- Last Month in Video: August When WITNESS was founded in 1992, we wanted to get cameras in people’s hands. This wasn’t an easy task- at the time, cameras weren’t in every household, they weren’t cheap, and it wasn’t instinctive for people to reach for their camera. Now, video is everywhere, and it’s being made by everyone with a cell phone. […]
- Vital Human Rights Evidence in Syria is Disappearing from YouTube Thousands of videos showing human rights abuses in Syria, as well as the channels that feature these videos, are being removed by YouTube.
- Introducing YouTube’s Updated Blurring Feature From Syria to Charlottesville, it’s not a safe time to be a human rights defender. It’s not a safe time to be associated with the fight for human rights at all. But fighting for human rights has never been “safe.” It has always been necessary. And the dedication of activists makes it clear that even […]
- How to Use YouTube’s New Blurring Feature to Protect Identities YouTube's blurring function allows users to blur select items such as faces or identifying information. In this post we will show you how to use the tool.
- Secure Tools for Activists: When to Make Designs and When to Make Demands What tech tools should human rights defenders use when balancing efficacy and safety - open source secure tools or insecure mainstream platforms? Morgan Hargrave unpacks the pros and cons of each and discusses the WITNESS strategy.
- How An Eyewitness Mode Helps Activists (and Others) Be Trusted Individuals and social networks can both benefit from functionality that would allow video uploaders to add metadata, enhancing the trustworthiness of their media.
- The Images of the Syrian War that Were Never Supposed to Be In the two and a half years Syria has been engulfed in war, numerous voices have tried to compel the world to take notice and take action. But the message that caught the world’s attention came not from any political leader or organization. It came by way of YouTube.
- Sending Videos Safely through the Wild, Wild, Web From YouTube to FTP, and Dropbox to Google Drive, online services have very different ways of transferring files. Which ones are safest for your videos?
- Video Advocacy at a Crossroads: 2012’s Dangers & 2013’s Solutions Video is increasingly at the nexus of opportunity and danger for human rights activists. Video helps activists to document, confront, circumvent, and lobby against oppressive authorities—but it also allows those authorities to stalk them. Here's what we think will happen in 2013.
- From Syria to Burma: 2012 in Citizen Human Rights Video Only six words accompany the video. But they are just enough background needed for the one minute and seven seconds it depicts: “ROHINGYA MUSLIM VILLAGE IN ANDI VILLAGE 2.”
- Is it Authentic? When Citizens and Soldiers Document War On November 1, a particular video caught not only our attention at the Human Rights Channel, but also that of international observers, news outlets, and criminal prosecutors. It’s the type of video whose images have altered the discussion of the Syrian conflict, and may also revolutionize the role of citizen video in times of war.
- Anatomy of a Bombing in Syria For many people outside Syria’s borders, shelling and bombings are concepts. They’re terrible and tragic, to be sure, but they remain hard to fathom as long as they remain unseen. That's why the Anatomy of a Bombing, our most recent playlist on the Human Rights Channel, is particularly arresting.
- In Depth on the Human Rights Channel: The Lonmin Mine Massacre In recent months, we’ve maintained video feeds for citizen journalism from Syria and worldwide. We’ve published in-depth playlists on topics ranging from the recent anti-American protests, to the persecution of the Rohingya minority in Burma, to the Mexican #YoSoy132 electoral protest movement.
- Transforming Human Rights Reporting: Merging Mainstream News and Citizen Content Human rights issues were never easily portrayed or understood in conventional news paradigms. Few news agencies can allocate sufficient resources to effectively depict these ongoing complex issues. Even with substantial budgets and protection, journalists often face life-threatening risks while reporting these stories.
- 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.
