- Front Page News: Why We Can All Benefit from Tools to Verify Video What if our devices could capture and store more information in our media? What if we could help media makers make their material trustworthy? WITNESS is excited to announce that we are very close to launching a beta version of InformaCam for testing!
- Tips for Activists Using the YouTube Face Blur Tool Recently, YouTube launched a feature that allows blurring on videos uploaded to their site. It's a step we've pushed for from the commercial video-sharing platforms and social networks - as a way to enable easy, faster, more accessible options for preserving and enabling visual anonymity in a networked, visual age.
- Visual Anonymity and YouTube’s New Blurring Tool Today YouTube announced a new tool within their upload editor that enables people to blur the faces within the video, and then publish a version with blurred faces.
- Whose Media Is It?: How Police Requests for Unreleased Footage Blur the Line Between News and Evidence A near 6-month battle between British news broadcasters and the police has recently concluded: last December’s court decision that ordered television companies including BBC, ITN, and Sky News to surrender to police hours of unaired footage from the violent October 19th Dale Farm eviction, was thrown out. Journalists are now hailing the decision as a landmark victory in the fight for news neutrality and confidentiality.
- Are News Photography Standards Out of Touch With the Cameras Everywhere World We Inhabit? A growing global trend of employing facial recognition technologies (FRTs) has increased risks of compromising the privacy and safety of anyone filmed or photographed, especially in countries with repressive governments.
- Thoughts and Reactions on The Atlantic Philanthropies’ Report on Funding Trends in Human Rights and International Justice Many of our donors and peers have been asking for the WITNESS take on the report, “Human Rights and International Justice: Opportunities and Challenges at an Inflection Point,” commissioned by The Atlantic Philanthropies and written by Jonathan Fanton and Zachary Katznelson.
- Introducing InformaCam, The Next Release of the SecureSmartCam Project Recently my colleague at The Guardian Project, Harlo Holmes wrote about the InformCam, the latest release from the joint collaboration between The Guardian Project and WITNESS, the SecureSmartCamera (SSC). This is an important development in the project as it incorporates all of the key themes in the WITNESS Leadership Initiative.
- Amy Robbins: Join Me In Supporting WITNESS For the Next 20 Years As WITNESS celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, I wanted to write a brief note to describe why I support this outstanding, and vital organization. I know many of you reading this share my view because you, too, strongly support WITNESS’s efforts.
- A Few Reasons Activsts Shouldn’t be Banned from the Internet Last month on Human Rights Day (December 10th) I wrote an opinion piece for the HuffingtonPost about the increasingly important role technology companies and platforms are playing in the human rights landscape.
- U.S. Needs Strong Privacy Protections for Digital Communications 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.
- Promoting Cameras Everywhere Recommendations at RightsCon and Stanford University This week, WITNESS is busy in the Bay Area of California where we'll be at multiple public meetings discussing ideas in our Cameras Everywhere leadership initiative. We're speaking on a panel at the first Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference, attending the first advisory board meeting of the exciting new EngineRoom initiative, and we're presenting at Stanford University's Liberation Technology Seminar on the "Cameras Everywhere" report and the tools we're developing in WITNESS Labs.
- Setting a Global Standard for Human Rights and Technology Companies In a world with more than five billion mobile phone subscribers and where 48 hours of video footage is being uploaded to YouTube every minute, the challenges navigating the nexus of human rights and technology are too complicated for any single company or human rights activist to manage on their own.
- Yahoo! and YouTube Share Learning on Business Practices to Protect Human Rights Content Online The latest in the Carnegie Council’s lunchtime workshops for Ethics in Business took place on Tuesday, September 20, 2011 in New York and brought together a range of business stakeholders to discuss the unique challenges that currently face the ICT sector.
- How Funders Can Support Technology for Human Rights and the Activists Using It Sameer Padania, the lead author/researcher of our "Cameras Everywhere" report spoke recently at "The Power of Information" conference in London, organized by the Indigo Trust, the Institute for Philanthropy and the Omidyar Network.
- #Video4change Weekly Digest: Sept. 9, 2011 It's been an exciting week here at WITNESS. We released our "Cameras Everywhere" report and many of us have been sharing it and we're looking forward to discussion to come. The report surveys the current landscape of human rights, video and technology and makes recommendations to a variety of players in that landscape from technology companies to policy makers and civil society organizations.
