We the people want the truth, good bad and ugly. Open source investigation helps to expose more factual information but unfortunately along with more dis-information, all needed to fill-in a timeline of an alleged crime in working-theory. Much groundbreaking work has been done by Lee Stranahan from Citizen Journalism School, George Webb from @TruthLeaks and Jason Goodman from Crowd Source the Truth on Youtube. In a very short time the industry of open source investigative, citizen journalism, or as Jason so aptly named it “crowd source the truth”.
Once the crowd source investigation reaches a stonewall or dead-end, where important information is being withheld, then we know we’re over the target, of possible deep-state corruption and/or cover-up. These cases need to be elevated in urgency and steps taken towards obtaining FOIA (freedom of information act) requests. Often the investigators will get tips and leads when a case loses traction but it’s generally obvious when an investigation hits-up against a immovable object and needs to find ways around.
Liberty and privacy are connected, conversely: truth and transparency are connected and open source journalism provides some privacy to some of the researchers. It’s important that we continue to support these intrepid researchers and foster this fledgling industry.
Journalism (as a trade) is in an environment of extreme threat, as confidential sources dry-up.
Crowd-source journalism builds a case on a timeline with factual evidence or recognized citations from verifiable sources, all open to fact-checking and dot-connecting, then back-checked by the crowd.
We live in a world where whistle-blowers are more important than ever, we need to respect the risk and continue to design and develop a framework of investigation management that enables anonymous disclosure, while at the same time vet the sources and corroborate.
Photo credit: Jose Luis Mieza Photography on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-SA
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