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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.
Morgan Hargrave
November 18, 2014
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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.
Sam Gregory
March 3, 2014
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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.
WITNESS
September 16, 2013
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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?
Yvonne Ng
May 9, 2013
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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.
WITNESS
January 22, 2013
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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.”
WITNESS
December 28, 2012
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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.
WITNESS
November 20, 2012
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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.
WITNESS
October 3, 2012
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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.
WITNESS
September 21, 2012
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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.
WITNESS
September 5, 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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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.
WITNESS
August 7, 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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WITNESS and Storyful Announce New YouTube Channel For Human Rights
WITNESS is pleased to announce The Human Rights Channel, a new channel on YouTube. In collaboration with Storyful, the channel is a platform to tell breaking stories through the lenses of citizen journalists that will change the way we view, share and engage human rights video.
Sam Gregory
May 24, 2012
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Video for Change Best Practices: Sharing and Uploading Human Rights Videos
Regardless if you are uploading unedited or edited footage, it is essential to provide the following information so your footage can be found and coordinated with other footage.
WITNESS
April 10, 2012
