'm I'm sure there's some sick
of out there who likes it, but everyone else, everyone
else hates all of the We hate all this organizing
and sorting. And I find archiving to be tedious. Archiving videos,
(30:26):
live streams, it's tedious, it's difficult. Um, it's done, it's
time consuming, it's repetitive, it's not generally not a good time,
but it is so useful and in the long run
of trying to get these like a list of of
like established players in your area, this is how you
start seeing patterns. Right. You need to have this information
(30:48):
already laid out so you can actually watch the patterns unfold.
Otherwise it's just a whole bunch of chaotic information that
means nothing. So it's it's super important, as as much
of a bummer as it may be. Yeah, let's see, UM,
is there anything you've been working on since then that
you like that you would like to talk about, or
any upcoming research projects? Right now, I'm really focused on
(31:12):
our local UM school board, and you know, like many
towns across the country, we have fascists trying to take
it over and going to the meetings, and so I've
been watching that group very closely for the last several months,
since probably about October. Our school year, we started out
(31:35):
without a mask mandate UM and a couple of parrots
UM who's children need like they're there, I mean a
compromise like their their kids need the everybody else to
wear a mask. So their parents sued the school board
and our governor UM to have a mass band aid.
(32:00):
The judge issued an injunction and like the next Monday,
all the schools had to wear a mask, and the
anti mask crowd is like losing their ship over it.
Still UM trying to figure out how to fire the judge. Um,
it's like, yeah, we have a member of Patriot Church
(32:22):
who's involved in it, and you know they're the ones
with the Church of plan Parenthood. It's Ken Peter too.
I think he's from Washington, yes, spoken, I believe, yeah,
and he's he's moved down here. Um. I think he
still goes up there to the to the church stuff,
but most of his time is spent down here in
Tennessee and causing just as much trouble as he does
(32:44):
up there and his followers. So I'm curious to see
how how does a research project like this school board
thing differ from like the research surrounding you know, trying
to identify someone at January six. Oh, for one, this
is local. It's you know, I'm going to the school
(33:06):
board meetings. Um. I know it's easier to know where
to look for this because like I'm watching it as
it happening where you like, you know, January six. Most
of those people you have no clue where to even
start from. Um. So this more now, it's it's monitoring
and documenting as we've you know, figure out who these
(33:28):
people are, like linking Telegram names with Facebook names and
all of that. So I guess now, it's more record
keeping and getting that documentation done early, so when one
of them goes too far, we have and we haven't ready.
I mean, that's that's that's the sad part where it's
(33:49):
like you're watching innevitive inevitability almost as it can mean.
But that's yeah, that's also how like January six works. Right,
We were able to identify these people because there was
a lot of documentation of a lot of major players already. Right,
So a lot of the work in between these big
protests and events is is the is this is the slow,
tedious documentation because we have to do it now so
(34:10):
that it's a useful later. Let's you know, a big
part of research is like, yeah, trying to spot potential,
you know, issues and archiving it and then if the
issue ever becomes a bigger issue, you already have information
on it, right, whether that be you know, watching someone
online who you might think is who like, watching someone
(34:31):
who's like a Nazi who you might be worried that
like they're posting and plans about how to kill people.
You're like, okay, so probably look into this dude, because
he's doing this in case he does something in the future.
Um it is that is kind of it sucks because yeah,
you are watching this thing where you feel kind of helpless,
but you know that documenting it is worthwhile. Um they ye. Yeah,
(34:55):
it's the same thing where like you don't want to
be vindicated, but if it does been, it's better to
be prepared because I don't think people realize like how
much anti fascist research, how much of this type of
like ohs and stuff like my journalism, Like most of
the work that you put into it is never seen.
Even if you do complete investigations. Sometimes by the end
(35:17):
you're like it's getting getting them, getting them out in
enough time for them to be useful. Sometimes it isn't
even worth it. Um. So you know a lot of
it is you know, writing stuff and doing research that
never actually sees the light of day for a long
long time. Right with Eric Mountchell, we had like probably
twenty people we had on our list too, and he
(35:38):
wasn't even one of them. Yeah, so you do all
this and like on one hand, it almost felt in
a moment like all of that we did was really
for nothing, But now it did lead to Yeah, it
did lead And even when you do find the correct answer,
sometimes sometimes could via circumstances. You know, it's not something
(35:59):
you need to put about immediately. Sometimes it's worth just
you know, hanging onto um and not being super super
public about every horrible thing you find. It's not like
you don't need to post every time you find a
horrible thing on Telegram. You don't. You don't need to
tell Twitter that. It's like it's it's about collecting these
things and keeping them there for future use. Um. Well,
(36:23):
thank you so much for coming on to talk with
me again, um, after after already already discussing, uh, mostly
the same things. Where can people follow your stuff online?
