From space truths to basement sleuths, debunking theories about MH370
By: Darren Smith
Tags: Satellite Imagery, Mh370, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Plane Crashes

How a West Australian startup dispatched a supposed tech sleuth in the time it takes to Instagram a selfie.

239. That’s the number of people lost without a trace on March 8th 2014. Four years later the world is still clueless as to what caused MH370 to disappear. The forensic search has been long an exhaustive and yet still without a conclusion. This void of truth has given space for unfounded theories. While useful as clickbait, these theories prey upon the grieving survivors and discount the immediately available hard science, itself waiting to tell the truth.

In the cruisey outer suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, a cadre of blockchain programmers and geospatial experts have cracked timeless mysteries surrounding the crystal ball of truth when it comes to using aerial images and maps to tell a story.

Digital images (photographs) are imbued with a rich tapestry of pixel based information once thought impossible to fake. Now there’s analytical programs capable of determining altered or anomalous images but there is no program able to tell if a validated, historically accurate, and corroborated, aerial image has been used to tell a fake story, until now. With these three qualifiers, Chris Lowe, head developer and WRX-driving nerd at Soar, quashed notions that MH370 was laying unobserved in Cambodia’s jungle. Chris’ sleuthing took about the same amount of time it takes to scope out urban legend on Snopes.com.

Step One: Chris Lowe utilised Soar to locate and identify the conspicuous image

Hindsight isn’t 2020, it’s 2018 and before

Knowing that he had a comprehensive satellite photo database for this location using Soar, Chris quickly gathered satellite images post March 8, 2014 for evidence of MH370. Coming up trumps with any evidence of the wreckage was Chris’ first indication that this theory was thinly supported. But like any fake news, the idea that MH370 had finally been found after four years was highly emotive or at least ‘click-baitive’. According to Chris, “knowing that I had a collection of images from the same location for various dates after 2014, it was a no-brainer, I could easily prove that the plane never crashed here. Because satellite photos are effectively time lapse photos, I can go back in time and tell you what the earth says”.

Step Two: Soar uncloaks erroneous MH370 discovery claims using satellite imagery from September 2018

One picture tells a thousand stories, but a thousand pictures tell a true story

It’s easy to control the narrative when you only give a singular perspective. Lets try that. An immigrant committed a crime. So because someone else is an immigrant, they’re capable of committing the same crime. Therefore if we ban immigrants, they can’t commit crime. Here’s a another example, I have a grainy photo of an aeroplane in an inaccessible area where people don’t have the internet and because they never found MH370, this must be it! Speaking to the first analogy, were the conversation to be; one immigrant committed a crime, another immigrant came to Australia to learn English where he met his wife and started a family, another came here for the surf but and now writes content for a startup, another came here and now leads a team of developers, the fifth immigrant came here grew up and founded a geospatial company. Four of these five immigrants now work for Soar. All summed up this paints a truer more highly faceted story. People need a tool to quickly truth egregious claims such as this MH370 fumble in the jungle story. We hope you now know what it is.

The MH370 in Cambodia myth, debunked on Soar.

Deep into our development, Soar already delivers timely satellite information and as it grows, will include more drone and manned aircraft images. Just envision of the forthcoming ability news outlets will have to utilise high resolution drone images for airplane crash debris scatter analysis, aerial images for the detection of crash scars on jungle landscapes, and furthermore for access to satellite images useful for terrain and weather conditions associated with the crash site.. “The cumulative analysis from three types of aerial platforms will be incontrovertible” says Amir Farhand, CEO and founder of Soar.

There’s no controlling how news is disseminated. You know it as I do, it takes longer to disprove an assertion than it does to make one and thus fake news, because it’s first, often stays in people’s minds as the real news because they don’t want to be unconvinced — a humbling experience.

Using the blockchain we can soar above the rumblings and grumblings choking our Twitter feeds

Soar proposes that the validation and retention of metadata (descriptive information), is crucial to delivering truthful aerial photos in the news. When unaltered, image metadata gives the full picture about how, when, where, and what settings were used to take the photo. When a transaction occurs on the blockchain, this information is permanent and visible for the world to see. Thus, if at any point an image gets manipulated (location, date, or other parameters are changed), this transaction anomaly rises its own red flag for the entire blockchain to see. “You can think of Soar as a dodgyness-detector for aerial images” says Farhand.

143,400 people. Take 239 people and multiply that by 600 (the average number of people known by a person). 143,400 people are potentially disheartened each time a flagrant MH370 claim gets pimped on the internet. Breeders and feeders of untruths need be aware, the blockchain is watching.

“The truth is always the strongest argument.” Sophocles