Computer expert and founder of FotoForensic Dr. Neal Krawetz said his company had nothing to do with a report produced by British investigative group Bellingcat that earlier accused Russia’s Ministry of Defense of falsifying satellite images released after the MH17 crash.
Bellingcat made headlines this week after the group claimed that it had proved Russia's Ministry of Defense allegedly provided false satellite images of the MH17 shooting down. Bellingcat said in a report that they used forensic analysis and found out that the Ministry of Defense altered the satellite images.
However, Dr. Neal Krawetz, a computer expert and the founder of the company which Bellingcat based their report on, had a different opinion on that.
"I had nothing to do with their [Bellingcat's] faulty analysis," Dr. Krawetz said on his Twitter account.
Dr. Krawetz's statement puts Bellingcat in a ridiculous situation. After Bellingcat goes around screaming to the whole world about Russia's alleged falsification of the satellite images, the director of the company, they referred their "analysis" to, tells everyone that his company had nothing to do with Bellingcat's faulty report.
Furthermore, German image forensics expert Jens Kriese also picked apart Bellingcat's analysis. It turns out the forensic analysis of images cannot even provide a clear answer.
"That's an erroneous interpretation. They [Bellingcat] claim that the metadata shows that the images were processed using Photoshop. Based on that they are concluding it was the clouds that were likely added in order to conceal something. The truth is that the indication of Photoshop in the metadata doesn't prove anything," Kriese said, as cited by Spiegel.
The German expert added that Russians had to use some sort of program to process the satellite images for the presentation and that does not mean that the images were manipulated. The image "analysis" conducted by Bellingcat is a "good example of how not to do forensic analysis," Kriese said. It is like "reading tea leaves" trying to figure out whether the satellite images were in any way edited, Kriese added, according to Spiegel.
Eliot Higgins aka Brown Moses, the founder of Bellingcat “by and for citizen investigative journalists”, is beloved by NATO media. Higgins is always able to “prove” by amateur “analysis” of open source data that the “bad guys”, just as the U.S. or NATO claim, did indeed do the bad thing that happened. The problem is that Higgins is no expert of anything. He was an unemployed office worker who looked at Youtube videos from Syria and tried Internet searches to find out what weapons were visible in the videos. That is all that made him an “expert”.
But Higgins claimed to prove that the Syrian government launched rockets with Sarin on Ghouta, an area south of Damascus. An MIT professor and real expert proved (pdf) that he was wrong.
Higgins claimed to “prove” that rockets launched from Russia hit Ukraine by looking at aerial pictures of impact craters. But a real expert of the method said that crater analysis is “highly experimental and prone to inaccuracy” and warned against its use without further corroboration.
Now another “expert” of Bellingcat, who’s source of “expertise” is unknown but likely also low, tries to prove that Russia manipulated some aerial pictures it published about the MH17 airline incident in Ukraine. That madesomesplash in the usual NATO media but is complete nonsense.
Yes, the pictures were obviously “manipulated” as labels were added to them. But that the visual content of the pictures were changed, as the “expert” claimed to prove by a JPEG compression analysis, is clearly bullshit.
The “expert” claims that “all image content should present roughly the same [compression] error levels if the photo has not been altered.” That is nonsense.
JPEG compresses a flat white surface with low error level and a rough multicolor part of a picture with a higher compression error level. That is digital compression 101 which I myself learned when I was doing a bit of math work on the early PNG format definition. So it turns out that the “expert” simply doesnot understand how JPEG compression works.
Out of three big “finds” that made it into the media Higgins and Bellingcat had three that were proven to be wrong by real experts. Any media who further quote “analysis” by the “experts” Higgins and Bellingcat should be regarded as propaganda outlet and not as a serious source of news.
German Image Forensics Expert Scoffs at Bellingcat's Allegations of Doctored MH17 Photos
Even the creator of the forensics tools used by Bellingcat has distanced himself from their faulty analysis
"The conclusion is always based on the perspective of humans."
Der Spiegel actually did its job, for once! The famous organ of anti-Russia hysteria interviewed Jens Kriese — a professional image analyst who runs his own digital imaging forensics lab in Hamburg — about Bellingcat’s claim that Moscow had fabricated MH17 sattelite images. Try and guess what Kriese says:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you consider the Russian satellite images to have been manipulation?
