It Could Happen Here - Ziptie Guy: OSINT Case Study

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

A member of the Opossum Press collective talks with Garrison about how they ID’ed the January 6th ‘Ziptie Guy.’ Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, the podcast we already recorded and I messed up or something happened with the Zoom and we lost the audio so now we're recording it again, as is the cycle of life. Thankfully, I'm now on my 10th shot of espresso of the day, and it is 8 p.m., so I'm ready. I am ready this time. Today, we're going to be doing another one of our chronicles into open-source and OSINT-style research, or open- source verification. And this kind of side of,

of generally, you know, this is kind of a field of like anti-fascist research and journalism. So we're looking at one of these case studies. But today I have someone with me. Alistair from Opossum Press is here to talk about, uh, OSINT and, uh, and this type of research.

Hello. Hi, thank you for being with me again, uh, on this, on this call on this very, uh, deja vu experience for us.

Um, I would, uh, actually first like to, uh, talk about how, uh, opossum press got started as like a collective of of people

dedicated towards this goal of you know surveying the the the fascist creep um i i had an interest in um in journalism i have no experience in it but i have other friends that are into writing and stuff and i i just kind of reached out to friends. I'm like, hey, would anybody be interested in doing this? And there are several friends that were like, hell yeah, let's do this. And that's pretty much it. After we got it all formed, we set up some open source Intel workshops. Cool.

And about every other week, we'd get together for two three hours and learn stuff that sounds that sounds lovely actually um most of my stuff is usually done alone in my computer dark when i'm on my again 10th cup of coffee of the day doing osint in a group of people like that sounds like it could be actually kind of fun. So yeah, in our last episode, we talked about how I tracked down and found out who Rittenhouse was the night of that happening in Kenosha.

And today we're going to be talking about someone related to January 6th, the infamous zip tie guy, as he became known for like two days on the internet before he got his actual name. First, I guess I probably, in case you haven't listened to the previous episode I did on Rittenhouse, I should probably kind of explain what open source stuff is and what OSINT is and verification.

So it's about trying to track down information using open sources on the internet. So in terms of like nothing is – it's all – it's already sitting there. Nothing requires like special access. Nothing requires you to hack into anyone's system. It's stuff is just – the stuff that's already sitting there. The data, whether that be geographical data, personal data, data from social media accounts, data from every time you've entered your email into a random website that you maybe didn't know quite what's going on, but you did it.

That gets stored somewhere as data, and someone can probably find it. So it's all this stuff about you on the internet that is all open if you do the digging. Often cases, this results in going through social media profiles. That is a good portion of OSINT work, is learning how to use Google really well and how to go through social media. Start using Google search operators, start using social media tools that help you sort through information, because the information's there, you just have to learn how to sort through it right because there's just so much of it um so that's kind of the gist of what open source stuff is i mean eventually you can get into the stuff like using like python using code and scrapers like all that stuff is is is there too

but for our purposes we're going to stick to the more simplistic stuff because this is an audio format and i'm i'm not going to start explaining Python code on a podcast. Right. So let's turn back the clocks a year, a little over a year. And it's January 6th. What's kind of you or your collective's reaction just to kind of watching things unfold? As a researcher, every time I look at these types of you know protests you know whether they be big or small always part of my brain is like trying to make connections and

do stuff right so as january 6th is unfolding what's what's kind of going through everyone at opossum press's head the the first thing that seemed to be collective in everybody's mind was oh my god none of these people are wearing face masks yeah yeah like the immediate thing is this is probably going to be really easy for a lot of people there's nobody nobody is in any type of like block or trying to hide their identity in at all something you see the european fascists actually doing more often there was a i think a video from germany of a whole bunch of far-right dudes just in Black Block, because Black Block's a tactic. So yeah, but in the States, specifically on January 6th, no one was really worried about keeping their identity a secret. They really did not think what they were doing was wrong.

