We’ve come to expect a certain level of incompetence from Daesh fighters, however, even for them this is pretty stupid.
Yesterday, pro-jihadi supporters across Europe posted photographs on social media showing pieces of paper with pro-ISIS rhetoric on them, ahead of a speech from Daesh spokesperson, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani.
The social media campaign, the first in months, was no doubt intended to scare The West by showing how deeply rooted extremism was in the heart of Europe.
Unfortunately for the moronic jihadis, that’s not what happened. In fact, all they did was give themselves away.
You see, Daesh’s top minds hadn’t banked on the skills of Elliot Higgins, the owner of a social media investigation website, who teamed up with some online sleuths to track down these fanboys.
They did this by looking at CCTV footage and identifying local landmarks, geo-locating exactly where they’d taken the pics.
Elliot explained to the Indy100:
We crowd-sourced the answer on Twitter, so it was really a group effort. For London it was basically a local IDing the location, then for Holland several people noted the lamp posts were distinct enough to narrow down the locations, then it was just a matter of looking.
[In the] Paris photo the Suzuki sign was ID’d, then it was basically searching for Suzuki dealers in Paris and checking the locations on Google Street view.
Lets hope the police can catch these oxygen thieves before they do any real damage.
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.