Kriese: That’s not the right question. We are not talking about satellite images here. We only know the version published by Moscow. That is a satellite image that has been prepared for use in a presentation.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Bellingcat has come to the conclusion that they were edited using Photoshop.
Kriese: That’s an erroneous interpretation. They claim that the metadata shows that the images were processed using Photoshop. Based on that they are concluding it was the clouds that were likely added in order to conceal something. The truth is that the indication of Photoshop in the metadata doesn’t prove anything. Of course the Russians had to use some sort of program in order to process the satellite image for the presentation. They added frames and text blocks in order to explain it to the public. The artifacts which have been identified could be a product of that — or also a product of saving multiple times in JPG format.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Bellingcat says its findings are based on the use of the analysis tool FotoForensic.com, a website.
Kriese: And its founder Neal Krawetz also distanced himself from Bellingcat’s conclusions on Twitter. He described it as a good example of “how to not do image analysis.” What Bellingcat is doing is nothing more than reading tea leaves. Error Level Analysis is a method used by hobbyists.
We’re starting to think that Bellingcat might be a FSB project used to make NATO bootlickers look like fools.
Anyway, well done Spiegel. And keep up the good work, Bellingcat!
Der sogenannte Bürgerjournalismus und sein selbst gestellter Auftrag
Von Knut Mellenthin
Trümmer der MH-17 in der Ostukraine (17. Juli 2014)
Foto: MAXIM ZMEYEV / Reuters
Viele deutsche Journalisten verwechseln die Worte »offenbar« und »angeblich«. »Forensische Analyse: Kreml hat offenbar Satellitenfotos zu MH-17-Absturz gefälscht«, hieß es am 1. Juni bei Spiegel online. Die Geschichte über die angeblich gefälschten russischen Fotos war jedoch so außergewöhnlich stümperhaft gemacht, dass einige Medien, darunter Spiegel online selbst, schnell wieder zurückruderten. Die meisten anderen vergaßen das Thema.
Die Falschmeldung kam von der Agentur »Bellingcat«, die sich gern »unabhängige Investigativplattform« nennen lässt. Ein Blick auf ihre Website zeigt, dass sie sich einseitig auf zwei Themen spezialisiert hat: »Enthüllungen« über Russlands angebliche Rolle in der Ukraine und über Waffeneinsätze der syrischen Regierung.
»Bellingcat« ist noch nicht lange auf dem Markt. Der 35jährige Eliot Higgins gab die Gründung am 1. Juli 2014 bekannt. Dafür benutzte er damals noch sein Pseudonym Brown Moses. Unter diesem Namen hatte Higgins seit März 2012 mehrere vorgebliche »Analysen« ins Internet gestellt, mit denen auf der Grundlage von allgemein zugänglichen Satellitenaufnahmen nachgewiesen werden sollte, dass die syrischen Streitkräfte für den Einsatz chemischer Kampfstoffe verantwortlich seien. Im Dezember 2013 gründete Higgins die Firma »Brown Moses Media Ltd.«, die jetzt Eigentümer von »Bellingcat« ist. Journalisten erzählt er gern, dass er aus Langeweile zu dem »Hobby« gekommen sei, sich mit Waffeneinsätzen zu befassen, als er arbeitslos war und sich zu Hause um sein Kind kümmerte.
Zumindest heute arbeitet Higgins eng mit dem Atlantic Council zusammen, der sein Hauptquartier in Washington hat. Er ist Mitautor einer von dieser Organisation herausgegebenen Propagandaschrift »Putin's War in Ukraine«, die sich teilweise auf das von »Bellingcat« veröffentlichte Material stützt. Der Atlantic Council wurde 1961, auf dem Höhepunkt des Kalten Krieges, mit dem Auftrag gegründet, die Zusammenarbeit westeuropäischer Politiker mit den USA zu festigen und nach Osteuropa hineinzuwirken. Die Organisation stellt zum einen ein Kaderreservoir für die US-Administration dar. Zum anderen ist der Atlantic Council ein Wirkungsfeld des Auslandsgeheimdienstes CIA, der dem State Department unterstellt ist.
