Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026Thank you to the colleagues, collaborators and newsrooms I have been lucky to work alongside, and to my family for their patience and support over all these years. 000
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026Thank you to UL President, Professor Shane Kilcommins, Aoife Madden and Lisa Mc Carthy of the UL Alumni team, and our MC Dr Máire Treasa Ní Cheallaigh for a special evening. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026To my lecturers at UL, Tom Felle, Dr. Emer Connolly, Fiona McGarry, Keith Watterson, Fergal Quinn, mary dundon, Colin McGann, Henry Silke, Ron Kirwan, Kathryn Hayes, Amanda Haynes and Eoin Devereux, thank you for your time, energy and wisdom, and for pushing us all to be better. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026Every step of that road started in Limerick, with people who believed in me before I fully believed in myself. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026I walked into UL not entirely sure where it would lead. It led from the Limerick Voice newsroom to verifying eyewitness evidence from some of the world's biggest stories, to building news services for public service media, and on to training journalists around the world. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026It was a privilege to be honoured alongside Donal Ryan, Frances Collins and Martin Cotter, three people whose work I greatly admire. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026Humbled and honoured to receive the University of Limerick Outstanding Achievement Alumni Award (Society) at the 2026 UL Alumni Awards on Friday night. 📸 University of Limerick 110
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026Full workflow: signalandshadow.io/p/ai-vision-...signalandshadow.ioVision models guess locations. Verification confirms them.AI vision models can guess a photo's location. Only primary-source checks with SunCalc and Google Earth Pro confirm the guess is right. 000
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026Every model-generated candidate gets graded against the cross-referencing standard we use here: Possible for model output alone, Probable with one primary-source confirmation, Corroborated with two or more. 110
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026Our new Method Tutorial documents six distinct, predictable ways these models produce confidently stated but incorrect geolocation output. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026A model will confabulate a wrong location with exactly the same apparent confidence it uses for a correct one, which is what makes vision-model geolocation genuinely dangerous to rely on unverified. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026Large vision models can now describe architectural style, vegetation, signage and road markings across hundreds of frames in the time it takes an analyst to look at one. That speed is genuinely useful. The confidence score attached to it is not. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026The BBC reproduced the finding independently with different satellite providers, and AFP confirmed the scene in person. Three separate methods converging on one answer. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026On 4 April 2022, the New York Times matched the exact street positions of bodies in Bucha, Ukraine ground video against Maxar satellite imagery dated as early as 9 March, while Russian forces still held the town. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026We've laid out the full workflow, tools, and opsec considerations in AIV-002, out now for Signal tier subscribers. signalandshadow.io/p/ai-generat... #OSINT #factchecksignalandshadow.ioAI-generated image and video detection for OSINT investigatorsRun Hive Moderation, Optic and ExifTool in sequence, document false-positive checks and meet chain-of-custody requirements for legal or editorial submission. 000
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026That gap is why we lean on the cross-referencing standard behind evidentiary-grade verification rather than a single detector's confidence score. #OSINT #factcheck 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026Worth remembering how far detection tools still have to go: the winning model in the 2020 Deepfake Detection Challenge, tested on over 100,000 videos, reached only 65.18% accuracy. #OSINT #factcheck 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026CNN and the Baltimore Sun reported the case in April 2024, one of the more widely covered instances of a criminal case built on proving synthetic audio fabrication rather than debunking a genuine leak. #OSINT #factcheck 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026The confirmation didn't rest on one tool's output. It took forensic analysis by an FBI-contracted analyst and a University of California, Berkeley examiner before police called it fabricated. #OSINT #factcheck 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026In January 2024, an audio recording spread online appearing to capture Pikesville High School principal Eric Eiswert making racist remarks. Baltimore County Police confirmed in April 2024 it was entirely AI-generated. #OSINT #factcheck 110
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 08/09/2026Full workflow, including the verification record template, out now for Signal tier subscribers: signalandshadow.io/p/capstone-v... #OSINTsignalandshadow.ioFour layers every piece of crisis footage must passThe end-to-end verification workflow for contested footage: geolocation, shadow analysis, source tracing and satellite corroboration in sequence. 000
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 08/09/2026Our new capstone tutorial builds the cross-referencing standard used in cases like this, geolocation, chronolocation, source tracing and satellite corroboration, into a single sequence for new footage. #OSINT 101
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 08/09/2026Forensic identification of weapons and uniforms confirmed the unit as Cameroonian army, and from there, the individual soldiers involved. #OSINT 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 08/09/2026Terrain matching placed the killing on a road in Cameroon's Far North, close to the Nigerian border. Shadow length and direction then narrowed the time window. #OSINT 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 08/09/2026What makes that investigation worth revisiting is that no single finding carried it. Location, time, source and physical evidence were checked separately, and each had to hold on its own. #OSINT 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 08/09/2026In 2018, BBC Africa Eye verified crisis footage that led to the identification of Cameroonian soldiers who executed two women and two children. #OSINT 110
