Case Study: Bellingcat boosts open-source investigations with Flashpoint’s Echosec

Echosec, Flashpoint’s Open-Source Intelligence Solution, Is the “Best Tool” for Citizen Journalist Website Bellingcat

Bellingcat, a citizen journalist website specializing in open-source investigations, needed a stable and reliable online search tool to help its contributors find location-specific, real-time social media data. Their challenge was the unreliability of other tools, which frequently stopped working due to API changes, limiting their ability to effectively research global events. They turned to Flashpoint and its Echosec platform to find a more user-friendly and robust solution.

Flashpoint implemented its Echosec platform, which allows users to draw a geofence around any location and search for public social media content within it. The results were immediate; Bellingcat adopted it as a primary tool, citing its ease of use, reasonable price, and data diversity. The solution's impact was amplified when Bellingcat used Echosec to train other international journalists in workshops, successfully demonstrating its effectiveness for verification and investigation. Contributors heralded Echosec as the best and most stable tool available for their work.

Bellingcat

Aric Toler

Contributor