Bellingcat Online Investigation Kit: Transport Trackers

21 April 2023 4 minutes Author: Cyber Witcher

Transport companies

Trucking companies can be one of the best types of companies to research online because they often contain much more public information than regular companies. Movement of transport, border crossing, “dark” vehicles – all this and much more can be found in the Internet space. Today, there are many tools for finding, collecting and documenting information. Both in shipping and in airspace, it is necessary to control and track cargo and passenger transportation in real time. After all, safety is above all else. Especially since there are all the necessary tools and surveillance resources for this.

Despite the high technical and technological achievements of today, accidents also happen. That’s why a number of resources have been created, offering marine accident and aircraft crash investigation reports, case studies, safety tips and more. Also, there are several databases with both historical and current data on the condition of ships and aircraft with interesting details and facts. Therefore, conducting any investigation, we will have a complete picture of movements in water or air space. Coordinates of any vehicle in real time. What cargo or how many passengers are on board. And also all destinations. It is also quite important that there is a resource with the identification of “dark” boards and illegal, unregistered or irregular fishing vessels. All of this is freely available and this information can be used by ordinary people, as well as journalists or law enforcement officers. That is why transport companies strive to provide extensive, accurate, actionable data and information.

Sea transportation

MarineTraffic

An open public project that provides (near) real-time information about ship movements and their location in harbors and ports.


click here

FleetMon

Vessel position tracking, including a global database of vessels and ports. Marine Tools and important Marine News.


click here

Equasis

Vessel ownership and identification records. Lists historical information. Access to information through an account.


click here

Bosphorus Observer

A resource for very careful surveillance of ships crossing the Bosphorus.


click here

Global Fishing Watch

Identification of “dark vessels” and includes the Indonesian level of VMS.


click here

IMO Registry

Information about the ship or the arrival of the ship at the destination from the IMO.


click here

ShipSpotting

A community website for uploading photos and details of vessels sighted around the world.


click here

Unregular fishing Vessels List

Massive list of known illegal, unregistered, irregular fishing vessels.


click here

Tokyo MOU

Vessel survey/history database (PSC database) to eliminate non-standard shipping.


click here

Flights

AirNav RadarBox

Live flight tracker.


click here

FlightAware

Live flight tracker.


click here

PlaneFinder

Live flight tracker.


click here

ADS-B Exchange Radar View

Live flight tracker (including many military aircraft.)


click here

Live ATC

Audio from control towers in the USA.


click here

OpenSky-Network

Community, an open source flight tracking network.


click here

Airfleets

Database of aircraft parts.


click here

Flightradar24

Tracking (civilian) flights.


click here

Airframes

Database of aircraft parts.


click here

Federal Aviation Administration

National register of aircraft. Search by N-number (aka call sign).


click here

Aviation Safety Network

Database of aviation events; you can search by country, registration, year, etc.


click here

Icarus flights

Flight tracking platform with 2 years of free historical data.


click here

Public transport

OpenRailwayMap

Online map of the railway infrastructure of the world.


click here

Transit Visualisation

Visualized public transport routes are almost global.


click here

WikiRoutes

A very large online database of public transport.


click here

License plates

License Plate Mania

A large collection of photos of license plates around the world.


click here

License Plate Map (Europe)

Map of Europe with very many images of license plates.


click here

License Plate Map (Americas)

Map of North and South America with images of license plates.


click here

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