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026Full technique and gap-tracking framework: Issue #011, free for Intercept tier and up. signalandshadow.io/p/iran-strik...signalandshadow.ioIran strike geolocating: Wedding site distance analysis techniqueFrance 24 geolocated two confirmed points in a contested Iran strike and measured the distance between them. Here is the technique. 000
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026Distance measurement between a claimed civilian-harm site and a stated target is standard practice in strike verification. Running it as a default first step turns an assertion into a fact a reader can check. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026CENTCOM spokesperson Tim Hawkins said the US military "never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC." That statement does not address the 135-metre distance France 24 measured on the ground. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026The named-victim count still has a live discrepancy. AP and the Washington Examiner report a fifth death, per Iranian officials and a Balochistan human rights group, attributed to a separate strike on the comms tower. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026France 24 geolocated the wedding building and a nearby communications tower separately using published footage, then measured the distance between the two confirmed points: more than 135 metres. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026Iranian officials say one of the strikes hit a residential building in Kuhestak, Hormozgan, where a wedding was underway. The Hormozgan governor's office named four victims by age and put the wounded above sixty. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026On 1 September, US strikes hit southern Iran and Iran struck back within hours, hitting targets in four countries at once. It is the broadest single-night spread of strikes either side has launched in this war. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/08/2026What stopped it: an evidentiary constraint built directly into the prompt, the kind of cross-referencing standard this audience will recognise. Full field report, Signal tier: signalandshadow.io/p/linkedin-p...signalandshadow.ioThree profile changes, three days before a regulatory actionField report: AI analyses LinkedIn profile changes before an incident. Three changes, three verdicts, bleed caught, one corroboration step. 000
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/08/2026The same run caught the model volunteering a reference to a real documented case it was never given, while assessing the sequence as a whole. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/08/2026Run against a test scenario, two of three individual changes came back routine or inconclusive on their own. The combined sequence still leaned toward preparatory activity. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/08/2026AIO-008 tests a RAFT-structured prompt built to score each profile change on its own before combining them into one sequence verdict, rather than reading the whole cluster as a single judgment call. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/08/2026The actual problem with pre or post incident timing is that routine LinkedIn housekeeping produces the exact same observable signal as deliberate reputation management. Proximity alone doesn't tell you which you're looking at. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/08/2026New AI in OSINT field report: a softened job title, a de-emphasised employer line, a removed endorsement section. Three profile-change types clustered around an incident, and every one of them also happens for reasons that have nothing to do with it. 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026Full breakdown of the Ecuador precedent and how to build the file for whatever comes next, out now for Intercept subscribers: signalandshadow.io/p/guatemala-... #OSINTsignalandshadow.ioThe land campaign one government says doesn't existHegseth named three countries for ground strikes. Guatemala denies the deal, and a senators' letter shows why paper trails outlast claims. 000
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026PBI-Canada separately traced the helicopter in the Ecuador strike footage to an Airbus H225M and flagged Ecuador's 2023 direct purchase from Airbus as a probable but unconfirmed link, a useful model for the cross-referencing standard this next round of strikes will need. #OSINT 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026The same administration's own civilian-casualty report to Congress this month, covering the boat-strike campaign along with Iran, Somalia and Yemen, was called a whitewash by two officials briefed on it. #OSINT 110
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026A Senate letter from Peter Welch and Jeanne Shaheen, dated 11 August and made public on 17 August, documented a different sequence sourced to villagers, including a 3 March strike on a building satellite imagery reportedly shows was already abandoned. #OSINT 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026Ecuador ran the same framework starting in March. The Pentagon said on 6 March it had hit a "narco-terrorist supply complex" near San Martin village, with U.S. forces confirmed as partners on 9 March. #OSINT 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo says his constitution gives him no path to any such deal without a vote in Congress. Honduras and Colombia have said nothing publicly either way. #OSINT 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026Pete Hegseth told a Panama security conference on 12 August that Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras have joined a ground-strikes framework against cartels. Guatemala's president says there's no deal. #OSINT 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 26/08/2026The cross-referencing and chain-of-custody standard behind this is laid out in full in the card, out now for Signal tier subscribers. #OSINT signalandshadow.io/p/social-med...signalandshadow.ioPreserve social media evidence before platform deletionPlatform moderation removes conflict documentation within minutes. Hunchly, Wayback Machine and SMAT lock the record before the content is gone. 000
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 26/08/2026Getting that match wrong, using the wrong tool for the wrong platform, is often where evidence gets lost a second time, after an investigator thought it was already secure. #OSINT 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 26/08/2026The fix is procedural: capture at the point of discovery, using a source matched to the platform and content type in front of you. #OSINT 100
Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 26/08/2026That is a live evidentiary record eroding in real time, not a historical archiving problem. #OSINT 100