Angry Planet - Hunting Nazis Online With Canadian Journalists

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.comJournalists and Nazis have changed a lot in the years since the end of World War II; journalists are on the outs while Nazis are having a bit of a moment. Across the U.S. and Canada, avowed fascists have committed murder, attempted to destroy the power grid, and actively recruit online and in person. As these extremists work to hide their identity, journalists and law enforcement use advanced tech to expose them. But at what cost?On this episode of Angry Planet, Jordan Pearson of the CBC’s visual investigations unit talks us through how he and his co-workers use open source intelligence to expose fascists. We also discuss the ethical struggles that come with using the tools of the surveillance state to track them down.Nazis hiding their facesExercise as a path to fascismWhat’s the public concern?Hate speech in Canada vs AmericaHow a journalist decides when to unmask a fascistWhen a journalist uses facial recognition and leaked data in the public interestFalling into OSINTUsing a boxing glove to find a specific gymThe lightswitch!A gazebo with a chipped toothCan AI help journalists? (yes)The nightmare of transcription“It’s trending towards Nazis”How a Northern Irish town descended into 3 days of anti-immigrant violenceMan accused of facilitating terrorism used quarry outside Quebec City for target practiceTracking Canada’s fascist fight clubsWhat’s an active club?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Hey there, Angry Planet listeners, Matthew here. Did you know that Angry Planet is almost entirely listener supported? It's true. These ads, it's not a good business anymore.

So, if you would like early access to the mainline episodes and you would like to hear them commercial free, go to Angry Planet pod. sign up. We've got one brand new that's up right now. We've got a couple of gentlemen making the case for an independent American cyber force. It's pretty fascinating. Again, go to angry planetpod.com, sign up there. Without further ado, here is the episode. Hello and welcome to another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. I am Matthew Galt. Jason Fields is as good as dead to me. No, he's in Maine. He'll be back. It's fine. I have instead today the lovely Jordan Pearson

from CBC. What is your title over there now, Mr. Pearson? Well, right now I am the editorial and creative lead of the Visual Investigations Unit over at CBC News, which is a new thing that they're doing. It's kind of still in pilot mode. But we've been at it for a year.

And yeah, it's been pretty interesting. Yeah, so I wanted to bring you on, I think broadly to talk about what I see is one of the more interesting kind of new forms of journalism that's happening and then kind of use this piece that y'all just published tracking Canada's fascist fight clubs which is when I've said the lead image on this and of course we'll have a pick we'll have the link in the show notes got like this group of what I would call lads kind of standing in a line and they all have the Totenkov skull and for some

reason I thought that's what y'all were doing to hide their identity is like a cheeky ironic uh like we're going to use the nazi skull to but no that's that's what they do to themselves you're not the only person who thought that we actually got like like it's one of those things where like you you spend so much time trying to think through every possible like little thing in a story and like what might people think and how can we address things ahead of time and we actually got so many people being like why did you why did you hide these people's faces Well, this is a big journalistic problem with, sorry, listeners, with the readership, because it's pretty clear in the article that you're like, we're not going to blur their faces.

If it's blurred, it's because they did themselves. Yeah, we added that after publication because we were getting emails and we're like, okay, like, clearly this isn't like clear enough. So for like, you know, anybody in the back, like, let's just make it really explicit. it. Yeah, that was just one small kind of interesting detail. Those little things get... That's so funny. Yeah, yeah. It's those little things that you kind of just, you know, fly under the radar a little bit. The things that you don't account for. Yeah. It's always what people complain about, especially like in a long piece like this. There's so many moving parts. And you wrote this with four other people? Yeah, it was, yeah, it was a big team effort.

Like, to be clear, also, this is not the only thing we did. for like three months. Like, you know, we published like several other stories in that time. Um, because that's another thing actually like these, um, these like white supremacists. That's, they were all like, can you believe CDC spent like, oh, God, how much could this have cost like 50K with these four people just doing this for three months? And it's like, nah, man. Like it's not how the gig works.

All right. Like it's a no rest for the wicked situation. Um, but yeah, it was a big team effort of like, yeah. you know, five or six or probably more people. I always love how much attention and money these people think are being paid to them. Yeah. They never have like a clear idea of what's actually happening. It's a good bit of self-flattery, I think.

