By Guest Blogger | November 7th, 2011 Mark Stanley is New Media Manager for the Center for Democracy & Technology, a non-profit public interest organization based in Washington, DC, and San Francisco working on Internet policy.
One of the most cherished rights in the United States is the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable government searches, which has long protected the privacy of Americans’ homes and communications. But as technology has rapidly advanced, this right—long a crown jewel of U.S. civil liberties—has not been fully applied to protect digital communications.
At issue is the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which specifies when the government can access digital communications such as email, documents, photos, and videos stored privately online.
The government claims, for example, that ECPA allows it to access any email that has been opened and is stored with a Web-based email service—like Hotmail or Gmail—without obtaining a warrant from a judge based on probable cause. The consequences [...]
Continue reading U.S. Needs Strong Privacy Protections for Digital Communications
By Bukeni Waruzi | August 30th, 2011 The Lubanga trial is coming to an end as the prosecutors, victims’ representatives and the defense counsel make their closing statements in the submission of evidence phase before the trial chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
I came to attend this crucial phase with hope and trust in the evidence materials submitted by the prosecution that would prove the commission of the crime, the personal criminal responsibility of the suspect, Mr. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, for enlisting, conscripting children 15 years old and using them to participate actively in hostilities in Ituri region, North Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2002-2003. This is a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the ICC. However, I was saddened, to see that the crime of sexual violence against girls wasn’t included amongst other charges against Mr. Lubanga.
Over the course of the presentations, I saw [...]
Continue reading The ICC’s Lubanga Trial Nears Close: Will Child Soldiers Receive Justice?
By Guest Blogger | July 5th, 2011 Post written by: Mariel Gruszko, a WITNESS intern working with the “Cameras Everywhere” and “Tools and Tactics” initiatives.
On June 16, riots swept downtown Vancouver after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Final of the NHL’s Stanley Cup. The online response to the riots—a public campaign to name and shame rioters followed by a heated discussion regarding whether naming and shaming constitutes vigilantism or community policing—still rages.
This blog has extensively discussed the risks that human rights defenders face when they upload videos, agree to be filmed, or attend mass demonstrations. One aspect of this is when repressive governments use either automated or crowd-sourced identification technologies to persecute human rights activists. But what about when citizens themselves initiate and participate in crowd-sourced identification of others in social media, for example, criminals, or suspected criminals?
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Crowd-Sourcing Law Enforcement: Two Stories
During the Green Movement protests of 2009, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard [...]
Continue reading Crowd-Sourcing Surveillance: When Does Little Brother Get Too Big?
By Sam Gregory | May 12th, 2011 A couple of weeks ago I presented at Re:Publica, the largest social media conference in Germany. Since the conference gives a generous 50 minutes to its speakers I had the opportunity not only to talk about WITNESS and our work in general (first 10 minutes or so), but also to explain in some depth the video advocacy challenges and opportunities surfaced by events in the Middle East and North Africa as well as some of the emerging questions in our Cameras Everywhere initiative. Namely, how do human rights values and practicalities intersect in the new ubiquitous video moment?
As you’ll see at some point in the video, Re:Publica takes place in the Friedrichstadtpalast, a enormous revue theatre in Berlin… hopefully I didn’t gulp too much as I step up to the podium.
In case you don’t get through the entire video, below is a summary of the presentation:
In the [...]
Continue reading Watch: Cameras Everywhere – Presentation at Re:Publica 2011
By Sam Gregory | January 19th, 2011 Here at WITNESS we’re in the midst of exciting development on all our new programmatic initiatives. One of these is our ‘Cameras Everywhere’ Leadership initiative, which we’d like to introduce in this blog.
This initiative takes advantage of WITNESS’ position at the intersection of human rights, media and technology. As the use of video for change increases, we see an opportunity to become more of a leader and to provide a stronger voice of influence in creating a more conducive environment for impactful video. This entails changing norms, policies and practices, and promoting effective solutions across disparate sectors.
Some questions we’ve been asking ourselves to help frame this initiative are:
As more and more people film people speaking out and taking a stand against human rights crises, how can we protect victims and witnesses and ensure informed consent as much as possible?
As more and more footage circulates from human rights crises [...]
Continue reading Cameras Everywhere: Our New Leadership Initiative
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