I think the other thing, a lot of us were really angry. thing. We were, a lot of us were really angry. Um, like we had been like yelling that this was going to happen, screaming it out, like trying to get people to pay attention. And we got blown off so much. I remember just like a few days before I got in an argument with a Facebook friend. I'm like, people need to be paying attention. Like they're planning something. They're like, oh, it's fine. It's fine. And then, you know, just a few days later, I'm like, oh, is it fine?

That is kind of always the curse of surveilling all of these things, whether they be like a specific event or just a movement in general, right? People who are really into QAnon before the libs knew what QAnon was and were warning about it for years before you know it resulted in people dying um right that's that's kind of always the curse of

these things it's a it's it you get you get the mix of the shock and horror of the thing finally happening and a weird relief it's it's yes it's it's it's a very bizarre feeling to watch these things unfold because you're like oh i'm vindicated but it sucks that i'm vindicated right i remember like the december watching all these groups like i was just it was just filled with dread yeah um i knew something was gonna happen i didn't know what was gonna happen and it was just so much anxiety and then like it's funny january 6 after it happened like it all went away i was able to happen. And it was just so much anxiety. And then like, it's funny, January six, after it happened, like it all went away. I was able to get a decent night's sleep just

because there was, I didn't have that buildup of suspense of what, what is it going to be? What's it going to look like? How bad is it going to be? It kind of had that release. Yeah. And fortunately they were all like amateur and didn't know what they were doing and it wasn't as bad as it could have been yeah well i think as for the open source stuff i'm going to kind of walk us through chronologically of in terms of the the journey of uh zip tie guy because i was doing like archiving on january 6th but zip tie guy was really the only dude i was interested in identifying there was there was a lot of other people doing really great identification work i was also january 6th i was going through all the social media

history of ashley babbitt archiving all of her twitter and facebook, like years of stuff. I was to chronicle how she went from like an Obama voter to a QAnon proponent. So that was what I was doing. And I was writing an article with Bellingcat about that. But the only other guy I wanted to like identify was zip tie guy, because he was really interesting. He was one of the few guys that was masked up. He had what he had visible weapons on him. He was obviously carrying zip ties you know

it gives you images of like oh yeah it's like they're planning to capture and execute people that was like the general kind of vibe um of that so he was the only person i was actually put work into identifying and i put a decent amount of work in now i i failed where other people succeeded and we can talk about like why in a sec. But for a day at least, all we had to go on was the picture of the guy holding the zip ties in a mask. There's a few other pictures of him around from that day, but it's mostly one picture. And the biggest clue that we had to start with, what what what why don't you explain what the what the first clue is and how that maybe piqued your interest he had two patches on his vest and one of them was a thin blue line patch but it was in the shape of the state of tennessee so so yeah in

terms of having a decent lead that is like okay well that that narrows it down to one of 50 states probably. Right. Yeah, I should say I'm from Knoxville. So like it be in Tennessee that I picked up on that because that's my state. Yeah, that it becomes a local problem. As someone in Oregon, I definitely understand that feeling of of, yeah, when fascism becomes a local problem. Yeah, so that definitely piqued your interest specifically, but then also gives a really good lead for where to look. Because odds are he's not trying to do a meta thing by tricking us into giving us a false lead. Generally, people don't do that as often in real life as they do in television. But there's still plenty plenty other ways to detect. I mean, I love detecting and there's enough stuff to do otherwise that making it needlessly complicated is honestly, I'm fine with it

not being that. So yeah, we had that to go off initially. So starting looking for far-right activity in Tennessee. I was an outsider, so I didn't really know where to start in terms of specific rallies. But I know you – at what point did you start looking – trying to go through pictures of specific rallies to try to like match clothing or stuff i think it was probably it may have been that day or the day after is when i started going through the notebooks that i had um like names of just people we suspected may become problems um and i started looking at their profiles again and you know didn't find anything and in our research that we had already done we didn't see anything on okay yeah i mean that was kind of the case for me as well with just the picture of the zip tie uh guy with the patch i mean it's it's a lead but there wasn't tons to go on but thankfully uh thankfully our our good friends at january 6th were giving us more clues because, as the Simpsons meme goes, videotaping this crime scene was the best idea we ever had. So, like, January, I think, 7th, there was a livestream video that was kind of circulating through, like, anti-fascist group chats.