It's like, you know, it absolutely is. It's not how it works. Okay, let's zoom out. And I want to talk about the story and then kind of get into process stuff. Okay, so there's these things that I've never heard. I had never heard this phrase before, an active club. What is an active club? Yeah, well, it sounds pretty innocuous, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that's by design. So what these are, I mean, so this is a movement really that started several years ago. Not in North America. I think Australia. I'm not an active club expert to be. clear. We talked to a lot of people that were active club experts. Mac, for example. Yeah, Mac Lamarro, who is prominently in the story. He, like, when we work together at Vice as well,

and he was, he's been covering this stuff for such a long time. He knows so much about it. So, um, go read his work if you're really, really interested. But anyway, so this is a, this is like a global movement, um, that is really spreading. And what it is essentially neo-Nazi or white supremacist groups that are both sort of it's just like they are training like they get together in parks and gyms and they spar with a lot of like MMA or boxing. So they are training for, you know, essentially what they're looking forward to, which is kind of like the whole day of the rope siege like shit hits the fan type situation. for for the un-initiated can you explain i mean we don't have to do like a 30-minute

you know go listen to a robert evans podcast if you want that but like what is the day of the rope what is the siege shit hit the fan it's just like this this idea that you know there will be a day when like the uprising will be triggered and it'll be the day of revenge on our enemies and uh you know we'll storm the capitals and do it you know do it needs to be done So, you know, they're not actively saying we're going to go out and, like, beat anybody up. In fact, they're actually very careful to say the opposite. I think because they're very aware by this point that their communications are being monitored by police, by journalists. So they'll say, you know, we're not looking for street fights.

We're not like trying to, we're not doing anything violent. But there's this undercurrent of, you know, we'll be ready for the day when it is our time to, you know, commit in violence, essentially. But even beyond the training, these networks are really important because they're just building, you know, I guess I kind of hesitate to use this word, but for lack of a better word right now, building community and solidarity among, you know, racist white people. Why do you hate, why do you hesitate to use that word? I just, it's a very nice sounding word, but like, I mean, I guess strictly speaking,

it is a community of people. I think that that is exactly what they're doing. Yeah, and they do frame it that way as well. Like they're building community and solidarity. But yeah, so what's interesting about these groups is in many cases, at least in Canada, I'm speaking from the Canadian context specifically. Some of these groups are actually fronts for, for example, the Hammerskins, which is, you know, a violent neo-Nazi gang that is in the States. in Canada. And some of these clubs are like feeder groups, feeder clubs. So, you know, you join to be active and to be racist with your white buddies. And, you know, they'll try to indoctrinate you even

further into like a deeper layer of involvement with, you know, organized white supremacist groups. And in other cases, uh, these groups formed after other elements. So Adam Woffin Division, which was like a neo-Nazi militia tied to like multiple murders in North America, um, or the Proud Boys, which in Canada, at least, are a terror group. So when these groups are named... I did not know that. I didn't know that the Proud Boys had such a designation in Canada. Yeah, that was after the January 6th Capitol Riot.

They got designated as a terror group. So when that happens, you know, we'll see a couple cases of this where either members of these groups, like either they'll formally disband or they just kind of dissipate and basically join active clubs. So you have people who were in what is now considered a terror group that are sort of just in active clubs now and continuing on their activities in some ways or in other ways being even more like hardline and hardcore. Because like

the proud boys, you know, are like they had like people of color in their group like they were like Western chauvinist but not like explicitly a neo-Nazi exactly. And what we've seen is like after they got designated as a terror group and their members kind of split off, it's like the really hardcore guys, the guys who are like, yeah, no, we need to be neo-Nazi. Like, we need to like be white supremacist and be militant about it. Like those are the guys who like went on to like perform and join active clubs. So sounds really innocuous. That's a long way of getting around to it.

Sounds innocuous, but in reality is like, you know, according to some people we spoke to at least is like, you know, the fastest growing right-wing extremist threat in, you know, Canada, for example. So if I'm kind of charting out what this looks like, your guy that's online, maybe you're on the younger side and you're looking for people to work out with and like like-minded individuals, you maybe get involved in like a kickboxing group or an amateur boxing league. And then one of them may, and they rent out spaces in gyms, which we'll get to in a minute. And there's like a chance.

Do they actively advertise as like having these kinds of ideas? Do you know when you're going in that you're getting involved in something that's maybe a little bit, you know, dicey politically, so to speak? Yeah. I mean, this is actually an interesting point because the extent to which it's like, oh, I just want to work out. So I accidentally joined a neo-Nazi group. Like, I don't know if that's actually how it works. Like in some ways it feels like the active club designation or like the active club name and some of these groups actually don't even call themselves active clubs anymore. Like this is a term that like we are using to describe what they do.

