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Derek Bowler

@bowlerderek.com
1.2K followers 917 following 220 posts

Investigative journalist & OSINT trainer 🇨🇭Geneva-based, 🇮🇪 Cork-raised

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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026
Thank 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026
Thank 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026
To 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026
Every step of that road started in Limerick, with people who believed in me before I fully believed in myself.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026
I 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026
It was a privilege to be honoured alongside Donal Ryan, Frances Collins and Martin Cotter, three people whose work I greatly admire.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/09/2026
Humbled 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026
Full workflow: signalandshadow.io/p/ai-vision-...
signalandshadow.io
Vision 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026
Every 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026
Our new Method Tutorial documents six distinct, predictable ways these models produce confidently stated but incorrect geolocation output.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026
A 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026
Large 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026
The BBC reproduced the finding independently with different satellite providers, and AFP confirmed the scene in person. Three separate methods converging on one answer.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026
On 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026
We'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 #factcheck
signalandshadow.io
AI-generated image and video detection for OSINT investigators
Run Hive Moderation, Optic and ExifTool in sequence, document false-positive checks and meet chain-of-custody requirements for legal or editorial submission.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026
That gap is why we lean on the cross-referencing standard behind evidentiary-grade verification rather than a single detector's confidence score. #OSINT #factcheck
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026
Worth 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026
CNN 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026
The 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 16/09/2026
In 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 08/09/2026
Full workflow, including the verification record template, out now for Signal tier subscribers: signalandshadow.io/p/capstone-v... #OSINT
signalandshadow.io
Four layers every piece of crisis footage must pass
The end-to-end verification workflow for contested footage: geolocation, shadow analysis, source tracing and satellite corroboration in sequence.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 08/09/2026
Our 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 08/09/2026
Forensic identification of weapons and uniforms confirmed the unit as Cameroonian army, and from there, the individual soldiers involved. #OSINT
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 08/09/2026
Terrain 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 08/09/2026
What 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 08/09/2026
In 2018, BBC Africa Eye verified crisis footage that led to the identification of Cameroonian soldiers who executed two women and two children. #OSINT
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026
Full technique and gap-tracking framework: Issue #011, free for Intercept tier and up. signalandshadow.io/p/iran-strik...
signalandshadow.io
Iran strike geolocating: Wedding site distance analysis technique
France 24 geolocated two confirmed points in a contested Iran strike and measured the distance between them. Here is the technique.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026
Distance 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026
CENTCOM 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026
The 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026
France 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026
Iranian 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 03/09/2026
On 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/08/2026
What 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.io
Three profile changes, three days before a regulatory action
Field report: AI analyses LinkedIn profile changes before an incident. Three changes, three verdicts, bleed caught, one corroboration step.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/08/2026
The same run caught the model volunteering a reference to a real documented case it was never given, while assessing the sequence as a whole.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/08/2026
Run 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/08/2026
AIO-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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/08/2026
The 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 28/08/2026
New 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.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026
Full breakdown of the Ecuador precedent and how to build the file for whatever comes next, out now for Intercept subscribers: signalandshadow.io/p/guatemala-... #OSINT
signalandshadow.io
The land campaign one government says doesn't exist
Hegseth named three countries for ground strikes. Guatemala denies the deal, and a senators' letter shows why paper trails outlast claims.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026
PBI-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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026
The 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026
A 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026
Ecuador 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026
Guatemalan 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 27/08/2026
Pete 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 26/08/2026
The 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.io
Preserve social media evidence before platform deletion
Platform moderation removes conflict documentation within minutes. Hunchly, Wayback Machine and SMAT lock the record before the content is gone.
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 26/08/2026
Getting 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
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 26/08/2026
The fix is procedural: capture at the point of discovery, using a source matched to the platform and content type in front of you. #OSINT
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Derek Bowler @bowlerderek.com · 26/08/2026
That is a live evidentiary record eroding in real time, not a historical archiving problem. #OSINT
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