November 22, 2021 • 47 mins
Garrison walks us through how they identified Rittenhouse the night of the Kenosha shooting and gives tips for starting open source verification.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, every buddy America, Hey Americans America, How is American?
That is the podcast? And that was that was a
horrible issue. That was maybe your talk ten worst This
is it could happen here a podcast where an incompetent
Rube Fox up starting the show and then we talk
(00:27):
about how things are falling apart or how to make
things not fall apart, or some version of things in
between those two facts. Yep, yep. That's a kind of
kind of not great time going on right now. A
lot of people are that was our second. That was
our b pitch for the name. Kind not a great
(00:49):
time going on right now. Actually not that far from
what was the say. Yeah, I mean it's like, especially
especially right now, there's there's a lot of a lot
of trials going on, m feet on stuff, and the
mud are very trial is happening, the one about you know,
(01:10):
Unit Unite the Right is going on, and of course
the kindn't his trial as of as of recording is um. People,
the jury is still in deliberation. Um, So no idea
what's going to be the result. By the time this episode,
I've actually been like not commenting on it or neither
to think about it. There's nothing we can do about it.
There is nothing you can do. And like a lot
(01:32):
of people, there's been discussion about how much civil unrest
there's going to be depending on the result of the trial.
I know there's been a lot of like National guards
sent to Wisconsin. It's been you know, FBI door Knox
and activists tombs trying to scare people so they don't
you know, go out and ride or whatever. Discussion online,
the people you know, planning protests in response to in
response to whatever the result is. Um. I know just
(01:55):
today there was a post from I think the Ohio
Proud Boys claiming that they we sending like like, uh,
was it hundreds or thousands of like people armed with
like a RS to Wisconsin or Yeah, there's there's a
fucking post. People are saying, like you should take it
seriously because it's from a Proud Boys internal chat and
it's like we've got three hundred guys heavily armed heading
(02:16):
to and there's already X number of guys there, and
we're gonna kill a lot more communists than Kyle Rittenhouse did.
And YadA, YadA, YadA, And if I could give you
one piece of advice now, and who knows where the
world is at the point of which this episode drops.
It's when people talk about say when if you are
at a protest and someone starts talking about the Proud
Boys and the Proud Boys are coming or the Proud
(02:38):
Boys are here, if you don't immediately see uncontrovertible visual
proof that they have access to showing it, assume it's nonsense. Okay, Yeah,
that is my advice as someone who has heard a
thousand times people say versions of the Proud Boys are coming. Okay,
insist on evidence or ignore it. But you know, whenever,
(02:59):
whenever these big will you know, unrests and types of
stuff happens, there's always an increased chance that there will
be some kind of protest related shooting. Especially people are
definitely absolutely may have happened by the time this episode drops.
Especially people are bringing guns. People people bring firearms under
There's been a lot of there's you know, for the
demonstrations outside the courthouse, there's been you know, guns there. Um,
(03:22):
there's been you know, an increasing uh in the rate
of shootings at protests on the West Coast throughout the
past few months. Um, So I'm gonna be kind of
talking about you know some things that you can do
if you're at home and you feel competent enough in
the aftermath of one of one of these shootings. You know,
if if if you know, if a proud boy does
(03:42):
bring a bring a gun and shoot somebody at what
you can actually do if video, if you're in a
situation where you've been following something happening all day, there's
a shooting and like low quality footage starts coming out
of somebody killing someone or someone's else, here's what to
do next if you want to maybe be a positive
part of of that, of that process, well not of
(04:05):
that process, but of like the aftermath of it, you know.
And and because because the universe is cruel. I I
originally wrote this road right up about the written house shooting.
Um because the universe is a cruel place and it's gonna,
you know, continue to This particular incident is going to
continue to be impactful. Even though it's not the first,
(04:26):
it's not gonna be the last one of these. It
is still impactful because of how much of a symbol
has been turned into So I think a lot of
people forget about how how chaotic the night on the
Internet was. The day of the Kenosha shooting. UM, like
it was. It was wild being online as that was
going on. Uh. No, one had no idea what was
(04:48):
going on. People could not agree on who the shooter
was beforehand. There was a lot of pictures floating around.
It was, it was, it was. It was a nightmare. Uh.
We know, we knew that people were shot, we couldn't
know how many or who. Like, it was was pretty
bad and chaotic. And it is always that way in
the wake of a shooting. UM. And it is the
in any given shooting. Always keep in mind when you're
(05:11):
when you're online or in person and there has been
a shooting and people are saying things about said shooting
other than we should take cover from the shooting. If
they're saying anything else about it, um, you have to
assume they're probably not either wrong or not entirely accurate. UM,
because it's hard to be. It happens constantly. I mean,
that's not it's something against any of them. I can
(05:32):
remember a moment when you and I were out last
year Garrison and there was a shooting I don't know,
like forty ft away. Um. Nobody hurt, thankfully, but like
the the immediate report from it was some guy had
gotten pulled an a R fifteen out of his car
and uh, and I think the thing I said to
you was I'll bet you right now it's a nine
millimeter handgun. And sure enough, within minutes there was a photo. Yeah.
(05:54):
It's and it's not that those people were like dumb
or bad. It's that, like shootings are scary, guns getting
pulled is scary, and people funk up um in in
their recollections. Um. It's the same way in which, like
if a bear comes after you, uh, you may exaggerate
the size of that bear in your head because you're
(06:14):
scared as ship because it's a bear. So So I
was home on August um just and I I was,
I was. I was actually about to go out to
to uh cover a purchase in Portland, but then I
saw this happened on my phone on Twitter. I was like,
I cannot go out. I will be more useful at home. Um. So,
with with so much uncertainty online or the details of
(06:36):
the actual shooting it was, it was clear that trying
to provide concrete information would be crucial in the hours
to come. So I spowed it up my computer and
started to try to begin to search for you know,
information and verifiable stuff. Um. So I spent I spent
all night looking looking for details about the shooter, you know, um,
uncovering his supposed identity. Um. Ultimately, about an hour before
(07:00):
or the police announced their investigation even started. Um and
and twelve hours before the police announced the shooters arrest
um and also to my surprise at the time, I
discovered that the shooter was the same age as me. Um. Yeah,
that was that. That was That was a night so
(07:20):
um Because because I mean only use Twitter, and most
of the video of the instant was on Twitter, I started,
uh my my investigation by looking at Twitter. Uh. My
first goal was to find as as many videos of
of the shooting that I could, and collect pictures of
all of the alleged suspects, all all the people who
were claiming, hey, this is this is this is the shooter.
I think I think I got a picture of the shooter.
(07:40):
Who's here's what he is. Um so. I I kept
my eye on trending terms, so I searched under the
hashtags like Kenosha, Kenosha shootings, Kanosha shooting, Kenosha protests, Boogaloo
was trending a lot. A lot of people thought the
shooter was a boogaloo boy. Um was not um and
also so U hashtag militia. So the search has brought
(08:04):
up a lot, a lot of photos of of multiple
young men, most of whom were carrying long guns, and
a lot of unconfirmed reports that the shooter was a
boogaloo boy was trending on Twitter. This was the main
the main thing that night was boogloo boy shot. All
this stuff that that was the main the main trending topic.
A lot of a lot of conflicting details, and I
did not want to kind of add the misinformation, so
(08:26):
I decided to not make any posts but whatsoever about
the identity of the shooter until I was one pcent
confident um that I had the correct idea, which takes
a while. It's it's not you know, Twitter wants you
to post stuff quickly as soon as you find it out,
and it's way better to hold off your information and
wait until you were absolutely sure it's the right time
to post it. And because it's correct, correct stuff, because
(08:47):
miss mismisidentifying a suspect, you can have a serious, serious
consequences for any individual UM involved. It's when the worst
things you can do is is mis misidentify any any suspect.
So I was looking through all the videos that I
collected for kind of unique um or identifying clothing that
that the shooter may have been wearing. The first video
(09:08):
I found useful was from a right wing videographer named
Drew hernandez Um who a few months later called from
bloodshed at the Capitol. He also testified at the Written
House trial. This video did not actually show any any
actual shooting. It had a wounded person on the ground
being treated by a medic, and a man standing over
(09:28):
the scene with with with a gun, um and wearing
a green shirt, a tan baseball cat jeans, and like
purple latex gloves. He had he had a he had
he had a black and orange bag um. The person
on the green shirt then runs towards the camera while
talking on the phone, and he says into the phone, UM,
I just shot somebody or I just killed somebody. It's
(09:49):
hard to tell where he's actually saying if it's it's
one of those things where if you think about it,
you can hear both ones. But but he he says
something like I just killed somebody on the phone and
he runs past the camera. So this this this, this
was the first kind of really important piece of information
personal that was brought up in the trial too, and
he he was like, I don't remember what I said.
(10:12):
Oh interesting, okay, Yeah, And to be honest, like, even
if if this was I don't think any of us
believe this was legitimate self defense. But like, even if
it was, either of those things would be perfectly acceptable
things to say. It's a surprising moment, and you probably
wouldn't remember what you said. I don't necessarily think he's
lying about that. It turns out he he was. He
(10:33):
was on the phone with the person who bought him
the gun of a friend of his. Um So, but
but that this was my first important piece of information,
you know, the the night of right. This is before
anyone's analyzed any of this stuff. So this is the
first video that I can find. Its like, Okay, here's
a person admitting on camera that they shot somebody. Um
(10:53):
and we're wearing a few potential identifiers, namely the green shirt,
baseball cap, and bag. Um. So, now I could search
for all of those items together and the rest of
the footage collected throughout the night looking over the top
viral videos of the night showing multiple people getting shot. Uh,
this is from This is from later on, after the
first person gets killed, we can see someone in a
(11:15):
baseball cap, black and raunch bag and what could be
a green shirt running through a street. Um. Somebody runs
over to the individual with the gun and kind of
punches them in the head, not knocking his hat off.
