Online ‘sedition hunters’ search for remaining US Capitol rioters, new report claims

Amateur, internet sleuths are tracking down hundreds of wanted individuals from the Capitol riots. But the chances of identifying innocnent people is high, says new report.

Online vigilante “sedition hunters” are reportedly tracking down suspected Capitol rioters not yet arrested or charged by authorities.

More than 400 people have been arrested and charged over their alleged involvement in the attack in Washington DC on 6 January that left five people dead.

But the FBI’s most wanted page still features photos of hundreds more people wanted in connection with the event.

Now groups of “amateur internet sleuths” are reportedly turning the search for the outstanding participants into the “ultimate online manhunt”, according to Bloomberg.

One man, Chris Sigurdson, 58, an out-of-work actor in Canada, said that he spent 40-hours a week poring over photos and videos on social media, eventually leading to the FBI’s arrest and charging of Daniel Ray Caldwell of The Colony, Texas, with his tweets cited in the affidavit.

Another man reportedly built a facial recognition website, leading to the arrest of one man, whilst websites are popping up aggregating social media “evidence” including seditionhunters.org.

On Jan6evidence.com visitors can upload and scroll through videos taken from social media of the crowds, and add time tags and descriptions, including: “Approach toward Washington Monument, views of crowds preparing for Trump’s rally. 0:11: GreenBandanaMan in a group with three others and a 13 colonies flag.”

All the videos are plotted by time and location on a map. You can filter them by known groups like “ProudBoys” or “Sons of Liberty” who attended.

There are 25 tagged videos for “vandalism”, and 125 for “violence”.

They give the people they seek nicknames like “PippiLongScarf on left”, “YellowScarfYeti”, “FullCamoKneePads” and “scallops” and when they are found, arrested or charged, their mugshot is updated in the gallery called “Persons of Interest.”

SeditionHunters.org’s landing page has a statement that reads: “Sedition Hunters is a global community of open-source intelligence investigators (OSINT) working together to assist the U.S. FBI and Washington D.C. Capitol Police in finding people who allegedly committed crimes in the January 6 capitol riots.”

It continues: “We examine thousands of hours of videos and hundreds of images searching for individuals who committed crimes on Jan 6, 2021 at the United States Capitol. As we look for those wanted by the FBI we are able to identify other crimes and pass that information along to law enforcement officers.”

The reasons behind the vigilante quests vary.

For Mr Sigurdson, his interest was one of fascination.

He said: “I don’t think anger would’ve sustained me through this whole process. It’s more of a deep quest for comprehension.”

Whereas for Forrest Rogers, a German-American business consultant who helps run a sedition-hunting group called Deep State Dogs, it’s about morality.

He said: “We want these people brought to justice. And we don’t want a random sampling of them, a token group.”

Bloomberg claimed that following the riots the FBI saw a 750 per cent increase in calls and electronic tips to their hotline in the immediate aftermath.

Samantha Shero, an FBI spokeswoman, said that the tips were helpful in “dozens of cases” and added: “The public has provided tremendous assistance to this investigation, and we are asking for continued help to identify other individuals.”

But the bureau has also raised concerns over how crowdsourcing by untrained, private individuals might lead to the identification of innocent people, including a retired firefighter in Chicago. 

Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told Bloomberg that the chance of accidental accusations of the innocent was high and said: “As soon as you put someone’s personal information out there, you just don’t know what’s going to happen. When you do it publicly, there’s just a lot more that can go wrong.”