| SERIES | HUM · 003 of 006 |
| DOMAIN | Human Intelligence (HUMINT) |
| ACCESS | Signal subscribers (PDF) |
| LAST CHECKED | 6 November 2026 |
Independent investigative journalist, OSINT practitioner and digital forensics educator; chapter author in Eyewitness Textures (MQUP, 2024).
Source verification and reliability assessment is the structured process of evaluating a human source's credibility and the accuracy of the information they provide before that information enters a published report or intelligence product. The method draws on triangulation against independent open-source material, behavioural assessment, provenance tracing, and formal scoring frameworks to produce a documented record that can withstand editorial, legal, or evidentiary scrutiny.
Apply this method when acting on a new or unsolicited source, when an established source contradicts verified facts, when a provided document requires authenticity assessment, or when findings must be scored before submission to an editor, legal team, or intelligence consumer. A single source corroborated by a second source derived from the same original is still one source. The pattern of independent agreement, not the count of citations, is what holds.
HUM-003 sets out the methodology for scoring, triangulating, and documenting human source material to evidentiary standard.
IN THIS CARD
Eight workflow steps | Eight tooling sources | Six false-positive checks | Six chain-of-custody requirements |
TOOLS CHECKED · 6 NOVEMBER 2026
Metadata extraction for images, documents and video. Free, no account. "exiftool -all -j" on a test JPEG returned every embedded tag as JSON, including Software and Artist. | ||
Keyframes, video and image metadata, multi-engine reverse search. Not run in this check. The Chrome Web Store listing is live: version 0.94, updated 2 November 2026. | ||
Checks credentials and published work a source claims. The search page loads without signing in; the test query returned a temporary error, so no result was recorded. |
DELIVERABLE
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A four-page PDF of HUM-003 is below for Signal subscribers.
The rest of this card is for Signal subscribers.
What remains: the step sequence, the tool list, the false-positive checks and the chain-of-custody note.
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