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Citizen Video and Togo’s Elections
Tomorrow, after multiple delays, months of protests, and the threat of a boycott, citizens in Togo will take their discontent to the polls as they vote in legislative elections. Citizen witnesses are filming the lead up and results.
WITNESS
July 24, 2013
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In Focus: Iran’s 2013 Presidential Election
Despite technical challenges and government surveillance, Iranians are determined to share with the world videos expressing dissent and frustration during the presidential election cycle.
Matisse Bustos Hawkes
June 14, 2013
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New Laws Threaten To Restrict Filming of Police Actions Worldwide
Social upheaval is surging through the world--protests against economic protests rock Europe, protests against politics boil in the Middle East. Governments are responding with new laws to suppress citizens' right to film police. Will they succeed?
WITNESS
February 4, 2013
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Personal Reflection on Human Rights Values and the Anti-Muslim Video
I'd like to share my views on the recent events as a human rights advocate who has used/is using video for human rights change - particularly recently in North Africa and the Middle East; as an African; and as a Christian.
WITNESS
September 19, 2012
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You Are Being Watched: What Faceprints Mean for Generation Y
On July 18, YouTube launched a new tool that would enable users to blur the faces in the videos they uploaded, thereby protecting the identities of people featured in them. The platform explicitly identified the human rights threat as a primary motivator for this online technological development.
WITNESS
August 21, 2012
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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.
Sam Gregory
July 18, 2012
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Why Global Organizations Are Joining the SOPA Blackout Strike
At Global Voices, we understand that we, collectively, are the Internet. Our individual participation is what makes the Internet a global conversation of startling depth and variety, but this is possible only because of its open technical and legal structure.
WITNESS
January 18, 2012
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Cameras, Livestreaming and Activism at Occupy Wall Street
Walking through the city of tents at Liberty Plaza, home of Occupy Wall Street, it is immediately striking how many cameras there are floating about. Pointing this out, filmmaker and member of the media working group, who goes by the name of Fix, jokes with me that it sometimes feels like Liberty Plaza is an “occupied surveillance machine.”
WITNESS
November 8, 2011
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The Rise in Tibetan Video Activism
By Dechen Pemba. Dechen, a UK born Tibetan, is spokesperson for Filming for Tibet, a non-profit organization supporting Tibetan filmmakers, and has been closely involved with “Leaving Fear Behind” since 2007. She is also is the editor of the website High Peaks Pure Earth that monitors the Tibetan blogosphere and translates Tibetan blogs into English. Leaving […]
WITNESS
October 28, 2011
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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.
Sam Gregory
October 24, 2011
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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.
WITNESS
October 18, 2011
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Cambodian Government Attempts to Silence Work on Forced Evictions
International non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have written to 35 foreign ministries to review donor aid if the Government of Cambodia passes a law severely restricting the activities of NGOs in the country.
WITNESS
September 1, 2011
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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.
Sam Gregory
February 16, 2011
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Re-Stalinization and revisionism in Russia
Last week Russian historian Mikhail Suprun was arrested by Russia's FSB security service for - as Truthdig put it - daring to study Russian history; more specifically, Stalin's gulags. Suprun's archives were confiscated; a police official who provided access to archive documents about gulag victims was also arrested. Suprun faces up to four years in jail if convicted.
WITNESS
October 20, 2009
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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
