On 29 July after a horrific knife attack against children, the alleged perpetrator was misnamed by a obscure website called Channel3now saying the very specific piece of misinformation that the attacker was called "Ali Al-Shakati", and had arrived in the UK illegally on a boat last year.
After this spark online the social cohesion in the UK has broken down with riots and more violence with a lot of narratives on blaming who is behind the disinformation.
The aim of this report by Internet 2.0 is to unveil key details we found about the website administrator to place more facts into the public debate and ask the follow-on questions that will lead to objective truth on the disinformation campaign over speculation.
Who runs the website?
Cyber forensics show that the WordPress site channel3now admin and an author on some of the articles is James Lawley. He has been running accounts at Facebook and LinkedIn. Experts immediately dismissed him as being a fake online identity set up by the perpetrators of the disinformation campaign.
Is he real?
Of note James Lawley is a real person in Halifax Nova Scotia, he has a father and uncles Jim and Jeff Lawley that is noted on his uncles obituary Ross Lawley. All three donated to the liberal party in Canada in 2021-22. James is named as a nephew of Ross. He played football for Citadel High School. He ran a lawnmowing business with a friend from football Jackson Bruce, who with James seemed to graduate high school in 2021 and now both go to Acadia University.
Is this just a cover identity by the real perpetrators?
We must note that there is no clear 100% link between the online identity of James Lawley the landscaper on LinkedIn and James Lawley the news website admin on Facebook. The Facebook account is located in LA, California and James the Landscaper is located in Nova Scotia. It is easy to rip off a profile pic without the student's knowledge.
The Times Radio were immediately able to identify Russian language car racing videos on the Channel3now YouTube account posted previously to the site. The assessment was it was Russian disinformation and the admin clearly was just lazy and hijacked a Russian YouTube channel, placing their crime focused news videos over the top.
But the assessment that this FSB style disinformation campaign was sloppy on the YouTube account but was able to build an elaborate identity for a Canadian university student doesn’t completely fit.
One thing that immediately flags is the in your face ads that the crime focused news site is running. They are everywhere and a more believable assessment is that this site is a clickbait ad website aimed at attracting bots and ad money. Most of the stories are from the United States and if this site is in an ad focused network it makes sense that the sloppy mistakes were actually never supposed to stand up to the scrutiny of a national tragedy sparking national riots.
One thing is for sure the identity of James Lawley and the use of his photo on the Channel3now website as well as the identity of his colleague Jackson Bruce can be quickly verified by Citadel High School or Acadia University. This piece of information would quickly clarify if his identity has been used falsely or in fact he made the mistake of misnaming the original perpetrator.
This investigation is not over and will be updated if more facts come to light.