So now the person running with the gun does not
have a hat. Individual with the gun he keeps running,
but trips and falls on the ground before people try
to disarm him. Four more shots are fired from the
(11:37):
suspect and uh what one more person dies as a
result of this. Other person gets their arm nearly blown off. Uh.
There is one continuous video of all of this happening.
Extremely useful having having one video of this whole shot. Yeah. Um,
so the shooter, who appears to be the same person
is the other video because of the green shirt and
(11:58):
the hat at the beginning, continues to get onto his
feet and runs off again. Uh. And the orange orangine
orangine a black bag swings in front of him as
he's running, and a purple glove is also visible. UM.
Multiple vehicles drive past, like police vehicles. UM. The shooter
then walks up pretty close to police vehicle and he
(12:20):
just he just he just with with with the rifle
and nothing, nothing happens. He he like he wait, he
waves to the cops and they just keep driving and
he walks away. So after finding watching these videos, I had,
you know, I had no reason to believe the shooter
was in custody, um, and I had a good idea
of his clothing and attire. So now it's time to
you know, compare this information that I gathered, uh two
(12:41):
pictures of the supposed you know, suspects circulating on Twitter. Um.
But but first I think, uh, now it's it's the
time to listen to people selling new stuff. You know,
who doesn't oh boy trampled to another state to show
up armed in a community to threatened people. They don't
(13:02):
do it. I'm saying they don't. That's good, Okay, Products
and services who supported less Hello fresh black Arple coffeehould patrol.
What are you actually a number of our sponsors will
show up unwanted in your community armed. I forgot. The
Washington State Highway and the FBI have both dropped ads. Now. Also,
(13:25):
you know highway patrol. Don't forget about those motherfuckers Like
Kyle Rittenhouse. A number of our sponsors may show up
in your home neighborhood with another one also Black Arple Coffee,
Kyle's favorite brand of coffee. Remember, well it was until
they disavowed him. And here's here's the ads. Here's the
ones that pay us do it. We're bad. So there
(13:58):
was there was a lot of pictures of suspects on Twitter,
some of them who look nothing like the person we
now know who shot those people. Um, funny how that happens. It's, uh,
well it's not funny. It's it's pretty pretty, pretty pretty bad. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's not great just to share stuff like like
that when these things happened. Um, which is why I
(14:21):
said I'm not gonna share anything until no. Um I
know that it's it's it's actually worth posting about. So
in uh, I'm gonna go through go through some some
some of the pictures and stuff of of I'm going
through at least one of the pictures of one of
the people people claimed to be the shooter. So in
one picture circulating you see someone in a green shirt,
(14:42):
a baseball cap, and big, big, big black rifle. But
this man's also wearing shorts of a black hat, not
a tan one, has no bag, appears to be wearing
like a tactile vest that is also green. So not
the guy. Even though he's wearing a green shirt and hat.
Not the same dude. Was be pretty easy to check.
Not you don't. You really don't need to share that
(15:03):
kind of stuff. Pretty sure, Pretty sure a lot of
people own green shirts. Yea. So two other photos that
were circulating, they're claiming to be the guy. We had
a green shirt, a tan baseball cap put on backwards,
jeans um one of the One of the pictures has
a bag in front of which is an orange and
black one, where one of them doesn't. One picture has
(15:25):
h purple gloves of the picture doesn't. But these dudes
look pretty similar despite the same differences. I'm pretty sure
this is this, this is this, This is the same guy.
But you know, I'm a decision at the night, so
this is probably the same dude. Um. And he does
appear to match the shooter a lot better, and there
was a few few clear fixed pictures of his face
um here, But honestly, the face of if if you
(15:47):
look at all the pictures of the Connection shooting that night,
the pictures of the suspect are really unclear because the
way that the light hit his face, he looks like
an incredibly generic white boy. Um like extremely generic. It
is hard to tell any any I identifying features from
his face because they look like he looks like every
(16:08):
every white every white boy. It's really hard to say
everyone you went to high school with, who I don't
know sniffed a girl's chair when he likes that's that's
Kyle rittenhouse visual. Now that I decided that I have,
like I have a decent collection of pictures of who
(16:28):
I believe the actual actual suspect, is time time time
to figure out who the suspects like name actually is
and this is This is one of the one of
the harder things. But often you can have a lot
of help in ways that you might not expect. Um Often,
once you can get a good picture of someone you know,
it'd be like, yes, yes, this this is actually the dude.
Once it gets shared enough, often somebody knows who this
(16:51):
is already. You know, the internet is a pretty big place.
I believe. The first I believe the first person to
actually like like I was the I was the person
to like prove online who who k written that kind
of right knows was the shooter. The first person to
actually tie Kyle's name to the shooter UM was a
neighbor of his on Facebook. Um. They they saw pictures
(17:13):
of the shooter on on Facebook and said, Hey, I
think this I think I recognized this guy. I think
I think this is my neighbor. UM. So often once
you started, once you have like enough pictures and those
can spread, people will feel to find names. It isn't
as hard as you would think that. The hard part
is is finding out what personal connections are making those
links and finding out where where where those are. But stuff,
(17:36):
stuff spreads in a weird way and right for this,
you know, I find I was able to prove that
it was Kyle pretty quickly. Um for a few reasons.
So after I was doing my my my clothing comparisons
to figure out this is to prove, like he said,
this is the actual person who who did these things? UM.
The other thing I I found that was not it
(17:58):
was not viral at all, UM, but just because I
was digging through so much stuff, was this meme shared
by uh I by some like small Boogaloo account. Um,
it was a picture of the shooter. UH compare right
beside a collection of Blue Lives Matter pictures of someone
(18:20):
who looks kind of similar, linking to a Facebook page
or not not linking it was it was it was
screenshot from the Facebook page. And I can tell because
of the font. And it was, like I said, like
a written houses photos. So this was the first This
is the first thing I saw on the like buried
deep inside like Twitter's, Twitter's, Twitter's images. But by using
(18:40):
all of like these a hashtag terms was this meme
and and and and then the meme said, so y'all
think he's still a boogaloo. No, no, he wasn't. But
because because of all of the pro police stuff, because
boogle is generally are not not that fon fond of police. Yeah.
So so yeah, um, given given. So you know, if
(19:03):
someone was to look at this, you know, look at
this meme itself, it's like, okay, you know the job
was done, you know, information this dude looks vaguely similar
ish to the guy on this written house Facebook. Um,
the gun looks kind of similar because one of the
pictures of the Facebook was was a guy holding was
a guy holding in a r um. But you know,
(19:26):
just something looking similar or even holding a similar gun
in one picture from a Facebook account. That's not enough
to be sure about publishing a positive I d that
there's's there's there's no actual really, there's no like definitive
proof there because honestly, if I was to look at
these two guys faces, they don't look incredibly similar because
faces can distort it with lighting and compression that it's it's,
(19:47):
it's it's. It can be really difficult. And this is
where you know, trying to ide a shooter is hard
and requires complex judgment calls and posting an accurate information
or like incomplete information um can have you know, extremely
harm effects. And there's there's a lot a lot of
examples of this happening in the past. You know, probably
the biggest example or the most notorious one of false
identification is the Boston bombing incident. UM. So, you know,
(20:12):
right after the right after thirteen bombing, you know, thousands
of users on sites like Reddit and four chan became
combing through footage to try to identify potential suspects. Screen
caps of the people they deemed suspicious went viral online
on on various social media sites. Unfortunately, the slew thing
work done on four Chuan and Reddit was incredibly shoddy
UM and seemingly had way more to do with like
(20:34):
racial paranoia than actual detective work and evidence gathering. The
New York Post subsequently published a picture on front page
that that originated on Reddit that users had declared that
that was showing the two suspects with without doing any
further verification. So it's it's it's real bad how stuff
can spread from Reddit like this that's completely unverified to
(20:55):
you know, a newspaper, even as one as unreputable as
the Post that's still a very popular paper. The Post
also claimed that the law enforcement we're looking for those
two too, uh two individuals in that picture. UM. One
of the one of the people identified by the post
was harassed online. UM police police later told him just
(21:15):
to delete his social media accounts entirely because there was
no use at that point. UM. When the FBI did
officially release photos of the unnamed suspects, Reddit users again
the false he identified these people. What One of the
people they false he identified went went missing for weeks Priorum.
His his family received media inquiries about the false, unverified
rumors of their son's involvement. UM, and rumors of of
(21:38):
of involvement were spread by reporters from Politico News, Squeak Newsweek,
NBC News, and BuzzFeed. UM. Eight days after the bombing,
this guy was actually eight of the bombing. This guy
was actually found dead and his family said it was
a suicide. UM, he was not not one of the
shooters and not one of the bombers. UM. Even more
(21:59):
than the tactics you could use to try and you know,
verify things online, the most useful thing you can take
out of this is if there is a mass shooting
or other active violence and people on social media are
saying it is this person, don't share it. Don't just
don't share it, just wait, especially sharing it if they
have don't have anything to verify this at all. So yeah,
(22:19):
like I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna don't again. That
is the overwhelming thing. We were not gonna, you know.
That's why you know I'm not gonna share this, Kyle Rittenhouse, UM,
googloom me, because there's no proof for it. It's it's
not there now. Eventually, after digging, I would realize that
this memeu comes from his neighbor saying that she thinks
(22:42):
the suspect is him. So that's that's what this meme
was created. Um But still like the there there was
no no proof for it, so I don't I didn't
share it. So all the Boston bombing stuff was like
going through my mind as I know found this and
was trying to dig for dig from my details. So yeah,
I could not post a name on the social media
um or any info until I until I could prove
(23:05):
it like without a shadow, but doubt that this is
the same person, because a lot a lot of times
it is possible. It just requires work in time, you know.
And a big part of doing this on Twitter is
like you want to get it out fast so you're
the first person to do it, so that you know
you can go vital on your thread of identifying this killer,
And like, no, that's not the reason to do image verification.
