Covert Postal Service unit probed Jan 6 social media politico.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from politico.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The New Zealand-based film producer logged onto social media, searching for any clues, video, and photographic evidence to determine what exactly had happened and who the violent insurrectionists were. Watching the situation unfold in the US was incredible, Reeves told Insider. I d seen talk of invading the Capitol and interrupting the certification, but I don t think I could have imagined it would be as effective as it turned out to be.
Reeves said that while he is no expert and only had minimal experience with open-source investigations he was eager to help identify some of the protesters because he always enjoyed solving puzzles.
What do Chuck Norris, an MMA fighter from Baltimore and a neo-Nazi from Tennessee have in common?
Amateur internet detectives identified each one as a participant in the storming of the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6. Each suspected participant was then harassed online. And each subsequently could prove he was hundreds of miles away at the time of the riot.
The misidentifications were hiccups in the massive crowdsource effort that may be among the largest internet-based manhunts in history. The FBI said this week it has collected more than 100,000 digital photos, videos and fragments of social media in an effort to track down and charge participants in the riot.