It was posted, like, publicly to get everyone's attention on it on January 8th. But for like a day, it was kind of passing through back channels. And in this livestream, which is, yeah, there was so many people were livestreaming that night. And it is a kind of surreal thing to watch of them. This livestream in

particular, a zip tie guy, a few of his friends, I think his mom, and just random people from January 6th, all hanging out at a hotel room afterwards. Like, it's, it is, it is the night of the 6th, and they're all just hanging out, again, totally, like, no masks, they're, they're, they're in a hotel lobby, no masks, and they're just, like, hanging out and chilling, like, sitting on the couch and chatting for, like for half an hour. It's one of the weirdest videos to watch. All the livestreams from that night are so surreal

because it is this transitionary period of after the Capitol attack, but before people go down on them. So they don't really know how to behave. They still think what they did was kind of fine. Even though at this point, I think four or five people are dead.

But it's so weird to watch them just interact like such normal people in this moment like after they did this thing then they go in this hotel room and they're acting completely normal so it's it's just a weird video in general but what it does have is someone in the same outfit as zip tie guy with no mask on you actually we actually can see his full face yep um getting to see his full face was a big moment for us big help big help because we everyone everyone was looking for pictures of this guy without his mask all like for the entirety of the day so now having a whole video where we can see like all of the angles of him was great it was perfect the best the best thing

that was really the beauty of all of the January 6th documentation is how many people were live streaming themselves doing crimes and their friends. It did make the archiving and, well, not the archiving part. Archiving is always painful and tedious, but it made the actual research

afterwards a lot easier because there was so much documentation of it. So, yeah, we got this video. I'm going to explain how I kind of took this video and failed to reach the conclusion, and then we can talk about how you succeeded. But first, we're going to hear some ads from our lovely products and services. Robert was here for our previous recording that we tried and I failed and he made some very good jokes and very good segues about how all of our

sponsors support insurrection just like January 6th and if I try to repeat the jokes it'll be stupid so I'm just gonna give you the sense there was a joke and now you're gonna be left with that dissatisfaction so goodbye here's some ads welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter nocturnal tales from the shadows presented by iheart and son. An anthology of modern-day horror stories

inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America. supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows

as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you.

We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it.

Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field.

And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHot Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Okay, we're back. And I'm going to give an extremely brief rundown on how I failed to do – well, I didn't fail to do research. I did research. I just didn't reach a of his face and interacting with people.

And the other thing is I think the hat he was wearing in the Zip Tie Guy photo was I think was tracked back to be our favorite coffee company, Black Rifle Coffee Merchandise. It was like one of the hats they sell. So me being clever, I'm like, okay, here's this Black Rifle Coffee hat, this patch in Tennessee. I know Black Rifle Coffee is based out of Tennessee. I'm going to go look through everyone who works for Black Rifle Coffee, which I mean, isn't a bad instinct as an outsider, but it did not succeed but the funny thing is is that while looking through all the employees at black rifle coffee all of them do look identical to zip tie guy they all same characteristics they all look exactly the same on their beards their nose their forehead their hair all of them identical every single one of them to the point where the only way i could tell that it wasn't zip tie guy was being like okay no he has a mole here he has like a birthmark here this way his like his eyes are his eye wrinkles are different so it's like it's going

