Ideas Archives - Page 6 of 7

Mixing Business and Pleasure – Fundraising Among Friends As my birthday approached last week I became increasingly uneasy. It had nothing to do with my age as you might suspect. Let me explain. For the last two years WITNESS has launched a spring drive fundraising appeal. Our staff, board and close supporters reach out to their personal and professional networks to ask them to donate to WITNESS. WITNESS May 25, 2010
An Archivist’s Perspective on Access and Privacy The New York Times reports that earlier this month, a US District Court granted a petition by Chevron to subpoena 600 hours of footage from Crude: The Real Price of Oil. The film, by director Joe Berlinger, documents a landmark lawsuit filed by 30,000 Ecuadorean Amazon residents against the oil company for allegedly contaminating the jungle and creating a “death zone” the size of Rhode Island. Yvonne Ng May 23, 2010
Video Testimony from an Untelevised Trial Always on the look out for new and interesting uses of video in human rights campaigns, I came across this innovative use of testimony and video by the Courage Campaign. They're fighting to keep the proceedings of the legal challenge to Proposition 8, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, public. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cameras could be barred from the trial. Matisse Bustos Hawkes May 15, 2010
Introducing the New WITNESS Blog Welcome to the new WITNESS blog! As an organization, we've been blogging for about five years now, but now you can find it all in one place. Matisse Bustos Hawkes May 12, 2010
LGBT Rights in Africa: Uganda I'm the IT coordinator here and will occasionally blog about issues relating to tech inside a non-profit organization that uses technology all the time. I am also going to be sharing thoughts about human rights issues that are of personal import. WITNESS April 28, 2010
Google unmuzzles itself in China Google has received brickbats a-plenty for its stance in China, where, in order to be permitted to operate by the Chinese government, the search company agreed to censor particular "sensitive" search results - Tiananmen, Dalai Lama, democracy, human rights, and so on. WITNESS January 13, 2010
Looking Back at 2 Years of the Hub – Top 10 Most Read Blog Posts December 2009 marks the Hub's official two-year anniversary and we're looking back at the most popular videos, issues, campaigns, and blog posts since our launch. Priscila Néri December 22, 2009
Looking Back at 2 Years of the Hub – Top 10 Most Mentioned Issues December 2009 marks the Hub's official two-year anniversary and we're looking back at the most popular videos, issues, campaigns, and blog posts since our launch. Priscila Néri December 22, 2009
Looking Back at 2 Years of the Hub – 10 Editor’s Picks NOTE: As part of my job here at WITNESS, I have watched more than 2,000 videos on the Hub alone since I joined the team in mid-2008. Different videos have stuck with me for different reasons – some visceral, others more rational. Selecting just ten of these – and you’ll see I also snuck in […] Priscila Néri December 22, 2009
Guest post: Eric Tars' Latest Dispatch from Geneva Eric Tars is a staff attorney at the National Law Center for Homelessness and Poverty (NLCHP), which works to prevent and end homelessness by serving as the legal arm of the US movement to end homelessness. Tars is in Geneva for the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). […] WITNESS February 22, 2008
Kenya in crisis: a search for citizen cameras… The crisis in Kenya may ultimately stem from a democratic failure, corruption and tribalism, or poverty and inequality, but either way, evidence of brutal violence continues to emerge, both in terms of killings and of violence against women and girls, and there’s news of an impending health crisis. For a quick tour d’horizon, including ways […] WITNESS January 10, 2008
Egypt videos back up at the Hub As I mentioned in my last post, a number of the Egypt police brutality videos at the Hub had been embedded from Wael Abbas’ YouTube account. When his account was suspended, these videos on the Hub (and everywhere else they were embedded) stopped playing. We’ve now managed to restore some of the key videos, and […] WITNESS December 2, 2007
Wael Abbas’ YouTube channel suspended [UPDATED – 29 Nov 07] News just in from Hossam El-Hamalawy…: I’ve just received the following message from blogger and friend Wael Abbas… disaster: youtube disables my account claiming there were complaints about my police torture videos!!! This is un-bloody-believable. YouTube has just disabled probably the most important channel for the Egyptian blogosphere. Wael’s videos have been central in the […] WITNESS November 22, 2007
Fair use in UGC / Legal threats database The Citizen Media Law Project has come out with two excellent resources in the last week, both of which are going to be tools for the Hub: 1. “A report entitled “Fair Use Principles for User Generated Video Content” that sets out six guidelines designed to minimize the collateral damage that copyright enforcement efforts may […] WITNESS November 7, 2007
Amnesty International UK: Censorship ‘changes face of net’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6724531.stm From the BBC News: Amnesty International has warned that the internet “could change beyond all recognition” unless action is taken against the erosion of online freedoms. he warning comes ahead of a conference organised by Amnesty, where victims of repression will outline their plights. The “virus of internet repression” has spread from a handful […] WITNESS June 7, 2007