We're on Twitter at um at a possum press really easy. Yeah,
(36:44):
we're on Facebook. We don't actually do much on Facebook. Um. Yeah,
as we've discussed now, you probably probably shouldn't like in
in a lot of ways, a lot of like fashions
organizing that used to be done in primarily like Facebook
groups or just even just like through the like incidental
organizing through just through like posting and cross posting. A
lot of that has been moved over to Telegram. At
(37:06):
this point. Telegram is kind of the new main nexus,
whereas Facebook and like the days of the early alts right,
Facebook was a pretty big nexus for like the more
normalis right. You know, it's there, there is actually fascist
forms that we're doing organizing, but as a place for again,
like a lot of people in January six who didn't
really know what they were doing was wrong. They were
(37:27):
mostly you know, make America Great Again people or Q
and on people. A good portion of like most of
them were not you know, swastika waving Nazis. Um. They
may they may agree with fascist ideas, but they don't
they don't self describe as Nazis. So like um. But
we're even seeing after after January six with you know,
(37:47):
um Facebook like cracking down on these groups, other platforms
like Partla going offline, a lot of these normies themselves
or even migrating onto Telegram. Um. So you know, Facebook
used to be a really great read research tool, and
I'm using it less and left less and less often
now unfortunately, because I mean it really didn't have a
lot of strong suits. Telegram does have his own strong suits,
(38:09):
but you know, it's it's still it's still different. I
think the normans moved into Telegram is troubling though, because
a way easier time that is there. That is the
obvious thing is Yeah, now that those groups are in
closer proximity, it's easier for one to seep into the other,
whereas before there was more of that distinction. Um. Yes,
(38:33):
that is a worrying thing that I believe we've talked
about before and we'll talk about again um in the
future in terms of having this like fascist milieu or
cultic milieu, UM of a place where the the amount
of the amount of overlap between you know, your uncle
who's a regular Conservative and you know a member of
Adam often or you know someone who wishes they remember
(38:56):
of Adam often, UM is very small. It's a very
these they are, they are very close together. Yeah. Well,
thank you for talking about all of these things on
our on our second osand case study episode. Like guess
big big big takeaways is uh, archiving is great, archive
(39:16):
live streams, archived things because it's better to have them
um and not use them than not have them and
need them. UM. And then you know, archiving and documenting
local fascists is really great, even for things beyond your locality,
like in January six. Um. So those are those are
my main takeaways from this and uh, you know, also
everyone in Black Life Coffee, they all, they all look
(39:39):
like everyone at Day six, all of them do they
do all right? That doesn't for us. Thank you so much.
I can follow the metoposs and press um. Good bye, everybody.
It Could Happen Here is a production of pool Zone Media.
For more podcasts and pool Zone Media, visit our website
(40:00):
Zone media dot com, or check us out on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here,
updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources.
Thanks for listening.
Welcome to It could happen here the podcast we already
recorded and I messed up UM or something happened with
the zoom and we lost the audio. So now we're
recording it again as is, as is the cycle of life. UM.
Thankfully I can. I'm now on my tenth shot of
Espresso of the day and it is eight pm, so
I'm I'm ready, I'm I'm ready this time. Today, we're
(00:26):
gonna be doing another one of our chronicles into open
source and O SENT style research or open source verification
and this kind of side of of generally, you know,
this is kind of a field of like anti fascist
research UM and journalism. So we're looking at one of
these case studies UM. But today I have someone with me,
(00:50):
Alistair from Opossum Press is here to talk about SENT
and UH and this type of research. Hello, Hey, thank
you for being with me again on this on this call,
on the very experience for us. I would actually first
(01:10):
like to talk about how Opossum Press got started as
like a collective of of people dedicated towards this goal
of you know, surveying the fascist creep. UM. I had
an interest in UM and journalism. I have no experience
in it. But I have other friends that are into
(01:32):
writing and stuff, and I just kind of reached out
to friends and like, Hey, would anybody be interested in
doing this? And um, there are several friends that were like, hell, yeah,
let's do this. And that's pretty much it. After we
got it all formed. Um, we set up some open
source intel like workshops and we've about every other week
(01:56):
we get together for two or three hours and learned
stuff that sounds that sounds lovely actually, Um, most of
my stuff is usually done alone in my computer dark
when I'm on my again tenth cup of coffee of
the day. Doing O sent in a group of people
like that sounds like it could be actually kind of fun.
So yeah, we're gonna In our last episode, we talked
(02:16):
about how I tracked down and found out who written
House was the night of of that happening in Kenosha. Um,
and today we're gonna be talking about someone related to
January six, um, the infamous zip tie guy, as he
became known for like two days on the internet before
(02:37):
he got his actual day. Um. First, I I guess
I probably I probably In case you haven't listened to
the previous episode, I did on written house, so probably
kind of explain what open source stuff is and what
like O sent is and verification. So it's about trying
to track down information using open sources UM on the Internet.
So in terms of like nothing is it's it's all.