down to the very like fine-tuned facial features because all of their face shapes are like identical i think there was a point that i had the same instinct i think i i know there's a point that I went through the Black Coffee Rifle, all of their people. I don't know if it was for Eric Munchell or if it was like maybe around the Rittenhouse stuff. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's what I spent my time doing is going through everybody who works there. spent my time doing is going through everybody who works there um uh but but by the time i kind of gave up on that uh the identity was already discovered um and posted by uh your team at

opossum press so how how did you get from you know the zip zip type guy picture then the light the archived live stream video of him uh without mask to the point where you could say, hey, this is his name. Well, I wasn't even really in contact with like we as a group weren't messaging each other trying to figure this out together. But we were like it turns out a few of us were working separately. So while I'm going through social media, a friend in Nashville was going through pictures of the protests from there over the summer. And they ended up finding about five different pictures, I think. And we knew we knew most of the people in the pictures that are maybe like one or two that we did not know and one was always eric munchell and he's wearing the exact same gear he wore january 6th yep um i say eric munchell we didn't know his name yet then so um from there we kind of we

went ahead and posted what we had to twitter and then we went back to the social media and I started looking through the profiles that were the people we knew. And sure enough, one of them, Kurt Dennis, had a live stream that was telling the story, the same story that Eric Munchell told in that 30 minute video. the same story that Eric Munchell told in that 30 minute video. And he actually, while telling it, he's like, yeah, my buddy, Eric. Great. So at that point we go to his friends list and sure enough, he only has one Eric there and it's Eric Munchell. And there we go to that page and find some of the same gear in the background of the pictures that he has publicly posted.

Yeah. He like posted pictures of him in his gear with like guns. And yeah, you can you can track all of his like facial like like like like birthmarks and stuff. They're all the same. So, yeah, you and that's you. You definitely got him. Yeah. Yeah.

Your own mistakes. Yes. That's my favorite part. they they gave us his identity they often if not handing themselves to you on a silver platter they at least have a platter um they they often there's often enough bread right the reason why these things are solved because there are enough breadcrumbs to follow and often they kind of leave pretty big chunks of bread. Just the fact that, again, adding to the surreal aspect of that whole live stream video, the fact that he's like, you matched it by telling the same, you could hear someone tell the same story. It's just such a weird, surreal thing.

So I think in terms of OSINT stuff, what this case study in particular really highlights is the importance of um archival stuff right the reason why you were able to solve this and not me is because i wasn't i mean i i i i did my own archival thing for archiving like the video but um the way that you were able to really crack this open and everyone else who worked on it is because you had like those lists of connections of people who are already kind of active in this like alt-right far-right scene within your local community like you already had documentation of the major players who they interact with or you already had pictures of this guy in gear with other known people so the fact that there was already previously work archived

really made the success of this so much more possible. That's what they, People's Plaza in Nashville during their protests, they were really big on documenting. They documented everything with the police and any counter protesters. They would, they had professional photographers out there making sure we had good, clear quality pictures of like everybody on the other side as well. And that definitely helped us a lot. Yeah. Cause off, especially before January 6th, they, there was, they did a decent job of archiving themselves. Well, not archiving, but like filming themselves and documenting themselves.

And then, you know, it takes other researchers to then archive that. So not only is it important just to like look at the research and look at like the documentation that people do of themselves, but then make sure that you have a source for that. That's not their own uploading of it. Right. So like a great example is like all of the live streams from January 6th, including like this one from this hotel room, pretty soon it was deleted by the person who posted it. Cause they realized, Oh, maybe I shouldn't have this living record of my crimes. Um, but at that point, people already saved the video. They already, like, I already ran it through a video saving program that I had. So it's important not only to, again, archiving, having previous documentation of people and known players, but then as new information is coming out, make sure you make separate copies of that for your own sake so that you actually have it. And then you're not going to be stuck looking

for something that's gone, right? The worst case scenario is like, you know, that there was an important thing, but you just don't have access to it anymore. It's like, you, you remember seeing it, but you didn't save it and now it's gone. That's a horrible feeling to do when you're trying to get this kind of research done. And like, it happens. We all, we all make mistakes like this. I definitely have. It happened to me actually this week. Yeah, it happens all the time. It happens to me all the time. I'll look at something and be like, I should probably save this.

