Frequently Asked Questions

Ross Burley and Adam Rutland founded the organisation in 2020. Based around the world, we are a group of passionate open source investigators and research professionals. We’re supported by dozens of brilliant volunteers who lend their time to assist our work.

CIR has no core funding; we receive funding for individual projects that support our organisational objectives of exposing human rights abuses and war crimes, countering disinformation and combating online behaviour harmful to women and minorities. For example, the Myanmar Witnessa project is supported by grants from the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Australia’s Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Like other charities and non-profits who receive government and multilateral support, these funds go directly towards delivering our project work. Our financial accounts are independently audited on an annual basis. As a social enterprise, all our income goes toward supporting our mission, with no profits going to shareholders.

We also accept donations; we have never received a donation over £500.

Yes. We have received grants from the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the U.S. State Department, USAID and Australia’s Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade. All funding was for specific projects related to our mission to investigate human rights abuses, war crimes and disinformation.

We carry out projects that are aligned with our core values of supporting and defending human rights and democracy. Our investigations are based on reviewing, cross-checking and analysing empirical, open source evidence.

Open source data, whether it is satellite imagery or social media content, is generated and provided by people outside our organisation and available to all to be meticulously scrutinised. We also regularly collaborate with independent media organisations, who themselves independently review and check our work. The wider open source community will often “check our working” too – something we encourage and support.

Through our maps (for example, the Eyes on Russia map) we provide open access to the results of our analysis. In our work, including Myanmar Witness, Afghan Witness or Eyes on Russia, anyone can “see our working” – that’s a core strength of open source: we will explain exactly how we got to a conclusion about a human rights incident, or discovered an online influence network. We will always show, not just tell.

We believe the explosion of disinformation and online harms has eroded trust within society and for democracy. The scale of the problem is beyond just one sector of society: we believe the only way to challenge this erosion is by all sectors working collaboratively together. That’s why we work with governments, but also with academia, the media, other NGOs and volunteers. But our own work – i.e. our reports and what we choose to focus on – is driven by ourselves only and is entirely independent.

No. We live in an age of conspiracy theories, which spread online and can end up causing real-world harm. Indeed, exposing and combatting this spread is often an important part of CIR’s work. CIR and our staff have ourselves been a target of dis-and-misinformation.

Claims that we are linked to intelligence agencies is a tactic used by disinformers to place doubts about the veracity and independence of our work. Open source is exactly that – open and free to all. Our work speaks for itself.

We recognise that in the course of CIR’s work, individuals may be exposed to violent, graphic or distressing content and that viewing these images can cause vicarious trauma (when individuals experience symptoms of distress similar to those they would experience if they had been present at the event).

This is why we developed this document, which sets out protocols, guidance and tools to help minimise both exposure to traumatic content and the impact of that exposure.

We are also working on a series of articles focusing on mental health and well-being, privacy policy and other useful resources that the OSINT community might find helpful. You can read the first one on vicarious trauma here.

While most organisations have policies on how their employees can represent them online, they often don’t have strategies in place to support employees if they are targeted by online harms as a result of their work.

This document details the steps CIR employees, consultants, and volunteers should take if they are experiencing online abuse, so that CIR can provide the best support. It also gives advice on engagement with adversarial accounts online, as well as resources for support and guidance outside of CIR.

Read the second in our series of articles focused on protecting researchers, sources and research subjects.

We have a small office in London, but many of our team and volunteers are based around the world.

We regularly post job vacancies on our careers page, which you can find here. We do offer paid internships and have a Research Associates programme for those looking to embark on a career in open source research related to human rights and disinformation. Keep an eye on our social media channels and our careers page for updates.

We also work with dozens of brilliant volunteers who are interested in open source analysis. If you’d like to get involved as a volunteer, drop the team a message at [email protected].

If you’d like to learn the basics of open source or brush up on your geolocation skills, our Director of Investigations, Ben Strick, has produced a series of YouTube tutorials, which can be found here.

​We also work with academics, other non-profits, and the wider open source community, as part of our Resilience Network. We believe the scale of the challenge of countering disinformation and exposing human right abuses is too large for one single organisation. Our Resilience Network is an informal coalition of individuals and organisations across the work who are dedicated to protecting democracy and exposing the manipulation of information. If you’d like to know more or get involved, please send us email at [email protected].