It’s like something from a Guy Ritchie movie played for laughs. An Irish gangster gets taken down because of his habit of posting reviews of wherever he goes, and accidentally shows his reflection in windows and mirrors.
Whenever I see one of these "crazy ways criminals give themselves away" stories I'm now thinking I'm probably looking at a parallel construction.
During the Floyd protests a woman was recorded on camera in Chicago destroying a police car. A week or so later the police arrested her and claimed an improbable series of gumshoeing around the tee-shirt she had on, figuring out where it was purchased and subpoena sales records then doing a lot of cross referencing.
Far more plausible to me is they pulled cellphone location data.
I've always assumed that this is how a lot of "anonymous tips to the police" work. Illegal dragnet wiretaps plus the OK of a drone functionary boss, and hey presto! the coppers are clued in.
It’s great that Bellingcat put this together, but what are the police being paid to do? Sometimes it seems like law enforcement aren’t investing enough in OSINT.
