- New Report Makes Recommendations for How to Enhance Potential of Human Rights Video I'm pleased to announce the launch of our new report: "Cameras Everywhere: Current Challenges and Opportunities at the Intersection of Human Rights, Video and Technology." You can read and download it on our website.
- Did Citizen Media Help Get Us the Story That Counts in the London Riots? Almost as soon as riots exploded in the streets of London two weeks ago - indirectly sparked by protests over the shooting of 29 year old Mark Duggan – hundreds of videos and photos capturing the violence became available online. For days every major news outlet in the UK gave center stage to citizen-shot content, inviting people to send in their photos and videos to be published online.
- In the News: Authenticating Video Footage as Evidence in Sri Lanka Over the past two years, mobile phone footage of alleged human rights violations in Sri Lanka has been at the center of a conversation regarding the evidentiary value of amateur video.
- Ahmad Bayasi’s Story: Citizen Video Authentication in Syria and Beyond When a video was posted online in April showing Syrian protesters being brutally beaten by security forces in the town of Bayda, the Syrian authorities quickly responded on state TV. First they said the footage was fake; they then alleged that the video had been filmed not in Syria but in northern Iraq, and depicted the abuse of prisoners by American marines.
- Crowd-Sourcing Surveillance: When Does Little Brother Get Too Big? 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.
- ObscuraCam v1: A Mobile App for Visual Privacy Last week we, along with our our friends and colleagues at the Guardian Project, released the first public beta app from the SecureSmartCam project. ObscuraCam, an Android camera phone application is the result of a 7 month long collaboration between WITNESS and The Guardian Project.
- Take Action For Internet Access and Digital Rights at the e-G8! Tomorrow, the French Presidency will host a meeting - the e-G8 Forum - focusing exclusively on shaping the agenda of the forthcoming G8 Summit around key global Internet policy issues. This will be the first time that the Internet's role in society and the economy is explicitly on the G8 agenda.
- Watch: Cameras Everywhere – Presentation at Re:Publica 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?
- The Secure Smart Camera App for Human Rights Video Earlier this year we announced our “Cameras Everywhere” initiative which hopes to address some of the changes happening around human rights video online and on mobile phones. The tools for creating and distributing video are becoming more wide spread and more accessible.
- Human Rights Video, Privacy and Visual Anonymity in the Facebook Age The successful nationwide organizing and subsequent protests in Egypt to oust the 30-year regime of President Hosni Mubarak have in part been facilitated by Facebook. But as media and technology commentators and human rights activists alike are noting, using Facebook for activism is fraught with risks.
- Our Responsibility To ‘Bear Witness’ Today is justifiably a day of euphoria for many Egyptians following the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, and for many people around the world (myself included) who have been following events in Cairo, Alexandria and across Egypt on Twitter, via the continuous coverage of Al-Jazeera English, via the nightly news in many countries (with some conspicious exceptions) and through videos on YouTube.
- Reflecting in the moment on Egypt and ‘video for change’ From the moment WITNESS was founded our vision has been to tap into the power of the video camera in the hands of everyone who wants to expose injustice and create positive change, from human rights defenders to committed citizens.
- Cameras Everywhere: Our New Leadership Initiative 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.
- The Ethical Engagements of Human Rights Social Media The explosion of digital media on human rights pushes us all to rethink how documentary film ethics apply in a more networked, social media-driven era.
