We Are Bellingcat: An Intelligence Agency for the People

Eliot Higgins founded Bellingcat in 2014 as a platform for open-source investigation — using publicly available digital data, satellite imagery, social media content and geolocation techniques to verify claims and hold actors accountable. In the decade since, the organisation has become one of the most significant forces in the counter-disinformation ecosystem, responsible for identifying the Russian military unit behind the MH17 shootdown, exposing the Salisbury poisoners, and documenting atrocities in Syria, Ukraine and beyond. This book is both the story of how Bellingcat was built and a manual for the methodology it pioneered.

For practitioners in the information environment, We Are Bellingcat matters for two distinct reasons. First, the OSINT methodology it documents has become essential tradecraft for anyone conducting open-source investigations into influence operations, attribution, or disinformation campaigns. Second, Bellingcat itself has become a model for how civil society can operate effectively in the information environment — with rigour, transparency, and public accountability. A Sunday Times bestseller described by the Financial Times as demystifying intelligence gathering itself, Higgins is direct about the limits as well as the capabilities of open-source investigation, making this a more reliable guide than accounts that oversell what the methodology can deliver.