(03:00):
It's it's it's it's it's already sitting there. Nothing requires
like special access, nothing requires you know, you're to hack
into anyone system. UM, it's it's stuff is just the
stuff that's already sitting there. The data, whether that be
you know, geographical data, personal data, data from social media accounts,
data from every time you've entered your email into a
(03:20):
random website that you maybe didn't know quite what's going on,
but you did it. Some that's that gets stored somewhere
as data and someone can probably find it. UM. So
it's all the stuff about you on the Internet that
is all open if you do the digging. UM. Often
cases this results in going through social media profiles UM.
That is a good portion of Osan's work is learning
(03:42):
how to use Google really well and how to how
to how to go through social media UM. Start using
like Google search operators, start using social media tools that
help you sort through information. Because the information is there,
You just have to learn how to sort through it, right,
because there's just so much of it. Um. So that's
kind of just to what open source stuff is. You mean,
eventually you can get into the stuff like using like Python,
(04:04):
using code and scrapers, like all that stuff is there too,
but for our purposes, we're gonna stick to the more
simplistic stuff because this is an audio format and I'm
I'm not going to start explaining Python code on a podcast, right. Um,
So let's let's let's turn back the clocks a year, um,
a little over a year, and it's January six. What's
(04:27):
kind of you or your collective's reaction just to kind
of watching things unfold? You know, Like as a researcher,
every every time I look at these types of you know, protests,
you know, whether they be big or small, always part
of my brains, like trying to make connections and do
stuff right. So, as January six is unfolding, what's what's
kind of going through? Everyone at a post and press
his head. The first thing that seemed to be collective
(04:49):
in everybody's mind was, oh my god, none of these
people are wearing face masks. Yea, like the immediate thing
is this is probably going to be re really easy
for a lot of people. There's nobody. Nobody is in
any type of like block or trying to hide their
identity in at all, something you see the European fascist
(05:10):
actually doing more often. There was a I think of
a video from Germany of a whole bunch of far
right dudees just to eat in black block because black
blocks a tactic. Um. So yeah, but in the States
they're specifically January six, it was Yeah, no one was
really worried about keeping their identity secret. They really did
not think what they were doing was wrong. I think
(05:30):
the other thing we were a lot of us were
really angry. Um, just like we had been like yelling
that this was gonna happen, screaming it out, like trying
to get people to pay attention, and we got blown
off so much. I remember, just like a few days before,
I got in an argument with a Facebook friend and
(05:53):
like people need to be paying attention, like they're planning something.
They're like, oh, it's fine, it's fine, and then you know,
just a few days later, I'm like, oh, is it fine?
Like that is kind of always the curse of surveilling
all of these things, whether they be like a specific
event or some movement in general. Right, people who are
really into q and on before the Libs knew what
(06:13):
Qunan was and we're warning about it for years before
you know it resulted in people dying. Um. Right, That's
that's kind of always the curse of these things is
that it's it's you get. You get the mix of
the shock and horder of the thing finally happening and
a weird relief. It's it's, it's, it's it's it's a
very bizarre feeling to watch these things unfold because you're like, oh,
(06:36):
I'm vindicated, but it sucks that I'm vindicated. Right. I remember,
like the December watching all these groups, like I was
just it was just filled with dread. Yea. I knew
something was gonna happen. I didn't know what was gonna happen,
and it was just so much anxiety. And then like
it's funny, January six after it happened, like it all
(06:58):
went away. I was able to get a dec at
night sleep. Um, just because there was I didn't have
that build up of suspense of what what is it
going to be? What's it gonna look like? How bad
is it going to be? Kind of had that release. Yeah,
Unfortunately they were all like amateur, didn't know what they
were doing, and it wasn't as bad as it could
(07:20):
have been. Yeah. Well, I think as for the open
source stuff, I'm going to kind of walk us through
chronologically and of in terms of the journey of zip
tie Guy because I was doing like archiving on January six,
But zip Tike I was really the only dude I
was interested in identifying. There was there was a lot
(07:41):
of other people doing really great identification work. I was
also generous six. I was going through all the social
media history of Ashley Babbitt, archiving all of her Twitter
and Facebook like years of stuff. I was to chronicle
how she went from like an Obama voter to a
Q and on from proponent. So that was what I
was doing, and I was writing an article with Belling
(08:02):
Cat about that. Um. But the only only other guy
I wanted to identify was zip tie Guy because he
was really interesting. He was one of the few guys
that was masked up. UM. He had what he had
visible weapons on him. He was obviously carrying zip ties.
You know it gives you images of like, oh yeah,
it's like they're planning to capture and execute people. That
was like the general kind of vibe um of that.
