As AI becomes more sophisticated and its techniques more accessible, how can organizations across technology, media, civil society, and the academic research community work together to coordinate strategies around the emergent threat of AI-generated mis/disinformation?

The workshop in London intended to:

• Connect news and media organizations, key technology companies, researchers, and others,
• Facilitate better understanding of the threats organizations currently face and will face in the future,
• Promote development of potential solutions to those threats, and how these relate to existing technical and journalistic approaches as well as the global contexts of mis/disinformation,
• Enable identification of tactics for better communication/coordination between participants, and
• Allow participants to work together on the prolonged, positive development of AI in the context of mis/disinformation.

The full post, co-authored by WITNESS Program Director Sam Gregory, is available here.

At WITNESS, we work on ways to prepare for the challenges of emerging threats such as “deepfakes” and synthetic media. Recently, we published a report on how we can work together to detect artificial intelligence-manipulated media. Click here to learn more about WITNESS’ special initiative focused on the impact of these emerging threats.

This year we’re proposing the panel, “Deepfakes: What Should We Fear, What Can We Do,” led by our Program Director Sam Gregory to discuss questions surrounding deepfakes and synthetic media, how they can be used maliciously, and how we can detect and stop them.

More about the panel:

Sound interesting? Want to hear from WITNESS in Austin? Then please cast your vote for Deepfakes: What Should We Fear, What Can We Do here!

You can login or create a free account and vote here: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/79478

By the time the next SXSW rolls around, we’ll be over a year into the dangerous impact of this administration on human rights in the USA, and growing authoritarianism around the world. Our meet up will explore what we can learn from each other about how citizen journalism and civic witnessing using our smartphones can best challenge injustice, hate, dangerous populism and authoritarianism, in the US and internationally. 

Help us get the word out for collaborators by sharing! Voting closes Friday, August 25 (11:59 PM CT).

The Emerging World of Virtual Reality and Human Rights

Virtual Reality (VR) is an expanding arena for immersive and interactive video content. Creators are exploring ways to project participants into new worlds and experiences, and a growing number of these are focused on human rights. A variety of backers such as the New York Times, Google, Facebook and the United Nations are working to develop and expand our use of the technology. Questions about how best to use VR, and it’s ability to impact human rights situations, are hotly debated – particularly as VR’s unique approach to audience experience, raises new issues over legitimacy and responsibility. Creators differ over how far to push audiences’ boundaries, for what impact, and with what design model. Opinions about these questions are ever-changing within the field. Join us for a panel discussion with creators, journalists, and human rights experts to discuss this exciting and evolving intersection of VR and human rights.

Panelists include Sam Gregory, Program Director at WITNESS, Francesca Panetta, Special Projects Editor at The Guardian and Lina Srivastava, Founder, CIEL.

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We’re also supporting HRWIFF’s presentation of 6×9: An immersive experience of Solitary Confinement – a groundbreaking VR piece that explores solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. This special exhibit, co-created by The Guardian and The Mill, will be available to festival visitors every day 7:30-9:30pm June 10-19, 2016 in the lobby of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Read Theater.

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If you can’t be in NYC, join the conversation online by tweeting us at @witnessorg and Sam at @samgregory and using #HRWFF and #video4change.

Featured image courtesy of HRWFF.

WITNESS will again be participating in the three-day convening, and ensuring that issues surrounding video are included in broader dialogue concerning how today’s digital systems impact human rights defenders. Part of our involvement will be contributing to panel discussions and presentations. The full schedule can be found here and descriptions of WITNESS’ participation is below:

The Promise Video: Documenters, Technology & Accountability
Wednesday March 30th, 12:00pm – 1:15pm
Panel: Yvette Alberdingk Thijm  (WITNESS, Executive Director), Alexa Koenig, Christoph Koettl, Linda Walter
Description: Thanks to the global proliferation of inexpensive mobile devices, video captured by citizens and on-the-ground human rights activists can be instrumental in drawing attention to human rights violations. But many of these frontline documenters want their videos to do more. They have the underlying expectation that footage exposing abuse can advance investigations of human rights and international crimes and bring about justice and accountability. And it can.

In many situations, these citizens and activists are better positioned to collect evidence of human rights abuse than professional investigators because investigators almost always arrive after-the-fact when evidence has deteriorated or is gone. However, the quality of citizen video and other content rarely passes the higher bar needed to function as evidence in a court of law.