I get distracted or I just don't want to because archiving is boring and tedious. And then I check again and it's gone. I'm like, well, I should have archived it. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season

digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators

sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun,

el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, on top of all of the

archiving stuff, which in general anti-fascist research is really, that's the thing it really excels at, even like above journalism, is like, you know, getting like traditional journalism. anti-fascist research is really that's the thing it really excels at even like um uh above above journalism is like you know getting like traditional journalism is like getting a good documentation of like key fascist players in your area key people who are kind of pushing far-right stuff and far-right violence actually getting like a good a good a good idea of who they are and having that knowledge always handy is something that this

type of research is really, that is really what it excels at or like what those researchers excel at. This is the thing that they do very well. I think a lot of us probably started doing it just out of curiosity, looking into people. That is certainly how I started. Like I've been doing it long before. I just didn't know that's what it was called because like I'd see somebody make a messed up comment online. I'm like, who is this person? And then, you know, try to find as much as I can about them. Yeah. That's, that is certainly how I got started with this type of thing. Because it can be fun to look for bad people. It is kind of pleasurable.

And one of the, again, another big contributing factor in how you got ZipTieGuy, how I got written, how a lot of this stuff works, is the beauty of Facebook as a research tool. is the beauty of Facebook as a research tool. Because often, in order to do the archiving, you need to have stuff to archive. And a lot of the stuff that gets posted from these things by the people doing them is done on Facebook. Or at least it used to, right? The past five years, really, Facebook has been the main source of this.

Now people are kind of getting wise and maybe some stuff's moving to Telegram. Facebook's becoming a little bit less important of a platform for this type of research. And I know Facebook has changed the way that you can use their service. So it does make research kind of harder in some ways. But even still, it is one of the better tools to dig into certain types of people because there is certain types of people who are going to be more likely to use facebook um and yeah in terms of how getting facebook was the method it not where the the place where you're able to make the link between the fascists you already knew and Eric because you already knew who the players were, and then Facebook had the visualized network to actually make those connections. So Facebook itself and social media in general is really

useful. And then in terms of how this operates, like going through friends lists is really easy, but oftentimes a lot of people will not maybe have those public. Um, and what, what then there's, again, it's not a dead road. You can still look through likes. You can still look through shares. You can still look through like, um, if you like people are tagged in photos. Um, it, it really, it really is a, is a great, is a great system that is good at making you not have privacy. That is the thing. It really excels it.

And even if people don't have an active social media presence per se, it can still be really useful in getting specific names of people or just having a connection be known. This was mostly how I was able to identify all the anonymous riot cops in 2020 when the Portland Police Bureau took away their badge numbers and names, is that I could get a list of cops and we could start figuring out, like, okay, this is cops previously on the riot team, right? We can start doing facial matching. And if I want to learn more information about their first name and more information about them in general, even if they don't have a social media profile,

often their wife might or their mom might. You know, there's a, in terms of fun sentences to say, really learning how to exploit people's family as a weakness is wonderful for this type of stalking violent bad people. Because, yeah, because a lot of the riot cops were smart enough to not, Because, yeah, a lot of the riot cops were smart enough to not – at least to either not have a presence at all on the internet or to have it very locked down in terms of no one can see their posts, no one can see their friends, no one can see anything. But still, their wife will occasionally tag them in photos or maybe not even photos of them, but they'll just tag them in a photo of their kid or something. And then this just creates more ways to make connections so that you can you know learn more about these specific people um because sometimes that's fun and interesting yeah i've noticed some people with socks that i've found their identity it's by uh going through the likes and cn yeah um you know

the same woman is always the first to put a heart react there. And you can go to their pages. Sometimes it's as little, if you go through their pictures and you see a picture of the guy they're with, they'll have like somebody in the comments. Oh, Mark looks really good there or something, you know, naming the husband and from there you can get the last, you know, you've known the wife's last name. You have a good chance of that being their last name.

