Gisela Perez de Acha: Data Privacy Lawyer Ascended Investigative Reporter

Gisela is a a human rights lawyer, an open source researcher at Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center Investigations Lab, and a trainer at Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps, a global network of volunteers who fact-checks social media posts about war crimes and human rights violations. She reports on extremism and other topics for the Investigative Reporting Program with a focus on digital forensics and network analysis. She is also cybersecurity expert and a digital safety trainer with PEN America.

In this interview, Gisela talks about the knowledge she gained from several  OSINT investigations, which later led to her multi-career journey in journalism, investigative reporting, and OSINT investigations. By sharing her experiences as an OSINTer, she answers questions on how to deal with mental distress when faced with threats and the top 3 must-have tools for her investigations.

0:00 Welcome!

1:10 Tell us a bit about yourself!

4:25 What gets you into intelligence and investigations?

9:08 How do you balance and keep going with multiple careers?

15:31 Tell us the craziest experience you have!

20:12 Has your perosnal safety been threatened when investigating?

25:00 How do you deal with mental distress?

31:39 What was it like winning a team Polk Award with «American Insurrection»?

34:52 What are the top 3 tools you cannot live without?

40:06 What advice would you give to inspire the listeners?

■ About The Pivot

Brought to you by Maltego, The Pivot deep dives into topics pivoting from information security to the criminal underground. Each episode features interviews with experts from the industry and research fields and explores how they connect the dots.

■ About Maltego

Used by investigators worldwide, Maltego is a graphical link analysis tool that allows users to mine, merge, and map data from OSINT and third-party data integrations for all sorts of investigations—cybersecurity, person of interest, fraud, and more.

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