This panel brings experts together to examine the importance of the game-changing role that frontline documenters are playing in transforming the fields of justice and accountability as well as the concrete steps they can implement to capture, organize, and manage the rich information they collect via video cameras in the field. In turn, this will ensure investigators and lawyers have better evidence to successfully hold those most responsible for crimes, systemic discrimination, and mass atrocities accountable.

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The Visual Communication Explosion Online: Where do Human Rights and Human Rights Users Fit?
Thursday, March 31st, 10:30am – 11:45am
Panel: Sam Gregory (WITNESS, Program Director), Amanda Conway, Munya Dodo,Mona Kareem, Julie Nelson 
Description: YouTube, Facebook and Twitter native video, Snapchat, Periscope and Meerkat…. More and more online and digital tools are becoming photo and video centric. This past year we saw the rise of ephemeral photo and video, live video, and the beginnings of VR. These are increasingly being used by both the ordinary citizen as a tool for free expression and the human rights defender from Ferguson to Rio to the conflict areas of Syria, as well as by perpetrators from ISIS to far-right extremists. How do we consider the particular human rights usages, human rights challenges and human rights value implications of visual media tools ranging from Snapchat, Facebook, Periscope to YouTube?

What are the particular censorship, surveillance and free speech concerns around video and photo tools and products? What are new approaches to how contentious visual content be best handled? How should live video content be handled? What are the particular anonymity concerns around visual media and how should issues of visual anonymity be handled? What does anonymity look like in a video­-mediated world, and how can privacy by design and user­-centric options help enhance this? Where does facial recognition fit in this map? When these visual technologies intersect with potentially ubiquitous wearables and enhanced sensors what are the rights implications and the human rights usages and pitfalls? What are the pros and cons from a human rights perspective of metadata-­rich images and video? What are the human rights and consent implications of live video, and wearable-­mediated live video?

We’ll have a focused, candid conversation on how we handle these issues.

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Witnessing Police Violence On and Off the Internet
Thursday, March 31st, 12:00-1:00pm
Panel: Morgan Hargrave (WITNESS, Systems Change Coordinator), Malkia Cyril, Taina Vargas
Description: In case after case, video footage is exposing police abuse to wider audiences but not always delivering justice, and questions about the effectiveness and ethics of those images and the ways in which we share them are only gaining importance. This panel will look at the tools+platforms that people use to document police violence, the ways in which witnesses and police are sharing footage, and how we can better make an impact. Participants will discuss the ways tech and media can overcome obstacles to justice, how to protect the rights of those on both sides of the lens, and the coming challenges for online organizing towards police accountability in the US and abroad. Beyond eyewitness media, we will also address the privacy, access, technology, and accountability issues tied to the most prevalent policy response to date: body­worn cameras.

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Mobil-Eyes Us: Using Live Video and the Power of Networks for Smart Activism
Thursday, March 31st 4:00-5:00pm
Lightening Talk Speaker: Sam Gregory (WITNESS, Program Director)
Description: ‘Mobil-Eyes Us’ uses the power of live mobile video to connect you to direct experience of causes you care about, and then use disruptive tools from the collaboration economy to provide you meaningful ways you can act by doing what you do best. We know that millions of people globally take actions for issues they care about – but frequently their only option is a click to donate or sign a petition. Often they don’t feel connected to the issues or the actions ­and usually the available actions are also not a good use of their skills, leverage or capacity. What if we could create a ‘witnessing’ corps of people ready to tune in live? What if, using live video, we could bring supporters into a human rights or other social justice situation at the right time to fully experience the reality? And then ask them to use their unique skills, leverage, or networks to take action – for example to deter illegal violence by their group presence, to rapidly share a stream or invite others to act as well, or to provide direct legal guidance? Through an effective integration of technologies with storytelling and movement­-building, we are building out prototypes and doing pilots to help people feel more experientially connected to causes they care about and then take actions that matter. Join us!

The Columbia Journalism Review reported on the panel:

Viewers have more opportunities—some of them unavoidable—to stumble onto graphic content. This shift demands serious attention from news organizations. That’s compounded by the potential for psychological harm to journalists, whose jobs require them to work, sometimes extensively, with traumatic material. The answers aren’t simple, but the problems are clear.