It's not to go viral on a thread. It's because
(23:27):
whenever that's your goal you're gonna do, you're gonna do
shitty fast work that is gonna end up causing some
kind of horrible consequence, like in the case the Boston bombing.
And to be even extra clear, the primary use for
this that kind of what you're teaching people image verification,
which is something that like like Belling Cat, which is
has been like kind of a part time employer of mine.
(23:47):
UM is an open source journalism collective that's broken some
of the biggest stories in the last couple of years.
And in the classes, we teach a class on image verification.
And the point is just whenever someone is airing a
piece of what is like supposedly breaking news based on
video or images that have been taken at the side
of a whatever, image verification tactics can help you to
(24:10):
know whether or not it's whether or not either it's
true or false, but also just whether or not the
image the information they're presenting gives you any reason to
believe it, Like it's you might be full of shit,
Like that's super important. Yeah, Like there's there's a thing
that happens like and any time there's something that looks
(24:30):
like a war starting, there's like this video of a
bombing from two thousand fourteen in Gaza that goes around. Yeah,
it's like every time. Yeah, um, there's there's actually five
or six different kinds of things that are like that Chris,
that are like, oh, this is there's actually footage from
like a Russian video game that people keep keeps getting
(24:50):
like mistaken for action combat footage, and it's like, no,
it's fucking from a video game. This has been on,
this has been three Wars. Now, there's this famous footage
of like a fucking um an air soft battle at
night with glowing with the glowing pellets and it it
kind of it kind of looks because it's black and
white and not a great camera, it kind of looks
(25:11):
like tracer fire. And it's there's like three Wars that
people have said like, look, this is still combat footage
from It happens all the time. And again grant account
to follow is a hoax I On Twitter, they do
really good work pointing out just like kind of more
like more like less high stakes kind of image image
verification stuff. Um So, but before I get into the
(25:33):
actual like verification work of like proving, hey, I can
actually prove that that by by not just someone's face,
I can prove that this shooter is the same guy
from from from the Facebook page. Um I'll explain that
next first short short ad break and then we will
fit finish up with this actual proving section. Yeah, you
know who is not Kyle? Why? How do you have
(26:01):
really dropped the ball out all of the transitions today? Yeah?
I am not proud of myself or my place in
society at the moment um. Here's ads, We're back. I
(26:24):
feel terrible Garrison. And So even even though the boogloo
meme was not hard evidence, uh it did, it did
provide a lead. So after seeing the meme, I did
the first most obvious thing that I could see was
compare the gun in the two frames. Uh they do
look similar. Uh they're not. They're not identical. Uh the
(26:44):
optics are different for each rifle um, But the rest
of it, but the stock, the grip um, and the
barrel do do seem? Do seem to be? Do seem
to be, if not, if not identical, at least extremely similar. Again,
don't lot enough to make a positive idea on an
individual basis, like this person is this person? So that
(27:05):
the next step is to scour the actual Facebook account
itself that is alluded to in this meme and see
what I can find there, the goal obviously being to
find statements or pictures that will tie this person in
the images of the shooter to the person on the account.
So that's you know, clothing, location, intention, you know, all
(27:27):
these types of things that could tie the pictures of
the shooter the pictures of person on on on this account. Um. So.
Kylera houses old public Facebook profile was mainly made up
of Blue Lives Matter and pro police images going back
as far as um with a few uh then recent
pictures of him holding his Air fifteen style rifle. Uh.
(27:48):
Those the the rifle pictures were like from June. The
shooting happened in late August. Um. It appears I think
it came out in the trial that he got his
rifle around like may um So, Yeah, a lot of
a lot of a lot of pro police stuff, a
lot of them blue lining, blue Lives matters type things. Um.
His public his his public page is real is relatively sparse. Um.
(28:11):
And there was no public friends list to look through. Um.
One one noteworthy piece of information was that he did
he did list another name for himself as Kyle Lewis
believe his mother's maiden name. But uh. But even so,
even though I wasn't able to view a friends list
and there wasn't many public posts. Uh, this is his
page is by no means a dead end. I could
(28:32):
still see everyone that has commented on, shared, or liked
his public posts, because like so, he did not have
he he did not many have any pictures himself on
his page that that that I could use for verification.
He didn't have like not nothing that I could tie
to the shooting besides the actual guns. So not not
tons of useful not tons of useful stuff. But there's
(28:54):
perhaps there's still other other leads to look through, Like
everyone who's liked, shared, or uh commented on his posts,
So I opened up new tabs for every single person
that interacted with Kyle's posts. While looking over their pages,
I was searching to see if any of them had
listed Kyle as a relative, with a focus on anyone
with the last name of written House or Lewis um
(29:15):
and and you know, ideally was looking forward to see
if anyone had pictures of Kyle or someone who seems
to be Kyle. Uh. One post from May eighteen eventually
eventually proved useful. One comment read, Kyle, you sure do
look look like a Louis. So there's the alternate last
name and two people had liked that comment, Kyle himself
(29:37):
and and UH and someone who is his mom, which
or would would later find out is his mom. Um. Uh,
so she said that lived. She said that she lived
in uh is it anatok Illinois? Probably Antioch, Illinois, which
matches uh with Kyle's UH Illinois based pro police posts.
(30:02):
He made a lot of like Chicago blue Lives Matter posts,
so I assumed that Kyle was from Illinois. And also, um,
uh Antioch is that you said whatever Antioch to to
Wiscon's Antioch to Kenosha is only like three minute drive,
so that is also like okay, that's that's that's that's
(30:23):
pretty close. That is that is doable. Um so it
was the next I went. I went through a lot
of the relatives pages, but I'm gonna focus just on
the person who I found out who was um Kyle's mom,
because they're the one that had the most useful information, right.
A lot of other information I looked through just didn't
turn out to be useful, right, So I'm not not
including all of that here. Um uh. One post from
(30:47):
from uh Wendy's mom UH featured a younger Kyle wearing
a police outfit. Um, I'm sure people have seen this
picture online before. I think I was probably I was.
I was probably the first person to share this photo
of Kyle in this in this younger Kyle wearing this
this police this police costume, an unbelievably cringe e photo,
(31:09):
like either side of the fact that he took two lives,
Like just yeah, I mean we all have photos we
took when while an r OTC, Like, so yeah, ideally
we would we would give there There's actually there's actually
a lot more of these photos. There's photos of him
touring so this is this stuff. I also found that
night photos of him like touring a target with police
(31:32):
as he's in a police uniform. He was part of
like a police Young Cadets program. He he was like twelve, Um,
so that that's where he got this outfit, and he
like tagged around with police for like a day or something.
And this photos of him like in a target with police,
even when I was like a shitty, right winging kid,
that sounded like a nightmare. So so yeah, so Kyle's
(31:54):
the person who I figured out was Kyle's mom posted
this this photo of of her and Kyle, which which
Kyle liked, and then in another picture of another picture
from from Kyle's mom, I found, Uh, it's a family
picture including Kyle wearing what I would say is like
(32:15):
an army green shirt kind of similar, but it's a
green shirt like I have. I have shirts that are
pretty similar to that. I'm not gonna that's not gonna
be anything so super definitive until we got there's one
one picture that that proved to be much much more,
much more useful. Uh, of Kyle on or someone who
(32:36):
assumed was Kyle. You don't you don't you don't actually
see his face, but he is wearing horribly cringe e
American flag crocs, which which Kyle? Which which so and
and and on. On Kyle's page, there was also pictures
of him wearing those same crocs, So like, even even
though I can't see the person's face, the crocs the same,
(32:59):
probably the same guy. He's also wearing a tan baseball cap. Um,
and on this I can actually see that it has
an American flag on the front of the cap, which
I did not notice on anything else before. So that's,
you know, that's something different, But again not that that's
that's not that's not that's not like a red flag.
That's just you know, a thing to a thing of
(33:19):
note um because the baseball cap is tan um and
it has like white mesh on the sides. Um. The one.
The one thing I did, I did make one post
before I actually did any kind of I claiming to
do I identity stuff. I did ask my Twitter followers
if there's any pictures of the back of the Shooters
(33:40):
cap um, and I got them to to send me those.
And then I got one picture of of the back
that actually has uh. I couldn't see, like, Okay, the
back of the Shooters cap also has the flag on it,
so I was able to actually show that. Okay, so
the baseball cap on the back of it, uh. But
they're both Tanna based ball caps, they both have white
(34:01):
men in the side, they both have to have an
American flag. And then I got another picture that was
even closer that showed a tear on the brim of
the hat. And if you zoom in on one of
the beach pictures, you could also see a tear on
the same position on the hat. So this is this
hat is the hat is the same hat? The hat
(34:22):
was definitely it was definitely in both locations. So at
this point, based on the gun, based on the hat,
based on the location being very close to kenosha um
and being closed on the rough facial similarities, um, there
was there was enough enough to enough to to um
(34:43):
enough to put put stuff together to be like, Okay,
I I think I think this is this is probably
this is probably fine in saying I think this is
probably the dude. UM. So at this point I wasn't.
I wasn't. Again, I'm not gonna post this immediately and
and gonna post something by saying this is who it
is without providing the evidence. So instead of like running
(35:04):
a thread tweet by tweet, I read the whole thread
out and then tweet the whole thread at the same time.
UM so, so I I put to the thread documenting
my relevant stuff. Um I. I wrote the first eight
posts the same time and posted them together with all
the evidence of uploaded um and then and then uh,
as I was writing the threat, I came across another
piece of evidence. There was one I was going through
(35:26):
one of the live streams of of that night from
a channel called the Rundown Live, which I've not heard
anything of before or since. Then. UM, but you know
one of the many streamers that were out UM, and
you can see you can see Kyle inside the frame
and then like pans away, but the people are still talking. UM.