Der beschönigende Begriff, unter dem neben »Bellingcat« zahlreiche ähnliche Unternehmen arbeiten, lautet scheinbar uneigennützig »Non-profit journalism« oder gern auch ganz bürgernah »Citizen Journalism«. Im sehr wohlwollenden englischen Wikipedia-Eintrag, den vermutlich Kollegen dieser speziellen Richtung selbst formuliert haben, wird als Stärke solcher Gruppen gerühmt, dass sie »in der Lage sind, dem öffentlichen Wohl zu dienen, ohne sich mit Schulden, Dividenden und den Zwang zum Gewinnmachen abgeben zu müssen«. Andererseits kosten die Recherchen, die oft mit Auslandsreisen verbunden sind, viel Geld, wie die Non-Profit-Journalisten immer wieder betonen. Sie finanzieren sich über Spenden, wobei Stiftungen als verlässliche Geldgeber einen hohen Stellenwert haben.
So hat zum Beispiel das »gemeinnützige Recherchebüro« Correctiv zum Start vor elf Monaten eine solide Anschubfinanzierung von drei Millionen Euro von der Brost-Stiftung erhalten. Das Stiftungsvermögen stammt aus dem Nachlass des Gründers der Westfälischen Allgemeinen Zeitung (WAZ), Erich Brost, und seiner Frau Anneliese. Nach eigener Beschreibung will Correctiv »Missständen in Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft nachspüren«. Das tut die Gruppe tatsächlich vielseitiger als Higgins' »Bellingcat«. Trotzdem ist auch bei dem deutschen Unternehmen ein besonderes Interesse am Propagandakrieg gegen Russland festzustellen. Zwei seiner Journalisten, Marcus Bensmann und der frühere Wallstreet-Journal-Mitarbeiter David Crawford, wirkten am Artikel »Flug MH-17 – Auf der Suche nach der Wahrheit« mit, den der Spiegel im Januar veröffentlichte.
A German image forensics expert has debunked the analysis of British online investigative group Bellingcat, which accused Russia of altering satellite images from the MH17 disaster. He labeled the probe “subjective” and “not based entirely on science.”
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was downed in eastern Ukraine on July 17 last year, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew members. Both Kiev and the eastern Ukrainian rebels placed the blame for the disaster on each other. Kiev also claimed there were no Ukrainian jets or anti-aircraft systems in the proximity of the crash.
When it came to providing evidence, however, the narratives were not so easy to back up. At the end of July, Russia’s Defense Ministry released military monitoring data showing Kiev military jets tracking the MH17 plane shortly before the crash. The ministry also posted satellite images of nearby areas where Kiev had had its air defense units deployed.
On the day of the crash “Ukrainian military had three or four air defense battalions equipped with Buk-M1 SAM systems deployed in the vicinity of Donetsk,” Russian Armed Forces Lieutenant General Andrey Kartopolov said, describing the intelligence gathered.
Some Western journalists have dismissed the satellite data as “fake,” with Bellingcat going as far as conducting an “analysis” of images.
But, German image forensics expert Jens Kriese said in an interview with Der Spiegel that it is, in fact, not possible to tell whether the images have been manipulated.
“From the perspective of forensics, the Bellingcat approach is not very robust. The core of what they are doing is based on so-called Error Level Analysis (ELA). The method is subjective and not based entirely on science,”he told Der Spiegel.
“What Bellingcat is doing is nothing more than reading tea leaves. Error Level Analysis is a method used by hobbyists,” said Kriese, who is a professional image analyst and former scientific researcher.
When asked about Belliingcat’s claim that the Russians had used Photoshop to manipulate their images of Ukrainian BUK missile launchers, Kriese was skeptical.
“The truth is, that the indication of Photoshop in the metadata doesn’t prove anything,” he said. “Of course the Russians had to use some sort of program in order to process the satellite image for the presentation. They added frames and text blocks in order to explain it to the public. The artifacts which have been identified could be a product of that – or also a product of saving multiple times in JPG format.”
