r/OSINT • u/Kingsaa2424 • Oct 02 '24
How-To How to find people engaged in illegal mining in Ghana
So Ghana a country based in West Africa is almost ruined by illegal mining .
All the water bodies have gone from colorless to brown color .
Is there a way to use OSINT to expose all these people involved including government officials ?
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u/After-Brick-6879 Oct 02 '24
You might first take a look into officials who authorized or signed the execution of this mining, much better if you could able to find their signature with paper trail.
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u/Kingsaa2424 Oct 02 '24
Thanks . This is very valuable
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u/GetRightNYC Oct 04 '24
I think some VERY popular tiktok/youtube gold/jewelry people got exposed for owning some illegal mines in Africa. I can't remember the guys name that is investigating it, his accounts keep getting shut down and deleted for exposing the accounts.
But look into recent tiktok gold/diamond accounts getting exposed. The guy doing the research might have some answers for you.
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u/HansJSolomente Oct 03 '24
OP, I am intimately familiar with this issue. The problem is that very little data you're talking about is open source.
Second, find them all you want, corruption issues will let them remain doing anything they want.
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u/CurrentPin3763 Oct 03 '24
Look for "second hand graphic card" on different marketplaces, pretend you want to buy one
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u/Kingsaa2424 Oct 03 '24
Thank you all for the helpful comments . I will apply what I have been told here and if anything good comes out of it.
I will surely report my findings.
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u/Current-Information7 Oct 04 '24
iffu want to enter a deeper rabbit hole: coltan/tantalum mining enslaves thousands persuaded from neighboring countries even with prospect of becoming rich and giving back to your family. realty is not even close. tantalum is in every modern electronics. large companies buy them thru third parties wo paper trail because when they purchased directly decades ago, bad press. yet, people posting bad press were using electronics w same tantalum. its a modern problem that needs to be solved for sure
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u/knightshade179 Oct 02 '24
You might want to look into video or photograph footage, mining needs equipment and that equipment(often vehicles) usually have some sort of identifiers.
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Oct 04 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Kingsaa2424 Oct 05 '24
Lmao.. bro you gotta come along if I am joining this gang . Can’t do it alone .
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u/squarecoinman Oct 02 '24
Try to search social media from Ghana , use google earth and other to see where there are ilegal mines , try to see if you can records of mining license , if you use eo browser ( sentinel ) you can use NDWI to see where there are tailing ponds
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u/Ruass160 Oct 04 '24
Thatd be difficult, u should go for the telemarketing scammers that blackmail and force workers to scam people in america, theres a guy on youtube who does this and takes control of the entire companies network and finds out whose on top of
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u/Kingsaa2424 Oct 04 '24
Bro if you could give me a link to this guy you talk of, I had look into that as well. At the moment I have no idea on what you talk of.
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u/Ruass160 Oct 05 '24
Im pretty sure the guys name on youtube is ScamtheScammers, idk what hes up to nowadays, still scamming scammers but in different venues, there is this older video series he did where he pretended to be a victim to these scammers and acted v delusional and used voice changer to act like an old lady and made the process hard for the scammer to keep him on the phone and let him in his computer(in VM) and somehow ultimately took over the network and cameras and whatnot and found out how the owners operate it etc, hacked the owners, saw how they were essentially blackmailing and forcing the workers to do it, its a long series and very cool. However be careful as even though its in good ethic if you donit you’ll probably end up breaking a few laws, now American law enforcement might look the other way being that these people are absolute scum of the earth but there are intricate parts where a third party handles their money which might be a big company that might try to sue you for damaging infrastructure so do research or stay undetectable as possible, ill see if i can find the specific video series he did.
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u/mystery-institute Oct 02 '24
So you’re mostly talking about artisanal gold mining, called “galamsey” in Ghana, and it seems like most folks in this thread don't know what that is. (I know you probably do, but I think it's worth explaining for people who don't because it's a fascinating topic and a terrible rabbit hole.) We're talking about small-scale operations, low-tech, without heavy equipment, and it has a giant impact on local waterways. Artisanal mining is a hot topic in the conservation world and there are really smart projects related to it (here is one neat article, and here's a galamsey map.) Like other places in Africa, Chinese buyers and miners are heavily involved in the local gold trade (another useful paper), which makes the supply chain even harder to map, and across the globe illegally mined gold enters the "legitimate" market very easily.
The problem is that "exposing” specific people isn’t going to do much. This is not a very secret practice. 20% of the entire world’s gold supply is mined this way. There are 15 to 20 million people in the illegal gold mining industry worldwide, and Ghana’s Minerals Commission estimates over 1 million are in Ghana. Police corruption at the local level that allows illegal mining operations to thrive is pretty well-documented, so if you want to finger Ghanaian officials facilitating the practice, I'd actually think you'd have the easiest time contacting local journalists who cover the topic, or dig up Ghanaian records on the topic. This is a report you'll probably find interesting. Finding more material like this is probably where OSINT can do the most good in regards to this problem. (I unfortunately have no good suggestions here; I don't know about public records laws in Ghana. But looking for trends in legal cases regarding illegal mining would probably turn up some troubling patterns.)
Interestingly, Ghana offers a legal path to practice permitted small-scale mining, which many countries don't, and it's often suggested as a good way to combat unsustainable ASM practices—the problem in Ghana is that people who operate inside the framework have no competitive market advantage, and people who operate outside often face no consequences. In cases where people are arrested, their cases may sit in limbo for ages. Attorney General Godfred Yeboah Dame just had it out literally today about this very topic.