POLITICS 'Sedition Hunters': Meet The Online Sleuths Aiding The FBI's Capitol Manhunt

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sedition-hunters-fbi-capitol-attack-manhunt-online-sleuths_n_60479dd7c5b653040034f749

…But there’s a whole other batch of Capitol defendants who ended up on the FBI’s radar thanks to the work of someone they’d never met: anonymous online sleuths who tracked down the digital breadcrumbs that Capitol suspects had often unknowingly sprinkled across the internet.

They call themselves sedition hunters, and they have receipts. They’re members of a loosely affiliated network of motivated individuals and pop-up volunteer organizations with names like Deep State Dogs and Capitol Terrorists Exposers that developed after the Jan. 6 attack to identify the Trump supporters who organized the Capitol riot and brutalized the law enforcement officers protecting the building.

The sedition hunters scour the web for any and all photographs, videos and posts from people at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack across well-known websites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter along with lesser-used sites and apps like Rumble, Gab and Telegram. They’ve got spreadsheets, Google Docs, links, bookmarks, unlisted YouTube backups, group chats and screenshots, as Joan puts it, “coming out the rear end.” They can uncover new evidence of conduct that’ll elevate a misdemeanor trespassing case into something much more serious; find the highest-quality image of a suspect that could generate new leads through facial recognition; and compile multimedia databases that turn the Jan. 6 attack into an interactive, high-stakes and soul-crushing edition of Where’s Waldo.