(08:25):
So he was the only person that I I was actually
put work into identifying, and I put a decent amount
of work in. Now I I failed where other people succeeded,
and we can talk about like why in a sec
But for like a day at least, all we had
to go on was the picture of the guy holding
the zip ties in a mask. Um. There's a few
(08:47):
other pictures of him around from that day, but it's
mostly mostly one picture and the biggest clue that we
had to start with, Um, what what what? Why? Why
don't you explain what the what the first clue is
and how that maybe piqued your interest. He had two
patches on his vest, and one of them was a
thin blue line patch, but it was in this uh
(09:07):
shape of the state of Tennessee. So so yeah, in
terms of having a decent lead, that is like, okay,
well that that narrows it down to one of fifties
states probably right, Yeah, I should say I'm from Knoxville,
so like it be in Tennessee that I picked up
on that because that's my state. Yeah, that it becomes
(09:28):
a local problem. I And as someone in Oregon, I
definitely understand that feeling of of yeah, when fascism becomes
a local problem of yeah. So that definitely piqued your
interest specifically, but then also gives a really good lead
for like where to look because Ozar, he's not trying
to do a meta thing by tricking us into giving
(09:50):
us a false lead. Generally people don't do that as
often in real life as they do in television. Um
but there's still has plenty of other ways to detect.
I mean, I love I love detecting, and there's there's enough,
there's enough stuff to do otherwise that making it needlessly
complicated as Honestly, I'm fine with it not being that.
(10:10):
Um So, yeah, we had we had that to go
off initially, So starting looking for like far right activity
in Tennessee. You know, I was an outsiders. I didn't
really know where to start in terms of specific rallies,
but I know, used, Uh, at what point did you
start looking trying to like go through pictures of specific
(10:30):
rallies to try to like match clothing or stuff. I
think it was probably it may have been that day
or the day after when I started going through the
notebooks that I had, like names of just people we
suspected may become problems, um, and I started looking at
their profiles again and you know, didn't find anything. And
(10:56):
in our research that we had already done, we didn't
see anything on Yeah, I mean that was kind of
the case for me as well. With just the picture
of the zip tie, a guy with the patch, I mean,
it's it's a lead, but there wasn't tons to go on.
But thankfully, thankfully are are good friends. At January six,
we're giving us more clues as because as the Simpsons
(11:19):
meme goes, videotaping this crime scene was the best idea
we ever had. Um. So, like January I think seventh,
there was a live stream video that was kind of
circulating through like anti fascist group chats um. It was.
It was posted like publicly to get everyone's attention on
it on January eight, um, but for like a day
it was kind of passing through back channels and throughout
(11:41):
in this live stream, which is yeah, there was so
many people were live streaming that night and it is
a kind of surreal thing to watch of them. This
this this live stream in particular, it is the zip
Ti guy if you was friends, um, I think his
mom and a few and just ranting the people from
January six all hanging out at a hotel room, um
towards like it's it is. It is the night of
(12:02):
the sixth, and they're all just hanging out again totally
like no masks, they're they're they're in a hotel lobby,
no masks, um, and they're just like hanging out on
chilly like sitting on the couch and chatting for like
half an hour. It's one of the weirdest videos to watch.
All all of the live streams from that night are
so surreal because it is like this transitionary period of
(12:22):
like after the capital attack but before every before like
people like go down on them, so they don't really
know how to behave They still think what they did
was kind of fine, even though at this point, like
I think like four or five people are dead. Um.
But it's so weird just watch them just interact like
such normal people in this moment like after they did
this thing, then they go in this hotel room and
(12:42):
they are acting completely normal. So it's it's just a
weird video in general. But what it does have is
someone in the same outfit as Zip Tie guy with
no mask on. You actually actually can see his full face. Ye.
Getting to see his full face was a big make
it big help, big help, because we ever, everyone was
(13:03):
looking for pictures of this guy without his mask all
like for the entirety of the day. So now having
a whole video where we gonna see like all of
the angles of him was great. It was perfect. The
best the best thing that was really the beauty of
of all of of all of all the January six
documentation is how many people were live streaming themselves doing
crimes and their friends. Um it did. It did make
(13:24):
the archiving and uh well not the archiving part. Archiving
is always painful and tedious, but it made the actual
research afterwards a lot easier because there was so much
the documentation of it. So yeah, we we got we
got this video. I'm gonna explain how I kind of
took this video and failed to reach the conclusion, and
then we can talk about how you succeeded. But first,
(13:45):
but first we're gonna hear some ads from our lovely
products and services. Robert was here for our previous recording,
uh that we tried to end I failed, and he
made some very good jokes uh and very good segways
about how all of our sponsors support insurrection, just like
January six, And if I tried to repeat the jokes,
(14:06):
it will be stupid. So I'm just gonna I'm just
gonna give you the sense there was a joke, and
now you're gonna be left with that dissatisfaction. So bye, goodbye.