So so Kyle Kyle is actually off camera now, UM,
(35:49):
but he I think someone like asks him his name
and he and the person who I think is Kyle
replies Kyle. Now, of course it's off camera, so it's
not you can't be totally sure. There's there's enough context
lose and that plus only other evidence. I'm like, Okay,
this is enough to add to the thread because it
again it's it's not enough proof by itself, but it
combined with everything else completes a much fuller picture. So
(36:12):
I posted my like niner yeah like eight or nine
thing thread on being able to prove its Kyle via
you know, comparing stuff like the gun, the hat, the shirt,
and demonstrating my work tracking across Facebook and how it's
able to like link these two people together. Um. Twenty
two minutes after I posted the threat identifying Kyle, Kosia
(36:34):
police adounce that they were that they were starting an
active investigation. UM. I soon added a court document to
my thread about a traffic violation by someone named cow
written House filed a few days before the shooting. The
traffic violation thing also included stuff like address, which I
I blacked out the addressed for that just because sharing
(36:55):
the sharing for reasons I'll soon explain. Because again, if
if it's if it's a it's a track of violation,
if people really want it, they can find it themselves,
right it's it's not making impossible to find it. And
this was able to confirm it. It was in the
same location, um antioch Um. And also this this proved
that Kyle was seventeen at the time. Uh. This is
(37:16):
how we knew that he was seventeen years old at
the time of the shooting was because of this traffic
violation document found online. So the the address on the
violation document was the same one I had linked to
Kyle's mom. By doing other like osan address work, I
was able to find out where what what her address was. UM.
(37:38):
So so yeah, that was that was most of my
work that night. Uh. It took about I don't know,
like too sh maybe you know it. It's hard, it's
hard to break up. Uh, it's timing it. It took
about half an hour to get from the boogaloo meme
to finding the matching baseball cap on Kyle's mom's Facebook page.
(38:02):
About another half hour to write out the thread, and
you know, about an hour of work previous to that
about you know, trying to find out the actual you know,
footage and categorize it. And Okay, this is the clothing
he's wearing. Here's the clothes I need, I need to
look for on social media right see see see see
if I can find these shoes, these pants, this, this shirt,
this hat, this bag, that kind of stuff. Um. And
I was able to find enough of those items to
(38:23):
make it pretty pretty clear that it was it was,
you know linked um. And that makes you, Garrison, one
of the first people in the world to get to
no way more about kyle rittenhouse than you ever wanted
to know. Yeah, a lot more. This nightmare has been
going on longer for you. Yeah, and so, and I
(38:50):
want to know a few of the ways to do
image verifications specifically on Kyle that that I didn't do,
but other people did after after I after I said, hey,
this is part of the guy. So afterwards people found
other kind of evidence on Kyle's TikTok um and snapchat
So it turns out Kyle was snapchatting his night in Wisconsin, um,
(39:10):
which we would find out later, So he was that
he was snapchatting from kenosha Um and Garrison. First off,
I do feel as the representative of zoomers in in
this call. Wait, why are you Why are you guys
all using the snapchats? Huh, I don't use I don't
use the snapchats. Um. Well, I'm making you answer for
the crimes of your generation, the crimes like the snap Now, well,
(39:36):
technically speaking, I have one friend who I only talked
to you through Snapchat, and we both only use it
for that and we don't know why we use snapchat. Yeah,
there's a few people who are like snapchat, people who
only text or snapchat, and I don't. I don't get it. Yeah,
except neither of us are like that. We just specifically
there got signal anyway, So yeah, the Snapchat. There's also
uh TikTok Um. There was a footage of of Kyle
(39:59):
att thing a Trump rally at TikTok Also him like
assembling and testing out his gun was on a Snapchat.
I believe eclipse that it were also shared on TikTok
So I could have got a lot more closer details
of the gun if if I looked on if if
on Snapchat or or TikTok um, and I think, if
(40:20):
this is this is a good advice that I've taken
since then, and for other people looking to do this stuff.
If if a suspect looks as young, um, you know,
Snapchat and TikTok might be, or and and Instagram might
be apps that are worth are worth checking out for
information as opposed to like Facebook. Right, lucky, lucky enough,
there was enough stuff on Facebook on this instance, typically
probably because No, Kyle's family was conservative so and he
(40:42):
was conservative, so higher chance of being on Facebook there.
But you know, in general, if someone's younger and maybe
look on younger apps. Um. But yeah, so you know,
good thing to think about. You know. Whenever these like
chaotic Panis moments happen, you know, misifforation can spread very
very quickly. Um. Cannot stress enough how dangerous and irresponsible
(41:03):
it is when a suspect is named without proper verification. Um.
You know. Uh. Last last September, uh Ian Miles Chung
falsely identified a suspect in the shooting of two l
A police officers This resulted in the falsely accused got
a man and receiving many death threats online. I think emails.
Chalnging did this like again a few months later. He
(41:26):
was doing this a lot. Last year he was doing it.
He was really bad about trying to identify people. Um.
But you know, doing solid solid arification work is possible,
but extreme caution needs to be taken. Um. I need
to be very mindful of the consequences of your actions
when when you're doing this work. I also want to
put out Garrison is very good at this. That's that's
why it took two hours and a half hours. It's
(41:46):
going to take it takes a lot longer. Yeah, Like honestly,
like I was surprised like it. Finding Kyle was just
the right mix of things in one moment. Often it doesn't.
Often it doesn't go that fast, and it doesn't need
to be right like a big big The problem is
that if people think about it needing to be like
a fast paced thing, that's where that that's where the
mistakes happen. I was just lucky to have enough like
(42:06):
dominoes fall in the right place too. I identify how
the night of having having his neighbor say, hey, this
guy looks similar to my neighbor. Extremely useful in in
in in the long run, right like that that happened
faster than that happens in a lot of cases, and
so not really accelerated things. Sometimes it will be easy.
Sometimes like a good example of when it's harder. We
have a decent amount of footage about the individual who
(42:29):
placed bombs outside of the capital bombing before the sixth um.
That person has not been identified and the FBI seems
to have no goddamn clue. But also what they were
way more intentional, and they're very smart whoever they are,
They're very capable. They were. The only things that have
on them is their shoes, basically those are those are
kind of the polls of this right on one. Like
(42:51):
that with with Rittenhouse, you've got this situation where it's
like all of the information you need to identify them
is there openly online um. And part of ops sex
if you're doing things that are crimes um is to
make sure that is to limit that that that whatever
it is you are going to to the to the
crimes in um. There nothing exists on the internet that
(43:13):
connects that to your name and face and that that
doesn't that doesn't always mean black block. That can mean
other clothing, especially if you've been photographed in black block
a book. I think like if you look at if
you look at, um, the guy who dropped off bombs
a January six, he's not wearing black block because black
block draws attention. He's wearing like grays. He's he's wearing
like that guy that well, that individual person is either
(43:38):
a former FED or former Special Forces. They were very capable,
leaning towards FED who showed up in clothing they had
never weren't worn before and paid for used in cash,
probably from a variety of places. Um. That clothing was
burned as soon as they got away. They were out
of the state as early as it was possible to
(44:00):
do so, plant them and then immediately get out like um,
and you know, by the time the capitol, right by
the time their bombs had been found, they were they
were if they were smartly gone, you know, like that's
how anyway whatever, like like oftentimes it can be if
someone knows what they're doing this this process can be
a lot harder, like in the case of the people
(44:20):
of of the guy who left the bombs at the capitol. Um.
You know, Kyle it was not you know, wasn't wearing
much identified clothing, wasn't even wearing a mask because COVID
was for cox UM. So you know, there's a lot
of these things that that made this process, um, you know,
easier than a lot of a lot of other verifications.
But like I said, there still was a lot of
false ideas going around that night, um, and so it
(44:43):
kind of still happens. I'm kind of on the fence
myself as to whether or not it would have been
safer like for our country or the society or whatever
you want to call it if, um like, how much
more damage or less damage would have been done if
Kyle Rittenhouse had been someone who showed up in impact
couple like clothing that he could not be identified from
(45:04):
fucking ran off and was never caught and we just
knew there was the shooting of protesters in Kenosha um
by somebody. UM Like, I don't know how much better
or worse that is for society if that happens. I
don't know. I'm thinking about terrible things. But sorry, but
first off, I want to apologize. Sometimes talking about this
stuff winds up seeming like advice for how to commit crimes.
(45:27):
That's not the intent. It's just when you talk about
what makes something difficult to identify, your kind of by
default talking about like here's how to here's how to
get commit a crime and get away with it. Um.
And it's the kind of thing like if you're doing
verification work, one of the things that helps is to
kind of put yourself in the mindset of somebody who, Okay,
if I'm in this situation and I do this, um,
(45:48):
what are the decisions that I might make afterwards? Um?
And you can kind of try to, uh think through
this person. Like it can be helpful, especially if you're
trying to like track someone through a day. So you know,
someone was at this point at a protest at X
hour because they shot somebody. Um, you know, think through, Okay,
what else happened that day? Where their other protests, where
(46:08):
their other gatherings, like or is this one in a
series of events? Can I go look for, you know,
videos from other things in the area that this person
might have also been at and might have warned the
same clothing? Um, there's anyway Image verification is fun. Catch
the fever. It is it is a fun thing to do.
It's good to if if if you're not able to
attend in person demos for like like physical reasons or whatever,
(46:31):
or like mental reasons, doing the stuff from home is
is another way of getting involved, especially already out tracking
down bad people after they after they do bad things. Yeah,
so you can, you know, if you want to learn
more about this with you know the benefit of also
visual aids um belling Cat has if you just type
(46:54):
image verification belling Cat. There's beginners and advanced guides to verification. Um.
There's talk about like manual reverse image search tools and
like how well they work. There's quizzes, so go go
there if you if you find this interesting, Um, it
can be quite a hoot. Um. But you know what
(47:15):
else is quite a hoot Ending a goddamn podcast, which
I'm doing. Now we're done, goodbye. It could happen here
as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
(47:37):
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
monthly at cool Zone media, dot com, slash sources, thanks
for listening.