But some of them have even moved on from this word because it's like, you know, toxic in a certain way. It's become associated. But like it feels like that is more public is more like facing journalists, police. But like what a. tracks people to these groups, I have to imagine, if you are just coming across them on social media, is the racism. Because they're very outward with it. Even if they're not saying, you know, explicitly, uh, we need to like kill certain groups or whatever. Um, they're very much like blood and honor, folk family future. If like in some cases, they're even like, if you're white, join our group, um, you know, don't stand by the sidelines. take action. Like, it's really hard for me to imagine how you would join one of these groups without the attraction being the racism and kind of like the call to action. Like, you don't have to sit around and be a keyboard warrior. You can actually take action in real life and join a

community and get ready to fight. So I feel like that's the attraction. Although, as you just mentioned in gyms, like, that's a whole other thing. And I don't really know how that goes, right? Like, it's like, we haven't talked to many people who interact with them at the gym. We don't know if they're like necessarily recruiting in a gym. But they do like go to these gyms, take propaganda photos essentially and then put those online as like advertising for their cause. And often as y'all discovered, without the people who own the gym knowing really what's going on. In most cases, yeah, yeah. which is a really interesting dynamic.

Because, yeah, like when we talk to these gym owners, so this was part of the reason we wanted to do this story was like, yeah, active clubs are a thing. Like people should know about it, but it's also not exactly big news. Like, you know, anyone could do a piece that's just like, here's what active clubs are and they're in Canada. So what we did as a visual investigations unit is,

collected all the videos and photos, like scrape these telegram channels, and then really just got to the grunt work of like spending a lot of time on Google Maps going through like every gym in like the metropolitan area of Toronto and beyond to find like details where they matched up. Because based on everything we were hearing from experts, it's like, okay, there's like a public safety concern here. And that is something that needs to come to light. So we actually found out what these gyms are and we went and talked to the gym owners.

And yeah, in most cases they didn't know. Some of them were pretty hesitant to speak with us for obvious reasons. You know, nobody wants to have their business associated with anything nefarious. Even though they're, you know, in most cases the gym owners are not doing anything nefarious. It's just, you know, these guys come. They book a private event, let's say. Maybe they say, like, we're veterans or whatever. And then, you know, that's how they get in these spaces.

Personally, I suspect that there may be some gym owners out there who do have closer connections, let's say, or maybe a little more aware. But in, like, the majority of cases and in the cases that we dug into, yeah, these gym owners were like, we had no idea this was this was going on. And some, one of them told you later that they're not allowing the Nazis back into the gym. Yeah, yeah. Pretty much all of them told us that,

which is good. It's hardening. And, you know, in this type of piece, there's so many discussions that you have, like you go back and forth on about, you know,

do you name these businesses? Do you let it go? Because, you know, they didn't know. But in this case, we felt that it was important just to have that layer of like just sort of cards on the table, public accountability, just for everyone involved. Because given the public safety risk that we heard about over and over again from experts and sources that we spoke to, and, you know, I believe the gym owners that we spoke

to who said, you know, these guys aren't allowed back. but it does feel like there needs to be some public knowledge and accountability involving that not just trust us as journalists and as the CBC as an institution which is a pretty tough sell these days but I think just getting it all out there is valuable and any gym owner that's like

you know these guys aren't a lot back is not going to come off looking bad they look good in my opinion yeah walk me through the the public concerns because I will admit and I want to get into a little bit of this like I've got I have pretty strong dumb American

southerner like reactions to some of the stuff that that you guys do in this story does that make sense like you kind of think it's like whatever a little bit not not not that Nazis are whatever to be clear no of course yeah but

But that like is what we want to be doing like kicking people out of public spaces? Like what is the, even if they are Nazis, um, don't they have some sort of right to like work out with their buds? Of course. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I would say like, first of all, I'll just point to like the experts we spoke to, um, who were, we're pretty much uniform and the idea that like, yeah, these guys say they're not. out looking for a fight, but like, you know, look at the words they're saying. They're like, um, like for example, just like, you know, we will see Hitler's vision complete. And it's like, okay. That means one, that means a pretty specific thing. So it's like, these people are on record

with, um, you know, hate speech that very well could be criminal. So just, just on the line of like, they're not doing anything wrong. I mean, I'm not going to make that determination now. What's the, Because it's very different in Canada that it is in America. Like what is what are the hate speech laws? Like what constitute is there is there like a written list or like how does that work? So from my understanding, I mean, there's certain things that are covered by hate speech laws like, you know, you can't incite like violence or like, incite genocide or, you know, these types of things.