Here's some ads. Okay, we're back, and I'm going to
(14:27):
give an extremely brief rundown and how I failed to
do uh well, I didn't fail to do research. I
did research. I just didn't reach a proper conclusion. Um
and I knew that. So the the the other the
other thing about Zip Tie Guy he had he had
the patch of like the thin blue line in Tennessee
and then that's at Then I soon after got the
(14:48):
video of his face and uh interacting with people. And
the the other thing is I think, um we the
hat he was wearing in the Zip Tie Guy photo
was I think was tracked back to be um our
favorite coffee company, Black Rifle Coffee merchandise. It was it
was like what was what was one of the hats
(15:09):
they sell. So me, being clever, I'm like, Okay, here's
this Black Raffer Coffee hat, this patch in Tennessee. I
know Black Ripe of Coffee is based out of Tennessee.
I'm gonna go look through everyone who works for Black
Raff of Coffee, which you mean isn't a bad instinct
as an outsider. But it did not. It did not succeed.
But the funny thing is is that while looking through
(15:30):
all the employees at Black Apple Coffee, all of them
do look identical to Zip Tie guy. They all same characteristics.
They all look exactly the same on their their beards,
their nose, their forehead, their hair, all of them identical,
every single one of them, to the point where the
only way I could tell that it wasn't a Zip
Tie guy was being like, Okay, no, he has a
mole here, he has like a birthmark here. This way
(15:53):
his like his eyes are his eye wrinkles are different.
So it's like it's going down to the very like
fine tuned facial features because all of their face shapes
are like I tentical. I think there's a point that
I had the same instinct. I think I know there's
a point that I went through, um the black Coffee Rifle,
all of their people look, Um, I don't know if
(16:16):
it was for Eric Wntel or if it was like
maybe around the written house stuff. I don't know. Uh. Yeah,
So that that's that's what I spent my time doing,
is going through everybody who works there of Uh. But
but by the time I kind of gave up on that,
(16:36):
the identity was already discovered, um and posted by your
team at a possum press. So how how did you
get from you know, this zip Tygi picture than the
light the archived livestream video of him without without a mask,
to to the point where you could say, hey, this
is his name? Well I was, I wasn't even really
(16:59):
in cont hacked with Like we as a group weren't
messaging each other trying to figure this out together, but
we were, like it turns out a few of us
were working separately. So while I'm going through social media, UM,
a friend in Nashville was um going through pictures of
the protests from there over the summer, and they ended
(17:23):
up finding about five different pictures, I think, and we
knew we knew most of the people in the pictures
that are maybe like one or two that we did
not know, and one was always Eric Munchell and he's
wearing the exact same gear he wore January six. Um,
I say, Eric Munchel, we didn't know his name yet then,
(17:43):
so um, from there, we kind of we went ahead
and posted what we had to Twitter, and then we
went back to the social media and I started looking
through the profiles that were the people we knew, and
sure enough, one of them, Kurt Dennis, had a live
(18:03):
stream that was telling the story, um, the same story
that Eric Mutchell told him, that thirty minute video and
he actually while telling it, he's like, yeah, my buddy Eric.
So at that point we go to his friend's list
and sure enough, he only has one Eric there and
(18:25):
it's Eric Mutchell. And there we go to that page
and find some of the same gear in the background
of the pictures that he has publicly posted. Yeah, he
like puts the pictures of him and his gear with
like guns, and yeah, you can you can track all
of his like facial like like like like birthmarks and stuff.
They're all the same. So yeah, you and that that's you.
You definitely got him of Yeah, their own mistakes Yeah,
(18:50):
that's that's my favorite part. Like they they gave us
his identity. They often, if not handing themselves to you
on a silver pilatter, they at least have a platter. Um.
They they often there's often enough bread, right. The reason
why these things are solved because there are enough bread
comes to follow and often they kind of leave pretty
big chunks of bread. Um. Just the fact that again
(19:12):
added to the surreal aspect of that whole live stream video,
the fact that he's like you matched it by telling
the same You can hear them someone tell the same story.
It's just such a weird, weird, surreal thing. Yeah. So
I think in terms of like oas and stuff, what
this case study in particular really highlights is the importance
(19:33):
of archival stuff. Right. The reason why you were able
to solve this and not me because I wasn't. I mean,
I did my own archival thing for archiving, like the video.
But um, the way that you were able to really
crack this open and everyone else who worked on it
is because you had like those lists of connections of
(19:53):
people who are already kind of active in this like
al right far right scene within your local community, Like
you already had documentation of the major players who they
interact with, or you already had pictures of this guy
in gear with other known people. So the fact that
there was already previously work archived really made the success
(20:14):
of this so much more possible. That's what they uh
People's Plaza and Nashville during their protests, they were really
big on documenting. Um they documented everything with the police
and um any counter protesters they would. They had professional
photographers out there making sure we had good, clear quality
(20:35):
pictures of like everybody on the other side as well,
and that definitely helped us a lot. Yeah, because especially
before January six, they there was they did a decent
job of archiving themselves, well not not archiving, but like
filming themselves and documenting themselves. And then you know, it
(20:57):
takes takes other research to then archive that. So not
only important just to like look at the research and
look at like the documentation of the that people do
of themselves, but then make sure that you have a
source for that that's not their own uploading of it. Right. So,
like a great example is like all of the live
streams from January six, including like this one from this
hotel room. Pretty soon it was deleted by the person
(21:19):
who posted it because they realized, oh maybe I shouldn't
have this living record of my crimes. Um. But at
that point people already saved the video. They already like,
I already ran it through a video of saving program
that I had. UM. So it's it's important not only
to get archiving, having having having previous documentation of people
(21:40):
and known players, but then as new information is coming out,
make sure you make separate copies of that for your
own sake so that you actually have it and then
you're not gonna be stuck looking for something that's gone. Right.