Yeah, so family is really great for finding people. Because all this research is is learning how to make these open-sourced connections. A lot of it is connections and networking. how to make these open-sourced connections, right? A lot of it is connections and networking. And people usually always have an innate connection and networking, and that is their family. And often this extends out in terms of political organizing,

whether you're part of militias or just kind of smaller groups. Yeah, that is another network. Friends is another network. But for people who are more locked down, it is possible to find information about people, you know, especially if they have like a if they have like a not very common last name, you know, that can make finding information about them much easier if you're using tools like Facebook. Then it's, you know, just a matter of doing all the other, you know, open source research of, you know, comparing clothing, you know clothing and comparing to what other kind of information you already know about the person. Email addresses, phone numbers, if you can get that kind of stuff as well. But I think that's all I had on zip tie guy mostly. Yeah, here's a really easy one.

There's not a whole lot to really dive into there. Not surprising. That's another thing anti-fascist research is really good at is that type of local research because they have all those local connections. They have those local documentation of political events that have happened in their area. So, again, it's the importance of having stuff archived and having stuff sorted and having stuff organized well so you can access your archived information is really important. It sucks. It's the part of OSINT I hate the most. We all of us do. Everyone hates it. Everyone hates it.

I'm sure there is some sicko out there who likes it, but everyone else hates all of the, we hate all this organizing and sorting. And I find archiving to be tedious. Archiving videos and live streams, it's tedious. It's difficult. Time consuming.

It's time consuming. It's repetitive. It's not generally not a good time, but it is so useful in the long run of trying to get these like a list of like established players in your area. This is how you start seeing patterns, right? You need to have this information already laid out so you can actually watch the patterns unfold. Otherwise

it's just a whole bunch of chaotic information that means nothing. So it's super important, as much of a bummer as it may be. Let's see. Is there anything you've been working on since then that you would like to talk about about or any upcoming research projects? Right now, I'm really focused on our local school board.

And, you know, like many towns across the country, we have fascists trying to take it over and going to the meetings. And so I've been watching that group very closely for the last several months. It's probably about October, our school year, we started out without a mask mandate. Okay. And a couple of parents whose children need, like they're immunocompromised like their their kids

need the everybody else to wear a mask so their parents sued the school board and our governor to have a mask mandate and the judge issued an injunction and like the next Monday all the schools had to wear a mask and the anti-mask crowd is like losing their shit over it still trying to figure out how to fire the judge. It's like, yeah, we have a member of Patriot Church who's involved in it. And, you know, they're the ones with Church of Planned Parenthood. It's Ken Peters, who I think he's from washington yes spokane i believe yeah and he's he's moved down here um i think he still goes up there to the church stuff but most of his time is spent down here in tennessee and um causing just as much trouble as he does up there and his followers.

So I'm curious to see how, how does a research project like this school board thing differ from like the research surrounding, you know, trying to identify someone at January 6th? For one, this is local. It's, you know, I'm going to the school board meetings. one this is local it's you know i'm going to the school board meetings um i know it's easier to know where to look for this because like i'm watching it as it happening where like you know january 6 most of those people you have no clue where to even start from um so this more now it's it's monitoring and documenting as we've you we figure out who these people are, like linking Telegram names with Facebook names and all of that. So I guess now it's more record keeping and getting that documentation done early.