Hey, every buddy America, Hey Americans America, How is American?
That is the podcast? And that was that was a
horrible issue. That was maybe your talk ten worst This
is it could happen here a podcast where an incompetent
Rube Fox up starting the show and then we talk
(00:27):
about how things are falling apart or how to make
things not fall apart, or some version of things in
between those two facts. Yep, yep. That's a kind of
kind of not great time going on right now. A
lot of people are that was our second. That was
our b pitch for the name. Kind not a great
(00:49):
time going on right now. Actually not that far from
what was the say. Yeah, I mean it's like, especially
especially right now, there's there's a lot of a lot
of trials going on, m feet on stuff, and the
mud are very trial is happening, the one about you know,
(01:10):
Unit Unite the Right is going on, and of course
the kindn't his trial as of as of recording is um. People,
the jury is still in deliberation. Um, So no idea
what's going to be the result. By the time this episode,
I've actually been like not commenting on it or neither
to think about it. There's nothing we can do about it.
There is nothing you can do. And like a lot
(01:32):
of people, there's been discussion about how much civil unrest
there's going to be depending on the result of the trial.
I know there's been a lot of like National guards
sent to Wisconsin. It's been you know, FBI door Knox
and activists tombs trying to scare people so they don't
you know, go out and ride or whatever. Discussion online,
the people you know, planning protests in response to in
response to whatever the result is. Um. I know just
(01:55):
today there was a post from I think the Ohio
Proud Boys claiming that they we sending like like, uh,
was it hundreds or thousands of like people armed with
like a RS to Wisconsin or Yeah, there's there's a
fucking post. People are saying, like you should take it
seriously because it's from a Proud Boys internal chat and
it's like we've got three hundred guys heavily armed heading
(02:16):
to and there's already X number of guys there, and
we're gonna kill a lot more communists than Kyle Rittenhouse did.
And YadA, YadA, YadA, And if I could give you
one piece of advice now, and who knows where the
world is at the point of which this episode drops.
It's when people talk about say when if you are
at a protest and someone starts talking about the Proud
Boys and the Proud Boys are coming or the Proud
(02:38):
Boys are here, if you don't immediately see uncontrovertible visual
proof that they have access to showing it, assume it's nonsense. Okay, Yeah,
that is my advice as someone who has heard a
thousand times people say versions of the Proud Boys are coming. Okay,
insist on evidence or ignore it. But you know, whenever,
(02:59):
whenever these big will you know, unrests and types of
stuff happens, there's always an increased chance that there will
be some kind of protest related shooting. Especially people are
definitely absolutely may have happened by the time this episode drops.
Especially people are bringing guns. People people bring firearms under
There's been a lot of there's you know, for the
demonstrations outside the courthouse, there's been you know, guns there. Um,
(03:22):
there's been you know, an increasing uh in the rate
of shootings at protests on the West Coast throughout the
past few months. Um, So I'm gonna be kind of
talking about you know some things that you can do
if you're at home and you feel competent enough in
the aftermath of one of one of these shootings. You know,
if if if you know, if a proud boy does
(03:42):
bring a bring a gun and shoot somebody at what
you can actually do if video, if you're in a
situation where you've been following something happening all day, there's
a shooting and like low quality footage starts coming out
of somebody killing someone or someone's else, here's what to
do next if you want to maybe be a positive
part of of that, of that process, well not of
(04:05):
that process, but of like the aftermath of it, you know.
And and because because the universe is cruel. I I
originally wrote this road right up about the written house shooting.
Um because the universe is a cruel place and it's gonna,
you know, continue to This particular incident is going to
continue to be impactful. Even though it's not the first,
(04:26):
it's not gonna be the last one of these. It
is still impactful because of how much of a symbol
has been turned into So I think a lot of
people forget about how how chaotic the night on the
Internet was. The day of the Kenosha shooting. UM, like
it was. It was wild being online as that was
going on. Uh. No, one had no idea what was
(04:48):
going on. People could not agree on who the shooter
was beforehand. There was a lot of pictures floating around.
It was, it was, it was. It was a nightmare. Uh.
We know, we knew that people were shot, we couldn't
know how many or who. Like, it was was pretty
bad and chaotic. And it is always that way in
the wake of a shooting. UM. And it is the
in any given shooting. Always keep in mind when you're
(05:11):
when you're online or in person and there has been
a shooting and people are saying things about said shooting
other than we should take cover from the shooting. If
they're saying anything else about it, um, you have to
assume they're probably not either wrong or not entirely accurate. UM,
because it's hard to be. It happens constantly. I mean,
that's not it's something against any of them. I can
(05:32):
remember a moment when you and I were out last
year Garrison and there was a shooting I don't know,
like forty ft away. Um. Nobody hurt, thankfully, but like
the the immediate report from it was some guy had
gotten pulled an a R fifteen out of his car
and uh, and I think the thing I said to
you was I'll bet you right now it's a nine
millimeter handgun. And sure enough, within minutes there was a photo. Yeah.
(05:54):
It's and it's not that those people were like dumb
or bad. It's that, like shootings are scary, guns getting
pulled is scary, and people funk up um in in
their recollections. Um. It's the same way in which, like
if a bear comes after you, uh, you may exaggerate
the size of that bear in your head because you're
(06:14):
scared as ship because it's a bear. So So I
was home on August um just and I I was,
I was. I was actually about to go out to
to uh cover a purchase in Portland, but then I
saw this happened on my phone on Twitter. I was like,
I cannot go out. I will be more useful at home. Um. So,
with with so much uncertainty online or the details of
(06:36):
the actual shooting it was, it was clear that trying
to provide concrete information would be crucial in the hours
to come. So I spowed it up my computer and
started to try to begin to search for you know,
information and verifiable stuff. Um. So I spent I spent
all night looking looking for details about the shooter, you know, um,
uncovering his supposed identity. Um. Ultimately, about an hour before
(07:00):
or the police announced their investigation even started. Um and
and twelve hours before the police announced the shooters arrest
um and also to my surprise at the time, I
discovered that the shooter was the same age as me. Um. Yeah,
that was that. That was That was a night so
(07:20):
um Because because I mean only use Twitter, and most
of the video of the instant was on Twitter, I started,
uh my my investigation by looking at Twitter. Uh. My
first goal was to find as as many videos of
of the shooting that I could, and collect pictures of
all of the alleged suspects, all all the people who
were claiming, hey, this is this is this is the shooter.
I think I think I got a picture of the shooter.
(07:40):
Who's here's what he is. Um so. I I kept
my eye on trending terms, so I searched under the
hashtags like Kenosha, Kenosha shootings, Kanosha shooting, Kenosha protests, Boogaloo
was trending a lot. A lot of people thought the
shooter was a boogaloo boy. Um was not um and
also so U hashtag militia. So the search has brought
(08:04):
up a lot, a lot of photos of of multiple
young men, most of whom were carrying long guns, and
a lot of unconfirmed reports that the shooter was a
boogaloo boy was trending on Twitter. This was the main
the main thing that night was boogloo boy shot. All
this stuff that that was the main the main trending topic.
A lot of a lot of conflicting details, and I
did not want to kind of add the misinformation, so
(08:26):
I decided to not make any posts but whatsoever about
the identity of the shooter until I was one pcent
confident um that I had the correct idea, which takes
a while. It's it's not you know, Twitter wants you
to post stuff quickly as soon as you find it out,
and it's way better to hold off your information and
wait until you were absolutely sure it's the right time
to post it. And because it's correct, correct stuff, because
(08:47):
miss mismisidentifying a suspect, you can have a serious, serious
consequences for any individual UM involved. It's when the worst
things you can do is is mis misidentify any any suspect.
So I was looking through all the videos that I
collected for kind of unique um or identifying clothing that
that the shooter may have been wearing. The first video
(09:08):
I found useful was from a right wing videographer named
Drew hernandez Um who a few months later called from
bloodshed at the Capitol. He also testified at the Written
House trial. This video did not actually show any any
actual shooting. It had a wounded person on the ground
being treated by a medic, and a man standing over
(09:28):
the scene with with with a gun, um and wearing
a green shirt, a tan baseball cat jeans, and like
purple latex gloves. He had he had a he had
he had a black and orange bag um. The person
on the green shirt then runs towards the camera while
talking on the phone, and he says into the phone, UM,
I just shot somebody or I just killed somebody. It's
(09:49):
hard to tell where he's actually saying if it's it's
one of those things where if you think about it,
you can hear both ones. But but he he says
something like I just killed somebody on the phone and
he runs past the camera. So this this this, this
was the first kind of really important piece of information
personal that was brought up in the trial too, and
he he was like, I don't remember what I said.
(10:12):
Oh interesting, okay, Yeah, And to be honest, like, even
if if this was I don't think any of us
believe this was legitimate self defense. But like, even if
it was, either of those things would be perfectly acceptable
things to say. It's a surprising moment, and you probably
wouldn't remember what you said. I don't necessarily think he's
lying about that. It turns out he he was. He
(10:33):
was on the phone with the person who bought him
the gun of a friend of his. Um So, but
but that this was my first important piece of information,
you know, the the night of right. This is before
anyone's analyzed any of this stuff. So this is the
first video that I can find. Its like, Okay, here's
a person admitting on camera that they shot somebody. Um
(10:53):
and we're wearing a few potential identifiers, namely the green shirt,
baseball cap, and bag. Um. So, now I could search
for all of those items together and the rest of
the footage collected throughout the night looking over the top
viral videos of the night showing multiple people getting shot. Uh,
this is from This is from later on, after the
first person gets killed, we can see someone in a
(11:15):
baseball cap, black and raunch bag and what could be
a green shirt running through a street. Um. Somebody runs
over to the individual with the gun and kind of
punches them in the head, not knocking his hat off.
