- Archivists’ Victory over Overbroad Copyright Claim A joint statement from Human Rights Watch, Mnemonic, and WITNESS, with lead authoring by Deborah Brown, Senior Researcher and Advocate on Digital Rights, and Gabriela Ivens, Head of Open Source Research, at Human Rights Watch. November 25, 2020 A decision by GitHub, a leading software development platform, to reinstate a popular free software tool for downloading videos, […]
- Tweet Chat: Archiving For Human Rights For Archives Month 2020, WITNESS Africa hosted a Twitter chat on archiving for the promotion and protection of human rights. In the chat, pertinent questions regarding the importance, practicalities and challenges to human rights archiving were put to Ayanda K of VIDERE and Yvonne Ng of WITNESS. Here is a recap of the chat on […]
- YOUTH V GOV: A Beacon of Hope YOUTH v GOV, a transformative film directed by former WITNESS partner Christi Cooper about the unparalleled work of another former partner, Our Children’s Trust, premieres at the prestigious DOC NYC Film Festival from November 11-19, 2020. Tickets can be purchased here. The next chance to watch this must-see film won’t be until 2021 so don’t […]
- The Adobe Content Authenticity Initiative approach to authenticity infrastructure against media manipulation Launch of the Content Authenticity Initiative White Paper Today the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) spearheaded by Adobe, Twitter and the New York Times publishes its White Paper. WITNESS is a co-author on the paper and has been part of the Working Group developing the standards alongside other groups including TruePic, Microsoft, the BBC, CBC and […]
- WITNESS joins 14 organizations to urge GIFCT to respect human rights WITNESS and 14 other organizations have joined together to send a public letter to the newly appointed Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) Executive Director Nicholas Rasmussen to apprise him of threats to human rights posed by GIFCT. Many of us have been warning companies and lawmakers about these issues for years. WITNESS is […]
- WITNESS at RightsCon Online 2020 Under the entwined and inflamed injustices that the world is facing (including a pandemic, authoritarianism, corporate exploitation of resources and privacy, racial capitalism, surveillance and the suppression of dissent), it is vital to have spaces that foster innovative resistance. RightsCon has long met this need. This annual gathering centers around the ever-changing role of […]
- Want to Record The Cops? Know Your Rights While not any sort of panacea for police violence, videos of police officers in the US killing unarmed Black men like George Floyd, Oscar Grant and Eric Garner have undeniably been an essential part of the conversation around racist, brutal policing in the United States. Police violence is a much longer lasting pandemic than COVID-19, […]
- COVID-19 Misinformation and Disinformation Responses: Sorting the Good from the Bad —May 2020: Sam Gregory, Dia Kayyali, Corin Faife. Last updated: 5/29 In this blog post we give an overview of some of the key trends in platform response to misinformation, disinformation and harmful speech during COVID-19, and develop a set of criteria through which the wide range of possible reactions can be assessed, using a framework […]
- 4 new resources to help activists use video during COVID19 Filming and sharing documentation for human rights can expose injustices, put a spotlight on stories rarely heard, and create movements that hold perpetrators and decision-makers accountable. But if advocating for accountability is dangerous on a normal day, even more so during a global pandemic. This is why the WITNESS team is devoted to working with […]
- Tracing trust: Why we must build authenticity infrastructure that works for all May 2020 TLDR: Coronavirus has dramatically increased the stakes for how we deal with issues of manipulated, fake and deceptive video and audio online, with governments, companies and publics responding to the need to discern truth from falsehood. One solution to misinformation and disinformation is to better track what is authentic, what is manipulated and […]
- What’s needed in deepfakes detection? April 2020 Misinformation and disinformation are a critical problem for societies worldwide. In response, WITNESS’s work addressing new forms of media manipulation such as deepfakes and synthetic media is focused on preparing better, and advancina a more global, human rights-lead approach to these emerging threats. Learning from previous and current mis/disinformation challenges, where critical impacted […]
- The Right to Record for human rights during COVID-19 When WITNESS says the Right to Record, we are referring to the ability to pick up a camera or cell phone and film the police or military without retaliation. We are also talking about the initiative, commitment, attitude, and courage that it takes to exercise that right, and the organizing communities do to make this […]
- WITNESS joins 75 experts calling for platforms to preserve data about takedowns during COVID-19 The importance of accurate information during this pandemic is clear. But knowledge about the novel coronavirus is rapidly evolving. This is also an unprecedented opportunity to study how online information flows ultimately affect health outcomes, and to evaluate the macro- and micro-level consequences of relying on automation to moderate content in a complex and evolving […]
- Camera Justitia: Bringing Human Rights, Law and Film Together Every spring a large gathering of human rights defenders and filmmakers come together for the Movies that Matters Film Festival. While this year’s festival had to move online, the celebration of the selected ground-breaking films moved forward. As part of the festival, an international jury awards one filmmaker with the Camera Justitia Award and €5,000 […]
- Using Video to Protect Human Rights During Covid-19 On January 24, Chen Qiushi stood in Wuhan, the center of the Covid-19 outbreak in China, and spoke into his camera: “This epidemic happened because the State covered up the truth and facts”, reported the human rights lawyer and activist. “Through my camera, I want to deliver the voices of Wuhan to the world. If […]