So when one of them goes too far, we have it ready. goes too far. We have it ready. I mean, that's the sad part where it's like you're watching inevitability almost. But yeah, that's also how like January 6th works, right? We were able to identify these people

because there was a lot of documentation of a lot of major players already, right? So a lot of the work in between these big protests and events is the slow tedious documentation because we have to do it now so that it's useful later that's you know a big part of research is like yeah trying to spot potential you know issues and archiving it and then if the issue ever becomes a bigger issue you already have information on it right whether that be

you know, watching someone online who you might think is, like, watching someone who's, like, a Nazi who you might be worried that, like, they're posting plans about how to kill people. You're like, okay, should probably look into this dude because he's doing this in case he does something

in the future. That is kind of a... It sucks because, yeah, you are watching this thing where you feel kind of helpless but you know that documenting it is worthwhile um yeah it's the same thing where like you don't want to be vindicated but if it does happen it's better to be prepared right right because i don't think people people realize how much anti-fascist research, how much of this type of OSINT stuff, like my journalism, most of the work that you put into it is never seen. Even if you do complete investigations, sometimes by the end, you're like, it's getting them out in enough time for them to be useful. Sometimes it isn't even worth it.

time for them to be useful sometimes isn't even worth it um so you know a lot of it is you know writing stuff and doing research that never actually sees the light of day for a long long time right with eric munchell we have like probably 20 people we had on our list too and he wasn't even one of them um so you do all this like on one hand it almost felt in a moment like all of that we did was really for nothing. But no, it did lead to him. It did, yeah. It did lead. And even when you do find the correct answer sometimes, sometimes via circumstances, you know, it's not something you need to post about immediately. Sometimes it's worth just, you know, hanging on to and not being super public about every horrible thing you find.

Right? It's not like you don't need to post every time you find a horrible thing on Telegram. You don't need to tell Twitter that. It's about collecting these things and keeping them there for future use. Well, thank you so much for coming on to talk with me again

after already discussing mostly the same things. Where can people follow your stuff online? We're on Twitter at ApostlePress. Really easy. Yeah. We're on Facebook. We don't actually do much on facebook though um yeah as we've discussed now you probably probably shouldn't facebook does that mean like in in a lot of ways

a lot of like fascist organizing that used to be done in primarily like facebook groups or just even just like through like like incidental organizing through just through like posting and cross-posting a lot of that has been you know moved over to telegram at this point telegram is kind of the new main nexus whereas facebook in like the days of the early alt-right facebook was a pretty big nexus for like the more normies right you know it's there there is actually like fascist forms that were doing organizing but as a place for again like a lot of people in january 6th who didn't really know what they were doing was wrong. They were mostly, you know, Make America Great Again people or QAnon people. A good portion

of, like, most of them were not swastika-waving Nazis. They may agree with fascist ideas, but they don't self-describe as Nazis. But we're even seeing after January 6th with,

you know, Facebook like cracking down on these groups, other platforms like Parler going offline. A lot of these normies themselves are even migrating onto Telegram. So, you know, Facebook used to be a really great research tool and I'm using it less and less often now,

unfortunately, because I mean, it really did have a lot of strong suits. Telegram does have its own strong suits, but it's still different. I think the normies move into Telegram is troubling, though, because the Nazis are having a way easier time over there. That is the obvious thing, is yeah, now that those groups are in closer proximity, it's easier for one to seep into the other, whereas before there was more of that distinction. occultic milieu of a place where the amount of overlap between your uncle who's a regular conservative and a member of Atomwaffen or someone who wishes they were a member of Atomwaffen

is very small. They are very close together. Well, thank you for talking about all of these things on our uh on our second uh osund case study episode i guess big big takeaways is uh archiving is great archive live streams archive things because it's better to have them um and not use them than not have them and need them um and then you know archiving and documenting local fascists is really great, even for things beyond your locality, like in January 6th. So those are my main takeaways from this, and

also everyone at Black Rifle Coffee, they all look like everyone at Day 6. All of them do. They do. Alright, that does it for us. Thank you so much. You can follow them at a possum press um goodbye everybody bye it could happen here is a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit

our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts you You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into Tex Elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers.

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