Source vetting and pre-publication audit trail.
You publish a piece, you stake your byline on it. The signals you wish you'd checked are exactly the ones that surface in the inevitable correction or retraction email. Tracelight runs the OSINT pass for you — fast — and gives you the audit trail you'll need three months later.
What investigative reporters need from OSINT
You're not building a court case — you're building a story that survives legal review and post-publication scrutiny. The signals that matter to you are different: source credibility, conflict of interest, prior retractions, parallel claims in other outlets, and the digital footprint that lets you confirm a subject is who they say they are. Tracelight surfaces those signals with citations you can attach to your reporting notes.
- Identity resolution across platforms (one source → all their public personas)
- COI surfacing — undisclosed business ties, prior employer relationships
- Retraction-database checks (RetractionWatch, journal corrections)
- Reputation signals — past defamation suits, sanctions, regulatory actions
- Pre-publication audit trail with content hashes
Source-vetting workflow
Drop a source's name and known identifiers (email, phone, LinkedIn URL) into a Tracelight subject. The platform cross-resolves social profiles, checks against sanctions/PEP lists, walks back published bylines and patents, and flags any concentration of attention (sudden Twitter creation, new email domain). For sources providing claims that are independently verifiable, the report can be the basis of the second-source check.
Pre-publication checklist
Every published piece should survive a 'when did you know this?' question from legal or an editor. Tracelight reports timestamp every claim with a content hash, so 'we ran the OSINT pass on X date, here are the signals as of that date' is an auditable answer. The report is exportable as a final PDF that goes in the editorial file.
What this is NOT
Tracelight is not a surveillance platform. We don't aggregate private data, we don't bypass platform privacy controls, we don't deanonymize protected sources. We're explicit about this because some peer products straddle the line. Our positioning is civilian-investigator-first: PIs, journalists, M&A diligence, SIU teams. We deliberately do not sell to ICAC task forces, intelligence agencies, or law enforcement use cases that require warrant-grade evidence collection — that's not our market.
Pricing for newsrooms
Starter ($49/mo) works for a freelance investigative reporter on 2-3 active pieces. Pro ($149/mo) is right for a small investigative desk. Newsroom partnerships with annual billing and seat-based licensing are available — email founder@trytracelight.com for an arrangement.
$149/mo, 50 cases included. Right for a small investigative desk; supports multi-piece concurrent reporting.
Common objections
No — we surface public signals, with citations. No private data aggregation, no platform bypasses, no deanonymization. We don't sell to surveillance-adjacent buyers; positioning is civilian-investigator-first.
Searches are workspace-isolated. We don't share queries or signals with platforms. That said: if you're investigating a sensitive subject and the subject has Google Alerts on themselves, an unrelated researcher running the same name in any tool may surface your interest indirectly. Use operational discipline; this tool is one input, not a replacement for tradecraft.
You cite the underlying sources we link to, not Tracelight. The platform is a research tool; the source for any factual claim is the public record it's grounded in.
What we don't do
Honest positioning matters more than feature-list maximalism. Here's what we're explicitly not, so you can rule us in or out faster:
- We don't deanonymize protected sources, bypass platform privacy controls, or aggregate private data.
- We don't sell to surveillance buyers — intelligence agencies, ICAC task forces, law-enforcement evidence-grade workflows.
- We don't certify findings as legally admissible — the platform produces editorial-grade research notes, not court exhibits.
Related workflows
Other audiences
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