The worst case scenarios to like you know that there
was an important thing, but you just don't have access
to it anymore. It's like you you remember seeing it,
you didn't say it, and now it's gone. That's a
(22:01):
horrible feeling to do when you're trying to get this
kind of research done. UM. And like it happens, we all,
we all make mistakes like this. UM, I definitely have
it happened to me actually this week. Yeah, it happens
all the time, and it happens to be. It happens
to be all the time. I'll look at something to
be like I should probably save this. I get distracted
or I just don't want to because archindague is boring
and tedious, and then I check again that's gone. I'm like,
(22:24):
well that's should I should have archived it. Yea. So
on top of all of the archiving stuff, which in general,
anti fascist research is really that that's the thing that
(22:44):
really excels at even like um above above journalism is like,
you know, getting like traditional journalism is like getting a
good documentation of like key fascist players in your area,
key people who are kind of pushing far right stuff
and far right violence. Actually getting like a good a good,
a good idea of who they are and having that
(23:05):
knowledge always handy. Um is something that this type of
research is is really that that is really what it
excels at, or like what what the what those researchers
excel at? This is the thing that they do very well.
I think a lot of us probably started doing it
just out of curiosity looking into people, and that that
is certainly how I started, Like I've been doing it
(23:28):
long before. I just didn't know that's what it was called,
because like I'd see somebody make a messed up common
online I'm like, who is this person? And then you know,
trying to find as much as I can about them. Yeah,
that's that is certainly how I got started with this
type of thing, because it can be fun to look
for bad people. It is, it is. It is kind
(23:50):
of pleasurable UM and one of one of the again
another big contributing factor. And how you got Zip tie guy,
How how I got and how how a lot of
this stuff works UM is uh the beauty of Facebook
as a research tool because often in order in order
in order to do the archiving, you need to have
(24:12):
stuff to archive, and a lot of the stuff that
gets posted from these things by the people doing them
UM is done on Facebook, or at least it used
to write the past five years, really, Facebook has been
the main main source of this UM. Now it's maybe
now people are kind of getting wise and maybe some
STU is moving to telegram. Facebook is becoming a little
(24:32):
little bit less important of a platform for this type
of research. And I know Facebook has changed the way
that they um that you can use their service, so
it does make research kind of harder in some ways,
but but even still it is it is one of
the better tools to UM to dig into certain types
of people, because there is certain types of people who
are going to be more likely to use Facebook. Um.
(24:55):
And yeah, in terms of how getting Facebook was the method,
it's not where the place where you're able to make
the link between the fascist you already knew and and
eric um because of because you are you already you
you already knew who the players were, and that Facebook
had the visualized network to actually make those connections. So
(25:17):
Facebook itself and social media in general is really is
really useful. And then in terms of how this operate,
it's like going through friends lists is really easy. Um,
but oftentimes a lot of people will not maybe have
those public um and what what Then there's again it's
not a dead road. You can still look through likes,
you can still look through shares, you can still look
(25:37):
through like, um if you like people are tagged in photos.
Um it really it really is a is a great
is a great system that is good at making you
not have privacy. That is the thing. It really it
really excels it. Yeah. And even even if people don't
have like an active social media presence per se um,
(26:01):
it can still be really useful in getting specific names
of people or or just make or just having a
connection be known like this. This was mostly how I
was able to identify the all the anonymous UM riot
cops in when when the Portland Police Bureau took took
away their badge numbers and names. UM, is that I
(26:23):
could get like a list of cops and we could
start figuring out like, okay, this is probably this is
this is this is pre cops previously on the right team, right,
and start doing facial matching UM. And then if I
want to learn out, if if I want to if
I want to learn more information about like their first name,
and more information about them in general, even if they
don't have a social media profile, often their wife might
(26:46):
or their mom might. You know, there's a UM And
in terms of fun sentences to say, really learning how
to exploit people's family as a weakness is is is
wonderful um for this type of stalking stalking bad people. UM.