“There is no way of knowing if the images show what Moscow is claiming,” Kriese added.“What one can say, however, is that this ‘analysis’ has achieved nothing besides raising awareness of Bellingcat.”
In its report, Bellingcat accused the Russian government of a “clear attempt to deceive the public, global community and the families of Flight MH17 victims.”
Bellingcat’s claims were based largely on an analysis of satellite images, performed using the website FotoForensics.com. However, it appears that even the founder of that website is unconvinced of the veracity of the group’s work.
Dr. Neal Krawetz is a forensic researcher who established the Fotoforensics site. When asked on Twitter about Bellingcat’s work, Krawetz described their efforts as “How not to do image analysis.”
@DonDonblizz1 Honestly, I haven't even been paying attention to bellingcat. I only noticed that their report used my tool incorrectly.
Still, the UK-based Bellingcat group saw their report immediately become big news among the global media, with publications including the Daily Mail, Telegraph and Deutsche Welle reporting their claims.
Not all the press was positive. In addition to criticism from experts, a well-known Russian blogger Tima aka ntv also claims to have debunked the accusations. He says he found a number of obvious mistakes in Bellingcat’s work.
The blogger analyzed photos from Bellingcat’s own website and said he found the same evidence of manipulation using Photoshop as was alleged against Moscow.
He then explained that the use of Adobe Photoshop CS5 software is actually standard method when downsizing images, which is the most likely reason why the Russian Defense Ministry used it.
The blogger dismissed the ELA method altogether. ELA is used to look for areas within an image that have different compression levels – a sign that the image has been altered. Bellingcat claimed it had discovered five such areas.
After using ELA to analyze images known to be unedited, Tima discovered a variety of different compression levels, which he said proves that this method is incoherent and cannot be trusted.
The founder of Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins, aka Brown Moses, was invited on RT’s ‘In The Now’ show to comment on the report. He ignored the request and turned to sarcasm on Twitter instead.
Higgins attached a Simpsons video to demonstrate how he thinks his interview on RT would have been severely edited.
Russia Today just emailed me to ask if I'd be on their #MH17 documentary. I suspect it would be rather like this https://t.co/txiW1nJc9W
This is not the first time that Higgins’ work has faced severe criticism. Back in February, the Guardian was forced to correct an article co-authored by Higgins, who accused the Russian military of shooting at the Ukrainian Army from inside the Russian border.
This week also saw the manufacturer of the BUK missile system, Almaz-Antey, announce that it had conducted its own investigation into the crash of Flight MH17. The Russian defense contractor concluded that if it was indeed an anti-aircraft missile that brought down Flight MH17, it would most likely have been one from the BUK-M1 system, which the company hasn’t produced since 1999.
Almaz-Antey said that Russia no longer has such weapons in service. However, according to the company’s chief engineer, Makhail Malyshev, back in 2005 Ukraine still possessed almost 1,000 such missiles.
The Dutch investigators have not yet finished looking into the MH17 tragedy, but several leaks to the media appear to suggest the BUK missile theory remains the most prevalent.
The Ukrainian authorities and the West blame the Donetsk militias for downing the plane, saying they used a BUK surface-to-air missile provided by Russia. The accusations have been denied by the rebels, while Moscow has repeatedly cautioned against blaming anyone before the investigation into the crash is completed.
By treating an amateur blog as an expert on highly technical issues that require opinions from specialists the Western media shows extreme bias and poor judgement
That report sought to cast doubt on the Russian satellite imagery that shows a Ukrainian BUK missile launcher in the location from which Almaz-Antey says the BUK missile that shot down MH17 was launched.
I said that since Bellingcat were enthusiastic proponents of the alternative theory that the BUK missile was launched by a militia controlled BUK missile launcher located at Snizhnoe, any report on the subject published by Bellingcat had to be treated skeptically.
I also said that the mere fact that the satellite imagery showed some evidence of retouching did not appear to me to be in any way sinister or to cast doubt on the value of the imagery as evidence given that it was produced for presentation at a press conference and not as evidence to one of the two inquiries investigating the tragedy.
It seems I may have been altogether too generous to Bellingcat.
