Steven25's Blog

February 2, 2015

Few days ago I received an email sent by Charles Wood, a professional forensic analyst and expert witness with specific expertise in digital media, manipulation of images, metadata and micro-meteorology.

Mr. Charles Wood comments on Bellingcat article Examining the MH17 Launch Smoke Photographs written by Daniel Romein. I chose to post his entire analysis unedited.

In a follow-up piece I will ask him questions and further data supplied by others will then be discussed as well.

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The basic flaws in the Romein piece are

• No provenance for the image files
• Basic checks on authenticity not performed
• Unjustified assumptions made from the checks they did do
• Writing on areas completely outside their expertise – weather conditions, rocketry, satellite image interpretation, image forensics
• Failure to use publically available data to verify the images
• Failure to release image data to support their claims
• Failure to have effective internal checks…