I write this not because bellingcat is in the news. But because ProtonMail just sent me something about some fundraiser where they are donating proceeds to a bunch of groups including bellingcat and I thought "WTF? Do I need a new email provider?" I guess I do.

IMHO every service out there that is marketing "privacy" or "security" should be seen as highly sketchy right from the get-go. I no longer trust ProtonMail (well, I never trusted them with anything other than my boring emails anyways).

“An email sent on November 12 2020 by an officer within Amsterdam’s National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) shows the agency was keeping an extremely close eye on a Bellingcat investigation published an hour earlier. Dutch spooks sought to use its contents for their own media strategies and messaging following its release. The revealing communication is irrefutable proof of Bellingcat’s propaganda value to Western intelligence services – and could provide an indication of a cozy relationship between the self-styled “independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists” and spying agencies.

In the message, marked “high importance,” the undisclosed author explained that Bellingcat had published research amounting to a deeply libelous attack on independent journalists and researchers, who challenged the mainstream narrative surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. As such, the Dutch intelligence officer wrote, “it is probably smart to put together interdepartmental wording for this already”:

“Because the article highlights several sides (MH17 but also COVID19) it is probably wise to wait a while and see if; a. the mainstream media pick it up; b. from which angle the media pick up and highlight it (MH17 or COVID); c. from this angle to determine the wording and therefore which department is in the lead; d. coordinate the language as much as possible interdepartmentally.””

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/30/bellingcat-collusion-western-intelligence/

Bellingcat is pretty woke. It's a little weird Proton would be promoting them since OSINT is basically the inverse of privacy.

Of course they are CIA agents, as are many others, but what does it matter? If Russia screwed up somewhere and the CIA is talking about it, is that a bad thing? I don't see a problem with that.