Comments I have seen have now comprehensively trashed its report, going far beyond the points I made and raising serious questions as to the report’s methodology and the qualifications of its authors.
Here is one particularly scathing example written by someone who (unlike the authors of the Bellingcat report) seems to be actually qualified in this area.
That the Western media has given such phenomenal weight to Bellingcat is one of the most extraordinary aspects of the whole MH17 affair.
The Financial Times was at it again when it published on 2nd June 2015 a brief article on the Almaz-Antey presentation, which contained the extraordinary sentence: “Other military experts have dismissed satellite pictures presented by Moscow to back up its Zaroshchenske claim.”
The “military experts” in question are of course Bellingcat, who are the people who “have dismissed satellite pictures presented by Moscow to back up its Zaroshchenske claim”.
As the debacle of the latest Bellingcat report shows, Bellingcat are not experts on anything and there is no justification to call them that. Certainly they are not “military experts”.
More seriously, there is absolutely no justification for giving their opinions equal weight to those of a company like Almaz-Altay — the world leader in surface to air missile technology — as the Financial Times appears to do.
In my article (BUK Manufacturer Almaz-Antey Speaks Out on MH17 Tragedy, Russia Insider, 2nd June 2015) I said that one of the perils of amateur investigations is that they throw up false leads, which waste the time and effort needed to refute them.
This is precisely the situation we are in with Bellingcat.
As for the Western media, if it continues to rely on Bellingcat as its technical adviser on these difficult questions, then it is setting itself up for an epic fail.
Die Russen hätten Satellitenbilder gefälscht, um die Verantwortung für den Absturz von MH17 der Ukraine zuzuweisen, behauptet die Recherche-Plattform Bellingcat. Aber Fachleute ziehen deren Methoden in Zweifel.
Ein Bericht der britischen Recherche-Plattform „Bellingcat“ über angeblich von Russland manipulierte Satellitenaufnahmen hat unter Fachleuten Kritik ausgelöst. Bellingcat hatte der russischen Regierung vorgeworfen, Satellitenbilder gefälscht zu haben, um die Schuld am Absturz des malaysischen Passierflugzeugs MH17 in der Ostukraine der ukrainischen Seite anzulasten.
Der Bildforensiker Jens Kriese sagte dem Internetportal „Spiegel Online“ am Mittwoch, es sei sehr schwer, die Satellitenaufnahmen auf Manipulationen hin zu prüfen. Dass die Bilder für Präsentationszwecke mit Photoshop bearbeitet wurden, beweise noch keine Manipulation. „Wir können nicht wissen, ob die Bilder zeigen, was Moskau behauptet“, sagte Kriese.
„Fehlerhafte Analyse“
Die Plattform Bellingcat, die 2014 von dem Militärblogger Eliot Higgings gegründet worden war, um Kriegsverbrechen in Syrien aufzudecken, hatte zu Wochenbeginn eine Analyse von Satellitenbildern vorgelegt, die das russische Verteidigungsministerium am 21. Juni 2014 präsentiert hatte, um nahezulegen, das malaysische Flugzeug sei vom ukrainischen Militär abgeschossen worden. In der britischen Analyse der Bilder hieß es: „Mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit wurden Wolken im linken und rechten Bildbereich digital hinzugefügt.“ Das ist nach Aussagen Krieses jedoch nicht belegbar.
Kriese wirft Bellingcat „Kaffeesatzleserei“ vor. Die Organisation stütze sich im Wesentlichen auf sogenannte Error Level Analysen, bei denen Kompressionsartefakte im Bild aufgedeckt werden. Dieses Verfahren sei jedoch „nicht streng wissenschaftlich“ und überdies subjektiv. „Aus diesem Grund gibt es keinen einzigen Fachaufsatz, der sich mit dieser Methode befasst“, so Kriese.
Bellingcat analysierte die Bilder mit einer Software der Websitefotoforensics.com. Deren Betreiber, der Computerwissenschaftler Neal Krawetz, kritisierte die Analyse mittlerweile als „fehlerhaft“ und betonte, er habe damit nichts zu tun. Krawetz twitterte, die Arbeit von Bellingcat sei ein Beispiel dafür,„wie man Bilder nicht analysieren sollte“.