Because Yeah, because a lot of a lot of a
lot of the riot cops were smart enough to not
(27:06):
to at least to either not have their presence at
all on the internet UM or to have it very
locked down in terms of you know, no one can
see their posts, no one can see their friends. No
one can see anything, but still their wife will occasionally
tag them in photos or uh maybe not even photos
of them, but like they'll they'll just take them in
a photo of like their kid or something. And then
this just creates more ways to make connections so that
(27:28):
you can, you know, learn more about these specific people. Um,
because sometimes that's fun and interesting. I've noticed some people
with socks that I've found their identity. It's by going
through the likes and seeing, um, you know, the same
woman is always the first to put a heart react there,
(27:48):
and you can go to their pages. Sometimes it's a
little if you go through their pictures and you see
a picture of the guy there with they'll have like
somebody in the comments, oh Mark looks really good, they're something.
You know. Naming the husband from thery you can get
the last thing you know, you've know the wife's last name,
you have a good chance of that being their last name. Yeah. Yeah.
(28:13):
So family families really is really great pro finding people
because because like all of the other research is is
learning how to make these open source connections, right, A
lot a lot of it is connections and networking, and
people usually always have an innate connection and networking and
that that that is their family. UM. And often this
(28:35):
like extends out in terms of you know, political organizing,
whether you're part of you know, militias or just kind
of smaller groups. Yeah, that is another network. Um friends
is another network. But you know, for people who are
kind of are are more locked down, it is possible
to find the information about people, um, you know, especially
if if they have like if they have like a
not very common last name, you know, that can make
(28:57):
finding information about them much easier if using tools like Facebook. Um.
And then it's you know, just a matter of doing
all the other you know, open source research of you know,
comparing clothing, um, you know, and comparing to what other
kind of information you already know about the person, email addresses,
phone numbers, if you can, you know, get that, get
that kind of stuff as well. But I think that's
all he had on zip tie guy out mostly. M Yeah,
(29:21):
here's a really easy one. There's not a whole lot
to really dive into their Yeah. No, for for someone
for someone who was one of the few people masked up,
wasn't was not was not that hard to find. I mean, yeah,
of course, the fact that he was found by local
people in his area. Not surprising. Um. That's another thing
(29:44):
anti fascist research is really good at, is that type
of local research because you know they they have they
have all those local connections, they have those local um
documentation of like a political events that have happened in
their area. So again it's the the importance of of
having stuff archives and having stuff like sorted and having
stuff organized well so you can access your archived information
(30:05):
is really important. It's it's it sucks that it's it's
the part of OS and I hate the most. Everyone.
Everyone hates. Everyone hates. I'm I'm sure there's some sick
of out there who likes it, but everyone else, everyone
else hates all of the We hate all this organizing
and sorting. And I find archiving to be tedious. Archiving videos,
(30:26):
live streams, it's tedious, it's difficult. Um, it's done, it's
time consuming, it's repetitive, it's not generally not a good time,
but it is so useful and in the long run
of trying to get these like a list of of
like established players in your area, this is how you
start seeing patterns. Right. You need to have this information
(30:48):
already laid out so you can actually watch the patterns unfold.
Otherwise it's just a whole bunch of chaotic information that
means nothing. So it's it's super important, as as much
of a bummer as it may be. Yeah, let's see, UM,
is there anything you've been working on since then that
you like that you would like to talk about, or
any upcoming research projects? Right now, I'm really focused on
(31:12):
our local UM school board, and you know, like many
towns across the country, we have fascists trying to take
it over and going to the meetings, and so I've
been watching that group very closely for the last several months,
since probably about October. Our school year, we started out
(31:35):
without a mask mandate UM and a couple of parrots
UM who's children need like they're there, I mean a
compromise like their their kids need the everybody else to
wear a mask. So their parents sued the school board
and our governor UM to have a mass band aid.
(32:00):
The judge issued an injunction and like the next Monday,
all the schools had to wear a mask, and the
anti mask crowd is like losing their ship over it.
Still UM trying to figure out how to fire the judge. Um,
it's like, yeah, we have a member of Patriot Church
(32:22):
who's involved in it, and you know they're the ones
with the Church of plan Parenthood. It's Ken Peter too.
I think he's from Washington, yes, spoken, I believe, yeah,
and he's he's moved down here. Um. I think he
still goes up there to the to the church stuff,
but most of his time is spent down here in
Tennessee and causing just as much trouble as he does
(32:44):
up there and his followers. So I'm curious to see
how how does a research project like this school board
thing differ from like the research surrounding you know, trying
to identify someone at January six. Oh, for one, this
is local. It's you know, I'm going to the school
(33:06):
board meetings. Um. I know it's easier to know where
to look for this because like I'm watching it as
it happening where you like, you know, January six. Most
of those people you have no clue where to even
start from. Um. So this more now, it's it's monitoring
and documenting as we've you know, figure out who these
(33:28):
people are, like linking Telegram names with Facebook names and
all of that. So I guess now, it's more record
keeping and getting that documentation done early, so when one
of them goes too far, we have and we haven't ready.
I mean, that's that's that's the sad part where it's
(33:49):
like you're watching innevitive inevitability almost as it can mean.