CJR recapped comments from the four panel experts and concluded with Sam’s comments:

People who are not professional journalists upload much of this content, Gregory says. It’s unmediated and free to stream across the internet. A major problem arises when these images jump outside  their original context. Not only does that practice open the door to resharing false information, but it transports graphic material that had a specific purpose: to energize, enrage, or educate a particular community. “We see it in front of us, and we’re like, ‘Wow, that is horrendous,’ and often we’re missing the context around it,” he says. “I think that’s part of why we’re feeling confronted now.”

Read more about WITNESS’ perspective on when and how to share graphic imagery and how to contextualize it.

For journalists and human rights advocates, check out our new resource “Ethical Guidelines: Using Eyewitness Videos in Human Rights Reporting & Advocacy.”

Featured image via CJR.

In July 2015, Program Director Sam Gregory was interviewed by Mexican newspaper Prensa Reforma on documenting human rights abuses using video. The interviewed followed the second Video4Change convening in Mexico City. Sam also discussed the importance of the right to film, how to document protest situations, and how video can be used as evidence.

You can read the full story in Spanish here.

In August, WITNESS Latin America consultant Indira Cornelio appeared on RompeViento, an online television station, to discuss citizen journalism. Indira highlighted the recent Video4Change Latin America convening and how WITNESS engages with activists to help them maximize the use of video on their work.

Indira Cornelio (front right) on RompeViento.

The full video broadcast in Spanish is available here.

And finally, Madeleine Bair, Program Manager for the WITNESS Media Lab was featured in the “Buena Gente” (good people) section of El Diario-La Prensa in New York City. Bair highlighted WITNESS’ work on police violence in the United States and how bystander video can impact the justice process.

Read the full article in Spanish.

Featured image: Madeleine Bair at work via El Diario-La Prensa

This year we’re proposing the panel, Live! Camera! Action!: Livestreaming That Matters, to discuss questions surrounding the use of livestreaming for good. More about the panel:

Sound interesting? Want to hear from WITNESS in Austin? Then please cast your vote for Live! Camera! Action!: Livestreaming That Matters here: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/48906

Live video technology is one of the most recent innovations making waves in the human rights world, as highlighted by Program Director Sam Gregory in his recent WIRED magazine article, How We Can Use Livestreaming Apps to Promote Justice.  The piece analyzes how mobile livestreaming is changing the very nature of human rights witnessing. As with any technology, Sam argues, there are still many unknowns and challenges, but there are also overwhelming possibilities for livestreaming apps to aid human rights defenders.

Live video takes many of the possibilities of recorded video and accentuates them. It pulls in and engages a distant audience with the visceral experience of what is happening on the ground—and makes it much more tangible because it is “now.” It makes us all, even if we are not in the same physical space, direct witnesses to rights violations.

See the full WIRED article here.

WITNESS’ Program Manager for Asia and the Pacific, Arul Prakkash (Prakkash), travelled to the Philippines to attend RightsCon 2015 along with Program Director Sam Gregory.  While in Manila, Prakkash also took part in the Responsible Data Forum, an event that brought together human rights defenders, technicians, and front-line activists to discuss human rights documentation. Additionally, Prakkash met with local groups and NGOs to WITNESS materials and lead short workshops. Despite the city traffic and his tight schedule, Prakkash was able to make the most of his ten days in Manila!

Following his time in the Philippines, Sam Gregory journeyed to Sweden in early April to participate in Defender Days, an annual event put on by Civil Rights Defenders. The event was attended by over 150 European human rights defenders and 160 human rights defenders from outside of Europe. Sam led sessions on video advocacy, video as evidence, and video verification. Check out a Storify from the conference below.

Meanwhile, Jackie Zammuto, WITNESS Engagement Coordinator, rocked it at The University of Texas at Austin.  Jackie conducted a workshop titled, “From Brazil to Ferguson: Using Video to Support Human Rights Advocacy”, and participated in a panel hosted but the Department of Eurasian and Slavic Studies, titled “Social Media + The Dynamics of Dissent.” The panel discussed the role of social media in recent conflicts and revolutions throughout the world including in Ukraine, Russia, Brazil and the Arab Spring. Upon her return to New York, Jackie held training sessions for youth, tailored to address concerns and needs of young people who want to learn about engaging in activism safely and effectively.

Stay tuned for more WITNESS updates from around the world!