So now the person running with the gun does not
have a hat. Individual with the gun he keeps running,
but trips and falls on the ground before people try
to disarm him. Four more shots are fired from the
(11:37):
suspect and uh what one more person dies as a
result of this. Other person gets their arm nearly blown off. Uh.
There is one continuous video of all of this happening.
Extremely useful having having one video of this whole shot. Yeah. Um,
so the shooter, who appears to be the same person
is the other video because of the green shirt and
(11:58):
the hat at the beginning, continues to get onto his
feet and runs off again. Uh. And the orange orangine
orangine a black bag swings in front of him as
he's running, and a purple glove is also visible. UM.
Multiple vehicles drive past, like police vehicles. UM. The shooter
then walks up pretty close to police vehicle and he
(12:20):
just he just he just with with with the rifle
and nothing, nothing happens. He he like he wait, he
waves to the cops and they just keep driving and
he walks away. So after finding watching these videos, I had,
you know, I had no reason to believe the shooter
was in custody, um, and I had a good idea
of his clothing and attire. So now it's time to
you know, compare this information that I gathered, uh two
(12:41):
pictures of the supposed you know, suspects circulating on Twitter. Um.
But but first I think, uh, now it's it's the
time to listen to people selling new stuff. You know,
who doesn't oh boy trampled to another state to show
up armed in a community to threatened people. They don't
(13:02):
do it. I'm saying they don't. That's good, Okay, Products
and services who supported less Hello fresh black Arple coffeehould patrol.
What are you actually a number of our sponsors will
show up unwanted in your community armed. I forgot. The
Washington State Highway and the FBI have both dropped ads. Now. Also,
(13:25):
you know highway patrol. Don't forget about those motherfuckers Like
Kyle Rittenhouse. A number of our sponsors may show up
in your home neighborhood with another one also Black Arple Coffee,
Kyle's favorite brand of coffee. Remember, well it was until
they disavowed him. And here's here's the ads. Here's the
ones that pay us do it. We're bad. So there
(13:58):
was there was a lot of pictures of suspects on Twitter,
some of them who look nothing like the person we
now know who shot those people. Um, funny how that happens. It's, uh,
well it's not funny. It's it's pretty pretty, pretty pretty bad. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's not great just to share stuff like like
that when these things happened. Um, which is why I
(14:21):
said I'm not gonna share anything until no. Um I
know that it's it's it's actually worth posting about. So
in uh, I'm gonna go through go through some some
some of the pictures and stuff of of I'm going
through at least one of the pictures of one of
the people people claimed to be the shooter. So in
one picture circulating you see someone in a green shirt,
(14:42):
a baseball cap, and big, big, big black rifle. But
this man's also wearing shorts of a black hat, not
a tan one, has no bag, appears to be wearing
like a tactile vest that is also green. So not
the guy. Even though he's wearing a green shirt and hat.
Not the same dude. Was be pretty easy to check.
Not you don't. You really don't need to share that
(15:03):
kind of stuff. Pretty sure, Pretty sure a lot of
people own green shirts. Yea. So two other photos that
were circulating, they're claiming to be the guy. We had
a green shirt, a tan baseball cap put on backwards,
jeans um one of the One of the pictures has
a bag in front of which is an orange and
black one, where one of them doesn't. One picture has
(15:25):
h purple gloves of the picture doesn't. But these dudes
look pretty similar despite the same differences. I'm pretty sure
this is this, this is this, This is the same guy.
But you know, I'm a decision at the night, so
this is probably the same dude. Um. And he does
appear to match the shooter a lot better, and there
was a few few clear fixed pictures of his face
um here, But honestly, the face of if if you
(15:47):
look at all the pictures of the Connection shooting that night,
the pictures of the suspect are really unclear because the
way that the light hit his face, he looks like
an incredibly generic white boy. Um like extremely generic. It
is hard to tell any any I identifying features from
his face because they look like he looks like every
(16:08):
every white every white boy. It's really hard to say
everyone you went to high school with, who I don't
know sniffed a girl's chair when he likes that's that's
Kyle rittenhouse visual. Now that I decided that I have,
like I have a decent collection of pictures of who
(16:28):
I believe the actual actual suspect, is time time time
to figure out who the suspects like name actually is
and this is This is one of the one of
the harder things. But often you can have a lot
of help in ways that you might not expect. Um Often,
once you can get a good picture of someone you know,
it'd be like, yes, yes, this this is actually the dude.
Once it gets shared enough, often somebody knows who this
(16:51):
is already. You know, the internet is a pretty big place.
I believe. The first I believe the first person to
actually like like I was the I was the person
to like prove online who who k written that kind
of right knows was the shooter. The first person to
actually tie Kyle's name to the shooter UM was a
neighbor of his on Facebook. Um. They they saw pictures
(17:13):
of the shooter on on Facebook and said, Hey, I
think this I think I recognized this guy. I think
I think this is my neighbor. UM. So often once
you started, once you have like enough pictures and those
can spread, people will feel to find names. It isn't
as hard as you would think that. The hard part
is is finding out what personal connections are making those
links and finding out where where where those are. But stuff,
(17:36):
stuff spreads in a weird way and right for this,
you know, I find I was able to prove that
it was Kyle pretty quickly. Um for a few reasons.
So after I was doing my my my clothing comparisons
to figure out this is to prove, like he said,
this is the actual person who who did these things? UM.
The other thing I I found that was not it
(17:58):
was not viral at all, UM, but just because I
was digging through so much stuff, was this meme shared
by uh I by some like small Boogaloo account. Um,
it was a picture of the shooter. UH compare right
beside a collection of Blue Lives Matter pictures of someone
(18:20):
who looks kind of similar, linking to a Facebook page
or not not linking it was it was it was
screenshot from the Facebook page. And I can tell because
of the font. And it was, like I said, like
a written houses photos. So this was the first This
is the first thing I saw on the like buried
deep inside like Twitter's, Twitter's, Twitter's images. But by using
(18:40):
all of like these a hashtag terms was this meme
and and and and then the meme said, so y'all
think he's still a boogaloo. No, no, he wasn't. But
because because of all of the pro police stuff, because
boogle is generally are not not that fon fond of police. Yeah.
So so yeah, um, given given. So you know, if
(19:03):
someone was to look at this, you know, look at
this meme itself, it's like, okay, you know the job
was done, you know, information this dude looks vaguely similar
ish to the guy on this written house Facebook. Um,
the gun looks kind of similar because one of the
pictures of the Facebook was was a guy holding was
a guy holding in a r um. But you know,
(19:26):
just something looking similar or even holding a similar gun
in one picture from a Facebook account. That's not enough
to be sure about publishing a positive I d that
there's's there's there's no actual really, there's no like definitive
proof there because honestly, if I was to look at
these two guys faces, they don't look incredibly similar because
faces can distort it with lighting and compression that it's it's,
(19:47):
it's it's. It can be really difficult. And this is
where you know, trying to ide a shooter is hard
and requires complex judgment calls and posting an accurate information
or like incomplete information um can have you know, extremely
harm effects. And there's there's a lot a lot of
examples of this happening in the past. You know, probably
the biggest example or the most notorious one of false
identification is the Boston bombing incident. UM. So, you know,
(20:12):
right after the right after thirteen bombing, you know, thousands
of users on sites like Reddit and four chan became
combing through footage to try to identify potential suspects. Screen
caps of the people they deemed suspicious went viral online
on on various social media sites. Unfortunately, the slew thing
work done on four Chuan and Reddit was incredibly shoddy
UM and seemingly had way more to do with like
(20:34):
racial paranoia than actual detective work and evidence gathering. The
New York Post subsequently published a picture on front page
that that originated on Reddit that users had declared that
that was showing the two suspects with without doing any
further verification. So it's it's it's real bad how stuff
can spread from Reddit like this that's completely unverified to
(20:55):
you know, a newspaper, even as one as unreputable as
the Post that's still a very popular paper. The Post
also claimed that the law enforcement we're looking for those
two too, uh two individuals in that picture. UM. One
of the one of the people identified by the post
was harassed online. UM police police later told him just
(21:15):
to delete his social media accounts entirely because there was
no use at that point. UM. When the FBI did
officially release photos of the unnamed suspects, Reddit users again
the false he identified these people. What One of the
people they false he identified went went missing for weeks Priorum.
His his family received media inquiries about the false, unverified
rumors of their son's involvement. UM, and rumors of of
(21:38):
of involvement were spread by reporters from Politico News, Squeak Newsweek,
NBC News, and BuzzFeed. UM. Eight days after the bombing,
this guy was actually eight of the bombing. This guy
was actually found dead and his family said it was
a suicide. UM, he was not not one of the
shooters and not one of the bombers. UM. Even more
(21:59):
than the tactics you could use to try and you know,
verify things online, the most useful thing you can take
out of this is if there is a mass shooting
or other active violence and people on social media are
saying it is this person, don't share it. Don't just
don't share it, just wait, especially sharing it if they
have don't have anything to verify this at all. So yeah,
(22:19):
like I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna don't again. That
is the overwhelming thing. We were not gonna, you know.
That's why you know I'm not gonna share this, Kyle Rittenhouse, UM,
googloom me, because there's no proof for it. It's it's
not there now. Eventually, after digging, I would realize that
this memeu comes from his neighbor saying that she thinks
(22:42):
the suspect is him. So that's that's what this meme
was created. Um But still like the there there was
no no proof for it, so I don't I didn't
share it. So all the Boston bombing stuff was like
going through my mind as I know found this and
was trying to dig for dig from my details. So yeah,
I could not post a name on the social media
um or any info until I until I could prove
(23:05):
it like without a shadow, but doubt that this is
the same person, because a lot a lot of times
it is possible. It just requires work in time, you know.
And a big part of doing this on Twitter is
like you want to get it out fast so you're
the first person to do it, so that you know
you can go vital on your thread of identifying this killer,
And like, no, that's not the reason to do image verification.