So like recently at the Montreal at, we had some protests in Montreal. that were pro-Palestine essentially, or really they were pro-Palestine, but also tied to the G7. So these things were kind of intertwined a little bit. And there was a woman who was, you know, I don't even think necessarily she was like, it's hard to, like, she wasn't like one of the organizers

as far as we're aware. She's just kind of like a random person who like, she's a participant. Yeah. But, you know, she was like throwing up, like she was saying, you know, final solution, final solution. and things like this. And she got in,

in, you know, legal trouble, like trouble with the police as far as I'm aware. And it's like, okay, so if this person is going to, if that's like considered like a crime in Canada, then, you know, how is it okay to go around saying, you know, Hitler's vision needs to be complete and like no Jews and like all this stuff. So, so yeah.

So that is a crime in Canada. I'm not saying that like what these people are doing in particular is a crime, but we did speak to an expert in Canadian speech law who's in the story. We said in his opinion that this would probably rise to the level of hate speech. So so this is like a roundabout discussion, but like to get back to like the the public safety concern, it's like you have people who are on record saying they want certain groups like to go away or to die or be exterminated essentially in their praise for Hitler and the final solution.

and they are fighting in parks. They are, you know, in an aggressive state of mind. They are, you know, in effect, preparing for violence. And that's just something that is like kind of like a powder keg. Like the potential for something to happen is absolutely there. Like as much as they're like, it's not illegal to work out. It's not illegal to go into a park and spar. But when you have like hate groups doing that, I think it changes the equation a little bit.

And this is just what we were told, like, you know, over and over again. And I also want to make clear that it doesn't make cable news very often, but there are a not, it's insignificant, there are, sorry, it doesn't make cable news very often, but there are a not insignificant amount. of murder cases, aggravated assault cases, like terrorist attacks that are attributed to people with this philosophy, both in Canada and the United States. I think there was a gentleman just today that was convicted of a 2020, it was Canadian,

somewhere in the south here that killed somebody. It was convicted of it just today. I noticed before we got on. So I think there is this, I don't know why, and I know that I kind of, we kind of talked about this a little bit beforehand, but I don't know why that there is this kind of perception that these, maybe it's just an American perception that these groups aren't super dangerous and that they're kind of small and inconsequential and they're not that many of them, but like people do die. You know, these, like this, this kind of street level violence does lead to, like, beatings and like there are consequences. in the real world. Right. Yeah. I mean, like, it's also important to, I think, place this within, like, the framework of just what's, what's often called in law enforcement circles, like, ideologically motivated violent extremism. And the risk with an IMVE group is not necessarily the violence that group is going to commit, like, in an organized manner as a whole. But kind of the risk of, like, you know, know, lone wolves or just people within that group who really internalize the message of hate

and violence and decide to act on it. So just, so even just like putting that, that sort of thing out there and letting it grow and, you know, get more and more intense. Like, it just raises the level of risk overall, like, regardless of what the group eventually plans to do, or what it may or may not do as a whole, you know, there's always that sort of risk of just, you know, raising the temperature to a degree

where one day it boils over. Can you walk me through? So obviously they, they publish the, all the pictures that you all found were stuff from public facing groups. They were things from mostly, I assume,

telegram channels. Yeah, telegram mostly. And so the, These people, they blur their faces, they hide their faces with skulls. They do things to mask their identity, not all the time, but often before they go up. But in some cases, you were able to, like, based on, like, tattoos or other things, you're able to figure out exactly who these people are. Can you explain to me, like, why it's important that we have the faces and names of these guys in these active clubs?

Yeah. Well, it's important for accountability, first of all. You know, it's hard to imagine how you can do this story, which the story is basically the accountability and bringing these things to light. I think that's basically impossible to do unless you name at least like the leaders or the people who appear to be, you know, the most prominent and dedicated members who may actually be going out to book time at these gyms. And so we felt that was really important. But we were having discussions like literally every day until we published almost. Like, what is the bar? Who are we naming and not?

Like, what purpose is it serving? So for example, we named this guy at Brandon LaPointe, who is, you know, a prominent member of NS 13, Nationalist 13, which is one of the active clubs that we covered. And the reason that we named him and showed his face. And actually, we went out and took some footage of our own of him. because we uncovered his address, which is kind of an interesting tangent on its own. But we wanted to name him not just because he's like a prominent member

who may be involved in booking these spaces and accountability and da-da-da. But, you know, he was actually a proud boy in Canada. So we felt that was important to name him in particular because it sort of shows our work. And, you know, it takes us a little bit out of the trust me bro zone. And takes you along the progression. of like group. Yeah, like it just shows that this guy was a member of what is now a terrorist group and is now doing this thing. And that's really important, I think, to show people and get out there.