But that's yeah, that's also how like January six works. Right,
We were able to identify these people because there was
a lot of documentation of a lot of major players already. Right,
So a lot of the work in between these big
protests and events is is the is this is the slow,
tedious documentation because we have to do it now so
(34:10):
that it's a useful later. Let's you know, a big
part of research is like, yeah, trying to spot potential,
you know, issues and archiving it and then if the
issue ever becomes a bigger issue, you already have information
on it, right, whether that be you know, watching someone
online who you might think is who like, watching someone
(34:31):
who's like a Nazi who you might be worried that
like they're posting and plans about how to kill people.
You're like, okay, so probably look into this dude, because
he's doing this in case he does something in the future.
Um it is that is kind of it sucks because yeah,
you are watching this thing where you feel kind of helpless,
but you know that documenting it is worthwhile. Um they ye. Yeah,
(34:55):
it's the same thing where like you don't want to
be vindicated, but if it does been, it's better to
be prepared because I don't think people realize like how
much anti fascist research, how much of this type of
like ohs and stuff like my journalism, Like most of
the work that you put into it is never seen.
Even if you do complete investigations. Sometimes by the end
(35:17):
you're like it's getting getting them, getting them out in
enough time for them to be useful. Sometimes it isn't
even worth it. Um. So you know a lot of
it is you know, writing stuff and doing research that
never actually sees the light of day for a long
long time. Right with Eric Mountchell, we had like probably
twenty people we had on our list too, and he
(35:38):
wasn't even one of them. Yeah, so you do all
this and like on one hand, it almost felt in
a moment like all of that we did was really
for nothing, But now it did lead to Yeah, it
did lead And even when you do find the correct answer,
sometimes sometimes could via circumstances. You know, it's not something
(35:59):
you need to put about immediately. Sometimes it's worth just
you know, hanging onto um and not being super super
public about every horrible thing you find. It's not like
you don't need to post every time you find a
horrible thing on Telegram. You don't. You don't need to
tell Twitter that. It's like it's it's about collecting these
things and keeping them there for future use. Um. Well,
(36:23):
thank you so much for coming on to talk with
me again, um, after after already already discussing, uh, mostly
the same things. Where can people follow your stuff online?
We're on Twitter at um at a possum press really easy. Yeah,
(36:44):
we're on Facebook. We don't actually do much on Facebook. Um. Yeah,
as we've discussed now, you probably probably shouldn't like in
in a lot of ways, a lot of like fashions
organizing that used to be done in primarily like Facebook
groups or just even just like through the like incidental
organizing through just through like posting and cross posting. A
lot of that has been moved over to Telegram. At
(37:06):
this point. Telegram is kind of the new main nexus,
whereas Facebook and like the days of the early alts right,
Facebook was a pretty big nexus for like the more
normalis right. You know, it's there, there is actually fascist
forms that we're doing organizing, but as a place for again,
like a lot of people in January six who didn't
really know what they were doing was wrong. They were
(37:27):
mostly you know, make America Great Again people or Q
and on people. A good portion of like most of
them were not you know, swastika waving Nazis. Um. They
may they may agree with fascist ideas, but they don't
they don't self describe as Nazis. So like um. But
we're even seeing after after January six with you know,
(37:47):
um Facebook like cracking down on these groups, other platforms
like Partla going offline, a lot of these normies themselves
or even migrating onto Telegram. Um. So you know, Facebook
used to be a really great read research tool, and
I'm using it less and left less and less often
now unfortunately, because I mean it really didn't have a
lot of strong suits. Telegram does have his own strong suits,
(38:09):
but you know, it's it's still it's still different. I
think the normans moved into Telegram is troubling though, because
a way easier time that is there. That is the
obvious thing is Yeah, now that those groups are in
closer proximity, it's easier for one to seep into the other,
whereas before there was more of that distinction. Um. Yes,
(38:33):
that is a worrying thing that I believe we've talked
about before and we'll talk about again um in the
future in terms of having this like fascist milieu or
cultic milieu, UM of a place where the the amount
of the amount of overlap between you know, your uncle
who's a regular Conservative and you know a member of
Adam often or you know someone who wishes they remember
(38:56):
of Adam often, UM is very small. It's a very
these they are, they are very close together. Yeah. Well,
thank you for talking about all of these things on
our on our second osand case study episode. Like guess
big big big takeaways is uh, archiving is great, archive
(39:16):
live streams, archived things because it's better to have them
um and not use them than not have them and
need them. UM. And then you know, archiving and documenting
local fascists is really great, even for things beyond your locality,
like in January six. Um. So those are those are
my main takeaways from this and uh, you know, also
everyone in Black Life Coffee, they all, they all look
(39:39):
like everyone at Day six, all of them do they
do all right? That doesn't for us. Thank you so much.
I can follow the metoposs and press um. Good bye, everybody.
It Could Happen Here is a production of pool Zone Media.
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Thanks for listening.
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Robert Evans
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James Stout
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