It's not to go viral on a thread. It's because
(23:27):
whenever that's your goal you're gonna do, you're gonna do
shitty fast work that is gonna end up causing some
kind of horrible consequence, like in the case the Boston bombing.
And to be even extra clear, the primary use for
this that kind of what you're teaching people image verification,
which is something that like like Belling Cat, which is
has been like kind of a part time employer of mine.
(23:47):
UM is an open source journalism collective that's broken some
of the biggest stories in the last couple of years.
And in the classes, we teach a class on image verification.
And the point is just whenever someone is airing a
piece of what is like supposedly breaking news based on
video or images that have been taken at the side
of a whatever, image verification tactics can help you to
(24:10):
know whether or not it's whether or not either it's
true or false, but also just whether or not the
image the information they're presenting gives you any reason to
believe it, Like it's you might be full of shit,
Like that's super important. Yeah, Like there's there's a thing
that happens like and any time there's something that looks
(24:30):
like a war starting, there's like this video of a
bombing from two thousand fourteen in Gaza that goes around. Yeah,
it's like every time. Yeah, um, there's there's actually five
or six different kinds of things that are like that Chris,
that are like, oh, this is there's actually footage from
like a Russian video game that people keep keeps getting
(24:50):
like mistaken for action combat footage, and it's like, no,
it's fucking from a video game. This has been on,
this has been three Wars. Now, there's this famous footage
of like a fucking um an air soft battle at
night with glowing with the glowing pellets and it it
kind of it kind of looks because it's black and
white and not a great camera, it kind of looks
(25:11):
like tracer fire. And it's there's like three Wars that
people have said like, look, this is still combat footage
from It happens all the time. And again grant account
to follow is a hoax I On Twitter, they do
really good work pointing out just like kind of more
like more like less high stakes kind of image image
verification stuff. Um So, but before I get into the
(25:33):
actual like verification work of like proving, hey, I can
actually prove that that by by not just someone's face,
I can prove that this shooter is the same guy
from from from the Facebook page. Um I'll explain that
next first short short ad break and then we will
fit finish up with this actual proving section. Yeah, you
know who is not Kyle? Why? How do you have
(26:01):
really dropped the ball out all of the transitions today? Yeah?
I am not proud of myself or my place in
society at the moment um. Here's ads, We're back. I
(26:24):
feel terrible Garrison. And So even even though the boogloo
meme was not hard evidence, uh it did, it did
provide a lead. So after seeing the meme, I did
the first most obvious thing that I could see was
compare the gun in the two frames. Uh they do
look similar. Uh they're not. They're not identical. Uh the
(26:44):
optics are different for each rifle um, But the rest
of it, but the stock, the grip um, and the
barrel do do seem? Do seem to be? Do seem
to be, if not, if not identical, at least extremely similar. Again,
don't lot enough to make a positive idea on an
individual basis, like this person is this person? So that
(27:05):
the next step is to scour the actual Facebook account
itself that is alluded to in this meme and see
what I can find there, the goal obviously being to
find statements or pictures that will tie this person in
the images of the shooter to the person on the account.
So that's you know, clothing, location, intention, you know, all
(27:27):
these types of things that could tie the pictures of
the shooter the pictures of person on on on this account. Um. So.
Kylera houses old public Facebook profile was mainly made up
of Blue Lives Matter and pro police images going back
as far as um with a few uh then recent
pictures of him holding his Air fifteen style rifle. Uh.
(27:48):
Those the the rifle pictures were like from June. The
shooting happened in late August. Um. It appears I think
it came out in the trial that he got his
rifle around like may um So, Yeah, a lot of
a lot of a lot of pro police stuff, a
lot of them blue lining, blue Lives matters type things. Um.
His public his his public page is real is relatively sparse. Um.
(28:11):
And there was no public friends list to look through. Um.
One one noteworthy piece of information was that he did
he did list another name for himself as Kyle Lewis
believe his mother's maiden name. But uh. But even so,
even though I wasn't able to view a friends list
and there wasn't many public posts. Uh, this is his
page is by no means a dead end. I could
(28:32):
still see everyone that has commented on, shared, or liked
his public posts, because like so, he did not have
he he did not many have any pictures himself on
his page that that that I could use for verification.
He didn't have like not nothing that I could tie
to the shooting besides the actual guns. So not not
tons of useful not tons of useful stuff. But there's
(28:54):
perhaps there's still other other leads to look through, Like
everyone who's liked, shared, or uh commented on his posts,
So I opened up new tabs for every single person
that interacted with Kyle's posts. While looking over their pages,
I was searching to see if any of them had
listed Kyle as a relative, with a focus on anyone
with the last name of written House or Lewis um
(29:15):
and and you know, ideally was looking forward to see
if anyone had pictures of Kyle or someone who seems
to be Kyle. Uh. One post from May eighteen eventually
eventually proved useful. One comment read, Kyle, you sure do
look look like a Louis. So there's the alternate last
name and two people had liked that comment, Kyle himself
(29:37):
and and UH and someone who is his mom, which
or would would later find out is his mom. Um. Uh,
so she said that lived. She said that she lived
in uh is it anatok Illinois? Probably Antioch, Illinois, which
matches uh with Kyle's UH Illinois based pro police posts.
(30:02):
He made a lot of like Chicago blue Lives Matter posts,
so I assumed that Kyle was from Illinois. And also, um,
uh Antioch is that you said whatever Antioch to to
Wiscon's Antioch to Kenosha is only like three minute drive,
so that is also like okay, that's that's that's that's
(30:23):
pretty close. That is that is doable. Um so it
was the next I went. I went through a lot
of the relatives pages, but I'm gonna focus just on
the person who I found out who was um Kyle's mom,
because they're the one that had the most useful information, right.
A lot of other information I looked through just didn't
turn out to be useful, right, So I'm not not
including all of that here. Um uh. One post from
(30:47):
from uh Wendy's mom UH featured a younger Kyle wearing
a police outfit. Um, I'm sure people have seen this
picture online before. I think I was probably I was.
I was probably the first person to share this photo
of Kyle in this in this younger Kyle wearing this
this police this police costume, an unbelievably cringe e photo,
(31:09):
like either side of the fact that he took two lives,
Like just yeah, I mean we all have photos we
took when while an r OTC, Like, so yeah, ideally
we would we would give there There's actually there's actually
a lot more of these photos. There's photos of him
touring so this is this stuff. I also found that
night photos of him like touring a target with police
(31:32):
as he's in a police uniform. He was part of
like a police Young Cadets program. He he was like twelve, Um,
so that that's where he got this outfit, and he
like tagged around with police for like a day or something.
And this photos of him like in a target with police,
even when I was like a shitty, right winging kid,
that sounded like a nightmare. So so yeah, so Kyle's
(31:54):
the person who I figured out was Kyle's mom posted
this this photo of of her and Kyle, which which
Kyle liked, and then in another picture of another picture
from from Kyle's mom, I found, Uh, it's a family
picture including Kyle wearing what I would say is like
(32:15):
an army green shirt kind of similar, but it's a
green shirt like I have. I have shirts that are
pretty similar to that. I'm not gonna that's not gonna
be anything so super definitive until we got there's one
one picture that that proved to be much much more,
much more useful. Uh, of Kyle on or someone who
(32:36):
assumed was Kyle. You don't you don't you don't actually
see his face, but he is wearing horribly cringe e
American flag crocs, which which Kyle? Which which so and
and and on. On Kyle's page, there was also pictures
of him wearing those same crocs, So like, even even
though I can't see the person's face, the crocs the same,
(32:59):
probably the same guy. He's also wearing a tan baseball cap. Um,
and on this I can actually see that it has
an American flag on the front of the cap, which
I did not notice on anything else before. So that's,
you know, that's something different, But again not that that's
that's not that's not that's not like a red flag.
That's just you know, a thing to a thing of
(33:19):
note um because the baseball cap is tan um and
it has like white mesh on the sides. Um. The one.
The one thing I did, I did make one post
before I actually did any kind of I claiming to
do I identity stuff. I did ask my Twitter followers
if there's any pictures of the back of the Shooters
(33:40):
cap um, and I got them to to send me those.
And then I got one picture of of the back
that actually has uh. I couldn't see, like, Okay, the
back of the Shooters cap also has the flag on it,
so I was able to actually show that. Okay, so
the baseball cap on the back of it, uh. But
they're both Tanna based ball caps, they both have white
(34:01):
men in the side, they both have to have an
American flag. And then I got another picture that was
even closer that showed a tear on the brim of
the hat. And if you zoom in on one of
the beach pictures, you could also see a tear on
the same position on the hat. So this is this
hat is the hat is the same hat? The hat
(34:22):
was definitely it was definitely in both locations. So at
this point, based on the gun, based on the hat,
based on the location being very close to kenosha um
and being closed on the rough facial similarities, um, there
was there was enough enough to enough to to um
(34:43):
enough to put put stuff together to be like, Okay,
I I think I think this is this is probably
this is probably fine in saying I think this is
probably the dude. UM. So at this point I wasn't.
I wasn't. Again, I'm not gonna post this immediately and
and gonna post something by saying this is who it
is without providing the evidence. So instead of like running
(35:04):
a thread tweet by tweet, I read the whole thread
out and then tweet the whole thread at the same time.
UM so, so I I put to the thread documenting
my relevant stuff. Um I. I wrote the first eight
posts the same time and posted them together with all
the evidence of uploaded um and then and then uh,
as I was writing the threat, I came across another
piece of evidence. There was one I was going through
(35:26):
one of the live streams of of that night from
a channel called the Rundown Live, which I've not heard
anything of before or since. Then. UM, but you know
one of the many streamers that were out UM, and
you can see you can see Kyle inside the frame
and then like pans away, but the people are still talking. UM.