Yeah. So this picture then of him with the faith and fear shorts and the like fanny pack kind of strapped along his chest. That's one that one of your reporters got like in the wild. That is, yeah. how do you like you said there was an interesting tangent of uh of its own will you take me down that tangent like how do you decide to do something like that is there any are you afraid do you like do they knock on his door like how does this no so this was i mean you know it's this was taken i believe on a sidewalk and it's legal to fill in public so all of that is is you know fair game um

but yeah i mean like the discussion about how to go about is always interesting because this is actually in the written story, so I'm not like revealing anything that was, you know, under wraps or anything. We laid it all over, people, how we did this. But basically, we plugged his name into a service that lets you search leaked databases. So this is information, like whenever, it's called Darkside. That's also in the story. And we use another one, Ocent Industries. These are tools that, like, anyone can use if you pay for them or whatever. But yeah, so basically we plug his name into this thing and it'll look over any databases that have been contained leak information over the past several years, whether on the clear

web or I think even on like the dark web, they scan this stuff and collate it and make it searchable. And yeah, we found his address because it was in a leaked database of like a grocery store, basically, that had leaked at some point. And yeah, so that's how we found it. And then, you know, there's multiple layers of confirmation. Like there was a video that they had put out that we were able to already like geolocate just based on like clues in the image. Like we know what city it's in.

There's like other houses we can see, different things like that. So we were pretty sure. But like, you know, having the leaked data to back that up was like, okay, this is like 100% this guy's address. we can go and check it out. And that's like, you know, a really interesting discussion to have as journalists because part of this work is like, you know, we have access to all of these really powerful tools to like find people and like find, you know, where they live or like, you know, what other connections they might have. And all of it's legal, all of it's like above board. but still it might be in what you might call like, you know, a gray air, particularly like facial recognition. Like I think journalists like dealing with leaked data, like we're a little more comfortable with that these days, whereas like it was more of a debate several years ago.

But like facial recognition is still like very, very much in that like gray zone. But it's like a really powerful tool. And when do we use that tool? It's like you have to have that discussion around like public interest basically. to use a tool that, like, yeah, it's legal and everything like that. But there's still kind of like a societal, like, norm or just like societal queasiness about like. It gives me the it. Yeah, it has the ick factor to the point where like even if it's, even if it's a Nazi, it gives me a little bit of the.

Yeah, exactly. No, for sure. Exactly. And like, so like, would we just sort of willy-nilly throw everyone in anyone's face into whatever tool and just, you know, know, see what comes up because, you know, we have no, like, guardrails or, like, hesitations about that. Like, I actually think it's like, it should be in a discussion every time. And that's very much how we entered this story as well.

Like, we didn't use facial recognition as part of this. We would have disclosed that if we did. But even, like, using, like, tools that search, like, leaked databases and have, like, PII and things like that. That was very much a discussion that we had multiple times over like a long period of time about, you know, is the public interest there? Is this the only way we can like get this like confirming information that we really need? And we felt that the answers to those questions were yes. So that's why we did that in this case.

Can we talk a little bit about a little bit more interested in process and also just like you and I have never talked about this except a little bit. but kind of your personal journey into like this, this new field of like, Ocent and data journalism and the kind of thing that you're doing. Were you doing? I don't remember you doing a whole lot of this advice. I'm going to say that and like I'm going to be like, you're going to be like,

well, there's this piece. No, I mean, like, you're not wrong. I mean, in a certain way, it's like we were all kind of doing it at a certain level. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah.

We were internet technology journalists with an investigative bent. We know how to use Google. We know how to search social media. We know how to find documentation online. We know how to get satellite imagery from, you know, MaxR or whoever, if we want it. So obviously did a lot of that. And honestly, that's kind of a big part of the job still. So in certain ways, it felt really natural.

But what's nice about this, so at CBC, this is kind of like a new thing for them. And, you know, it just seemed like such a no-brainer. Like, this doesn't exist in Canada, really. And every other news organization that has the resources is doing it. And really the biggest thing is just, like, it's just time, man. Like to get really deep into it and like do the work, Like, it just takes time. And money also, of course, to, like, pay for some of these tools and stuff.

But, yeah, I mean, it felt like a really natural extension of, like, where mine and I'm sure your, like, head is already at in terms of, like, using the internet as an investigative tool. And, I mean, that's really it, right? Like, that's OSEN. Like, it's just, it's using the internet at, like, like, a high level, I guess. Yeah, it's kind of like there are all these databases and all these search engines and all this stuff that is all around you all the time, all of this data that is being collected about you and everyone on the planet and sorted everywhere, constantly. And the real superpower is being able to, like, go through those databases and find what you want. Often the information's out there, you just got to, you know, you just got to know where to look or who to pay.

Yeah. Or like even what questions. ask. Or even what questions to ask. It's like, it's really just about getting deep into enough like having enough resources at your finger tip, knowing what's out there, like what tools you could possibly use and just

just being into it to a degree where like those questions just kind of occur to you. You're like, okay, this is kind of a dead end. Well, maybe I'll like pivot and start looking at, you know, this other database or maybe I'll take a look at how the website is built. you know, maybe I'll take a look at the who is as like a very basic example and sort of like pivoting along those lines and and knowing that you can pivot and where to pivot and then sort of piling that stuff on top of each other until you have like a really airtight case about something. So it's like with Brandon LaPointe, you know, there was some previous reporting that had named him as like a member of this group, but we didn't want to just go off that. So it's like, We have that. We have like the geolocation of images he's posted. We have like, information from a database. And then we actually go out and like confirm it ourselves with a

camera. So like that's the result of like pivoting at like multiple points to, you know, stack this information on top of each other until you have, you know, a case that satisfies like journalistic ethics and everything like that. Let's talk a little bit about some of the specific examples in here beyond the point. I kind of want to know just how long some of this took. Like what the laborious process was like. All right. You've got a gym in an S-13 films a video.

There's a boxing glove, a small piece of a boxing glove in like a graphic on the wall. And from that, you're able to figure out exactly where the gym is. How long does that take? What do you have to do to figure that out? Yeah. I mean, so a lot, so in this story, a good amount of the geolocation work was done by two of my colleagues, even Anglowski and Christian Pass Lang. Just want to give them credit where it's due. But I mean, it can take a long time. Like, you know, they were all working, like we were all working on this alongside like multiple other things.

So it was really like, oh, we have like a day or a couple days here and there. that we can like dedicate to going through this stuff. But yeah, it could take like hours or days to just like literally just click through Google Maps. And in some cases you get really lucky, right? Like a lot of this is like, it's like pure luck. It's like you're like, okay, they say they're in Hamilton and there's only a certain amount of gyms in Hamilton.

So maybe it'll take me like an hour to click, through all of those gyms. Then you find one. And it's like, okay, that looks pretty similar. Then you go to that gym's social media and you look at all the videos that they have out. And then you find one that has the same angle as the wall in the photo that you're looking at. And then you're like, okay, got it. So it kind of depends how lucky you are and what like parameters you're playing in.

Because some of these gyms, like they said, there was one that they said wasn't Hamilton, but was not. It was like way further out in the boonies. and like, you know, that took longer to find because you're like, you're going crazy, you're pulling your hair out. You're like, I've looked at all these gyms and like not a single one matches. So you go further and further afield. Yeah.

So, you know, it really depends how lucky you get. But it can take, you know, anywhere from like, it could take anywhere from like five minutes if you're really lucky to, you know, days or weeks of like searching for different stuff. I like this one where you find there's like a black gym wall background with a specific pattern on the lower half in a specific light switch. And you'll find some public young person, young children's karate club Instagram video that has the same pattern on it and are able to trace the figure out which gym it is based on like linking those two objects. Yeah, that one was, yeah, the light switch actually came later, I remember. Also, it's just like, it's the stuff you talk about when you get really this. I'm like, oh, yeah, that light switch.

That one was a real clincher in the end. But yeah, like, you know, we were pretty sure it's like the floor match, like the wall matches. And it's really, okay, we're like fairly, fairly certain that it's this gym. But then I think even like right before we were about to go out and like, you know, talk to somebody's owners and say, hey, is this your gym and things like that? We were like, oh, shit, the light switch. The light switch. It's the same light switch.

And then we like lined it up and we're like, oh, yeah, okay, this is like 100% like the same. Like it's a very unique light switch and there's no way. It's a very distinct light switch, to be fair. The chances that it would be like that light switch next to that mat. It's like, you know, that that's the place. So, yeah, that one kind of came late in the game a little bit, I guess. The other one I really enjoy.

well, the other one I found really fascinating is the park, the public park and just how much was done to prove that the gazebo that they're under is the gazebo that you all found. Can you kind of talk about that? Yeah. So this is actually the one that kind of kicked off the whole story for us like over a year, like a year ago. where our colleague, even Engelofsky, he actually found this one. And this was actually part of our training for one of the many, many trainings that we've done. He was our trainer to begin with. And this was one of his examples. And basically he just did what we do all the time now, which is he saw the photo. he looked through like every soccer field in the region until he found one that looked similar

and then looked up like on YouTube like if there was any footage of this place and then he found this like drone video where the drone like flies through and there's like this slight like chip but very distinctive chip in the pavilion itself um that lined it up so yeah It's actually really funny that it depends on your definition of funny. We're journalists, so, you know, our definition's a little skewed. But, yeah, like that was like over a year ago for sure.