So so Kyle Kyle is actually off camera now, UM,
(35:49):
but he I think someone like asks him his name
and he and the person who I think is Kyle
replies Kyle. Now, of course it's off camera, so it's
not you can't be totally sure. There's there's enough context
lose and that plus only other evidence. I'm like, Okay,
this is enough to add to the thread because it
again it's it's not enough proof by itself, but it
combined with everything else completes a much fuller picture. So
(36:12):
I posted my like niner yeah like eight or nine
thing thread on being able to prove its Kyle via
you know, comparing stuff like the gun, the hat, the shirt,
and demonstrating my work tracking across Facebook and how it's
able to like link these two people together. Um. Twenty
two minutes after I posted the threat identifying Kyle, Kosia
(36:34):
police adounce that they were that they were starting an
active investigation. UM. I soon added a court document to
my thread about a traffic violation by someone named cow
written House filed a few days before the shooting. The
traffic violation thing also included stuff like address, which I
I blacked out the addressed for that just because sharing
(36:55):
the sharing for reasons I'll soon explain. Because again, if
if it's if it's a it's a track of violation,
if people really want it, they can find it themselves,
right it's it's not making impossible to find it. And
this was able to confirm it. It was in the
same location, um antioch Um. And also this this proved
that Kyle was seventeen at the time. Uh. This is
(37:16):
how we knew that he was seventeen years old at
the time of the shooting was because of this traffic
violation document found online. So the the address on the
violation document was the same one I had linked to
Kyle's mom. By doing other like osan address work, I
was able to find out where what what her address was. UM.
(37:38):
So so yeah, that was that was most of my
work that night. Uh. It took about I don't know,
like too sh maybe you know it. It's hard, it's
hard to break up. Uh, it's timing it. It took
about half an hour to get from the boogaloo meme
to finding the matching baseball cap on Kyle's mom's Facebook page.
(38:02):
About another half hour to write out the thread, and
you know, about an hour of work previous to that
about you know, trying to find out the actual you know,
footage and categorize it. And Okay, this is the clothing
he's wearing. Here's the clothes I need, I need to
look for on social media right see see see see
if I can find these shoes, these pants, this, this shirt,
this hat, this bag, that kind of stuff. Um. And
I was able to find enough of those items to
(38:23):
make it pretty pretty clear that it was it was,
you know linked um. And that makes you, Garrison, one
of the first people in the world to get to
no way more about kyle rittenhouse than you ever wanted
to know. Yeah, a lot more. This nightmare has been
going on longer for you. Yeah, and so, and I
(38:50):
want to know a few of the ways to do
image verifications specifically on Kyle that that I didn't do,
but other people did after after I after I said, hey,
this is part of the guy. So afterwards people found
other kind of evidence on Kyle's TikTok um and snapchat
So it turns out Kyle was snapchatting his night in Wisconsin, um,
(39:10):
which we would find out later, So he was that
he was snapchatting from kenosha Um and Garrison. First off,
I do feel as the representative of zoomers in in
this call. Wait, why are you Why are you guys
all using the snapchats? Huh, I don't use I don't
use the snapchats. Um. Well, I'm making you answer for
the crimes of your generation, the crimes like the snap Now, well,
(39:36):
technically speaking, I have one friend who I only talked
to you through Snapchat, and we both only use it
for that and we don't know why we use snapchat. Yeah,
there's a few people who are like snapchat, people who
only text or snapchat, and I don't. I don't get it. Yeah,
except neither of us are like that. We just specifically
there got signal anyway, So yeah, the Snapchat. There's also
uh TikTok Um. There was a footage of of Kyle
(39:59):
att thing a Trump rally at TikTok Also him like
assembling and testing out his gun was on a Snapchat.
I believe eclipse that it were also shared on TikTok
So I could have got a lot more closer details
of the gun if if I looked on if if
on Snapchat or or TikTok um, and I think, if
(40:20):
this is this is a good advice that I've taken
since then, and for other people looking to do this stuff.
If if a suspect looks as young, um, you know,
Snapchat and TikTok might be, or and and Instagram might
be apps that are worth are worth checking out for
information as opposed to like Facebook. Right, lucky, lucky enough,
there was enough stuff on Facebook on this instance, typically
probably because No, Kyle's family was conservative so and he
(40:42):
was conservative, so higher chance of being on Facebook there.
But you know, in general, if someone's younger and maybe
look on younger apps. Um. But yeah, so you know,
good thing to think about. You know. Whenever these like
chaotic Panis moments happen, you know, misifforation can spread very
very quickly. Um. Cannot stress enough how dangerous and irresponsible
(41:03):
it is when a suspect is named without proper verification. Um.
You know. Uh. Last last September, uh Ian Miles Chung
falsely identified a suspect in the shooting of two l
A police officers This resulted in the falsely accused got
a man and receiving many death threats online. I think emails.
Chalnging did this like again a few months later. He
(41:26):
was doing this a lot. Last year he was doing it.
He was really bad about trying to identify people. Um.
But you know, doing solid solid arification work is possible,
but extreme caution needs to be taken. Um. I need
to be very mindful of the consequences of your actions
when when you're doing this work. I also want to
put out Garrison is very good at this. That's that's
why it took two hours and a half hours. It's
(41:46):
going to take it takes a lot longer. Yeah, Like honestly,
like I was surprised like it. Finding Kyle was just
the right mix of things in one moment. Often it doesn't.
Often it doesn't go that fast, and it doesn't need
to be right like a big big The problem is
that if people think about it needing to be like
a fast paced thing, that's where that that's where the
mistakes happen. I was just lucky to have enough like
(42:06):
dominoes fall in the right place too. I identify how
the night of having having his neighbor say, hey, this
guy looks similar to my neighbor. Extremely useful in in
in in the long run, right like that that happened
faster than that happens in a lot of cases, and
so not really accelerated things. Sometimes it will be easy.
Sometimes like a good example of when it's harder. We
have a decent amount of footage about the individual who
(42:29):
placed bombs outside of the capital bombing before the sixth um.
That person has not been identified and the FBI seems
to have no goddamn clue. But also what they were
way more intentional, and they're very smart whoever they are,
They're very capable. They were. The only things that have
on them is their shoes, basically those are those are
kind of the polls of this right on one. Like
(42:51):
that with with Rittenhouse, you've got this situation where it's
like all of the information you need to identify them
is there openly online um. And part of ops sex
if you're doing things that are crimes um is to
make sure that is to limit that that that whatever
it is you are going to to the to the
crimes in um. There nothing exists on the internet that
(43:13):
connects that to your name and face and that that
doesn't that doesn't always mean black block. That can mean
other clothing, especially if you've been photographed in black block
a book. I think like if you look at if
you look at, um, the guy who dropped off bombs
a January six, he's not wearing black block because black
block draws attention. He's wearing like grays. He's he's wearing
like that guy that well, that individual person is either
(43:38):
a former FED or former Special Forces. They were very capable,
leaning towards FED who showed up in clothing they had
never weren't worn before and paid for used in cash,
probably from a variety of places. Um. That clothing was
burned as soon as they got away. They were out
of the state as early as it was possible to
(44:00):
do so, plant them and then immediately get out like um,
and you know, by the time the capitol, right by
the time their bombs had been found, they were they
were if they were smartly gone, you know, like that's
how anyway whatever, like like oftentimes it can be if
someone knows what they're doing this this process can be
a lot harder, like in the case of the people
(44:20):
of of the guy who left the bombs at the capitol. Um.
You know, Kyle it was not you know, wasn't wearing
much identified clothing, wasn't even wearing a mask because COVID
was for cox UM. So you know, there's a lot
of these things that that made this process, um, you know,
easier than a lot of a lot of other verifications.
But like I said, there still was a lot of
false ideas going around that night, um, and so it
(44:43):
kind of still happens. I'm kind of on the fence
myself as to whether or not it would have been
safer like for our country or the society or whatever
you want to call it if, um like, how much
more damage or less damage would have been done if
Kyle Rittenhouse had been someone who showed up in impact
couple like clothing that he could not be identified from
(45:04):
fucking ran off and was never caught and we just
knew there was the shooting of protesters in Kenosha um
by somebody. UM Like, I don't know how much better
or worse that is for society if that happens. I
don't know. I'm thinking about terrible things. But sorry, but
first off, I want to apologize. Sometimes talking about this
stuff winds up seeming like advice for how to commit crimes.
(45:27):
That's not the intent. It's just when you talk about
what makes something difficult to identify, your kind of by
default talking about like here's how to here's how to
get commit a crime and get away with it. Um.
And it's the kind of thing like if you're doing
verification work, one of the things that helps is to
kind of put yourself in the mindset of somebody who, Okay,
if I'm in this situation and I do this, um,
(45:48):
what are the decisions that I might make afterwards? Um?
And you can kind of try to, uh think through
this person. Like it can be helpful, especially if you're
trying to like track someone through a day. So you know,
someone was at this point at a protest at X
hour because they shot somebody. Um, you know, think through, Okay,
what else happened that day? Where their other protests, where
(46:08):
their other gatherings, like or is this one in a
series of events? Can I go look for, you know,
videos from other things in the area that this person
might have also been at and might have warned the
same clothing? Um, there's anyway Image verification is fun. Catch
the fever. It is it is a fun thing to do.
It's good to if if if you're not able to
attend in person demos for like like physical reasons or whatever,
(46:31):
or like mental reasons, doing the stuff from home is
is another way of getting involved, especially already out tracking
down bad people after they after they do bad things. Yeah,
so you can, you know, if you want to learn
more about this with you know the benefit of also
visual aids um belling Cat has if you just type
(46:54):
image verification belling Cat. There's beginners and advanced guides to verification. Um.
There's talk about like manual reverse image search tools and
like how well they work. There's quizzes, so go go
there if you if you find this interesting, Um, it
can be quite a hoot. Um. But you know what
(47:15):
else is quite a hoot Ending a goddamn podcast, which
I'm doing. Now we're done, goodbye. It could happen here
as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
(47:37):
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
monthly at cool Zone media, dot com, slash sources, thanks
for listening.
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