And we were all kind of like blown away by that at the time. And then lo and behold, a year later, you know, that little tidbit makes it into the story that we've done. Yeah, you know, many, many months down the road. Well, I think it's just one of the most interesting is one of the most interesting interesting, interesting use cases, I think, for this. You've got the YouTube video, like, embedded in the story.

That chip is so distinct. It's like a fingerprint in all of this footage. So the minute you see that chip, you know exactly where these guys are. If you kind of know that it's there. What else, like, other than kind of exposing Nazis, like what what stories are you working on or have published recently

that you've used these kinds of techniques on? Hmm. Well, we've published so many recently that honestly it's kind of hard to think of but I mean there's like there's big stuff and little stuff like you know the good thing about this toolkit

like that's how I really think about it with OScent is that it's just part of your toolkit as a journalist. Um, you know, there's nothing really special to it other than just knowing how the internet works and knowing where to look and what to, what to ask yourself. So you can fit it into so many different formats. So, you know, we've done really quick stuff. Like there was, um, a case recently where some Canadian soldiers were charged with, um, were given terror charges because they were training with, uh, firearms at a Quebec, um, uh, quarry. Uh, so we work with some of our college. of Montreal to, you know, geolocate where that was. And that was a combination of like visual cues, but also social media activity.

One that I really liked, because it just shows like how crazy you get. Like, doing this work was, um, a little while ago there were, uh, like riots in,

uh, town in Northern Ireland called Balimina, um, which were basically anti-immigrant riots. Um, and, you know, no one was really covering it in Canada. And also we were just, we were just kind of at a moment where we were like, okay, yeah,

we can actually, we have the time to just do this if we want. So we did. And so we kept, we took all the videos we could and collated them, looked at them. And basically we mapped out this entire town and like where all of these like events took place in like, you know, a two or three block radius. And we were so like. like crazy by the end of it that like because people were sending us like requests from across the network like you know the national is doing something which is one of CBC's programs and they're like

hey do you guys know where this video is and like we were like oh don't worry I know where that is don't worry it's on the corner of like 12th and you know north street on this neighborhood of Balimina my favorite town in Northern Ireland beautiful Bali Mina it lives in my heart and my memory so yeah I mean it's really just like like spending so much time on like Google Maps and like looking at these things that you have it all in your head. And it gets interesting and weird. Yeah. So I mean, but I would honestly, anyone I would recommend just like go to YouTube, go to CBC News, go to the visual investigations playlist. We're publishing everything there. You can get a really good sense of what we do kind of across

the spectrum of, you know, really quick stuff, investigative stuff. Do you want to touch a third rail with me? This is something, this is another thing that we talked about like months ago. That anything is pretty interesting. Do you think that AI could be of help to you in any of these kinds of investigations? Is it worth automating any of these processes? Like, do you need to be looking through every picture of every gym? or can you have a system that does it for you and then maybe flags things?

And further, do you think there's maybe journalistic outlets out there that are already doing this? I mean, yeah, there are for sure. Like, I think it's important to be realistic about AI. Like, is it going to, like, you know, change everything forever? Like, I don't know. But I can definitely see already how it's a really helpful tool in certain ways. But also not. It's been a real trial and error of this process of how do we use AI and is it actually useful.

So obviously facial recognition is like really powerful. Like it's just a really powerful tool and it works to the extent that it's like kind of scary. But like, you know, it's a really powerful and incredible tool. So just like there you go. Like first of all, in terms of investigative work, that's like massive. But even just like really like brain dead data tasks, it's really useful. Like if you have like a PDF that has like a big table in it, like you can just say like, okay, like just portless over to Excel and it'll do it and that'll save you like an hour of your

life and it'll be accurate. Obviously you should check it before or after. But honestly, it's like it's pretty good. But also there's times where it's like fallen down. So, you know, we were doing something where we pulled. And this isn't really AI. It's just like a script and it's coding. So it's different.

But like, you know, just downloading everything from a channel or whatever. So we were doing some of that. And we wanted to like count every time. This channel had mentioned like certain keywords. So we ran that through AI. And it was like so wrong. It was like not even close. So we ended up.

having to like count the whole stupid thing by hand. But that was something where I was like, man, I would have, I would have bet money that AI would do a good job at that. Like, it sounds so simple. But in fact, like, it could not do it. And we just had to do the whole thing ourselves. So, yeah. And like, even in terms of the visual investigation, like, there's like, you know,

chat cheap. There was this thing going around where, like, chat chippy can, like, investigate images and do seemingly like an okay job of it. Like, you're like, hey, where is this? And it'll, like, you know, walk you through the process of where it thinks it is. So would I depend on that? No. And, like, you know, I can probably do a better job than chat GPT in most cases.

But, like, if I was really stuck, would I throw it into chat GPT and be like, hey, where the hell do you think this is? Yeah, I definitely would. Because, you know, it might look for something that I'm not. and come up with like an insight that I don't have or didn't even think to look for. So yeah, I think like we are definitely integrating AI at different levels into our workflow. And I do think it is helpful in certain ways. But like it is it is not doing the job for us in like any way, shape, or form. Like, will it save me a little bit of time here and there?

Yeah, great. And also, like, transcription. Like, how game changing has that been? I, like, people who haven't done this job for a living, transcription is the, is like, it was so awful. God, man. It was so, it was the war. You have to, like, block off a day.

Like, hours and hours and hours of my life. just transcribing audio. And now it's done in an instant. And like obviously you want to check it and like make sure it's right. But like, dude, the time savings are insane. So like, well, that's like that's the good thing about order, right? Is that it creates that it creates that written transcription for you. But it's also embedded with the audio so you can, you could listen to it before you pull whatever quote.

So you know that it's right or wrong and change. Yeah. For sure. So like these things seem really basic, right? Like it's like transcription. moving something over into Excel, you know, like these are really like basic things,

but like really genuinely have made my life so much easier. So yeah, like I don't know. Like will AI get better and better? I don't know. Maybe. I kind of hope it does because it'll continue to make my life easier. But will it?

I don't know. Maybe not. And you're also not necessarily talking about like the things you're talking about are like automated tasks and like data entry. Yeah, yeah. You're not, you're not talking about what so many newsrooms are doing now, like making the thing write the article for you.

It's a, it's an enhancer. Yeah. And it does some of the shitty, like time, not time wasting, but like time intensive jobs. Yeah, absolutely,

yeah. And like, yeah, I would never let AI write something for me. Like, that's just such a scary thought. Like, there's so many things.

that could go wrong. And also it just sounds so boring. Like the actual piece of writing that it comes up with. I do know someone who uses AI at their job. I won't say who they are or what they do. Like they write all their stuff, but then use AI just to like make it sound, you know,

really professional and stuff. And, and, you know, they say it works. And, you know, I trust them and they're a smart person. So,

you know, using it that way, I think is probably, depending on the environment you're in, it's probably fair game too. But yeah, like it's just, it's a tool, right? Like, it's a tool like anything else. Like, if it makes your life easier, great. Like, I can't possibly have a bad thing to say about something that makes my life a little easier. You know, unless, you know, it's doing something terrible, which, which, with AI may very

very well be the case depending on what, what you're using. drinking all the water. But also like, you know, it's like, poison in the air around the data center. Or like in some cases it's like, wow, what am I giving my data to? Like what company owns this? Where are they based? Like some like Russian firm? So, you know, there have to be considerations with everything that you're doing.

And like, you know, you have to give everything a lot of thought. But at the end of the day, like if there's something that I can use as a tool that is going to like save me some time doing something brain dead, like, yeah, I'm going to. I'm going to use it 100%. Just don't admit to it on blue sky. Or on podcasts. Or on podcasts. Well, you know, this is a dedicated listenership. It'll be fine.

You'll be fine, probably, most likely. What are you working on now? So we're all kind of coming back from vacation. So like we kind of just got this big story out. And then everyone like went dark for like various honeymoons and just taking time off and family vacations. So we have, like, honestly, there's nothing that we're, like, pushing on right now. Like, we have, like, you know, like any investigative team, there's, like, a backlog of,

like, 20 ideas. Right. And so I would say right now we're kind of just deciding, like, which one of those do we want to go into, which makes sense. So that's a very disappointing answer. The answer right now is, like, nothing really that I care to mention, but a bunch of stuff. that we're kind of like early stages looking into that hopefully will become a thing. All right.

Well, if any of them involve Nazis, come back on Angry Planet and talk to us again. Anytime. I mean, I sincerely hope not, but the world we live in, it seems like that there's a, you know, pretty good chance that that can happen. It seems to be trending towards Nazis just a little bit. Unfortunately, unfortunately. Mr. Pearson, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. That's all for this episode of Angry Planet.

As always, Angry Planet is me. Matthew Galt, Jason Fields and Kevin O'Dell. If you like the show, Angry PlanetPod.com, $9 a month, get you commercial-free versions of the mainline episodes and you get early access to them and you get the written work. We will be back again soon with another conversation about conflict on an Angry Planet. Stay safe until then.