Here’s a line up of where we’ll be:

Friday, June 16, 11:00am – 12:30pm

“Facebook warfare: sharing stories, staying safe”
This lunchtime meetup will provide space for participants to learn from real-world, publicly known cases, such as:

• The doxing, surveillance of, and threats against anti-fascist activists in the United States;
• The recent case of a trans comic book artist who was forced to relocate and cancel a book launch in Canada following doxing and threats.
• The 2016 case of a Brazilian Army officer who infiltrated a group of activists on Tinder and Facebook; and

The 2015 case of a fake Facebook page used to endanger Maré Vive, a group of community activists standing up to police and military violence in the Maré community of Rio.

In this informal session, Dia Kayyali will talk about how doxing and threats to physical safety, as well as other forms of harassment and surveillance, are being leveraged by the “alt-right” and the government. We’ll use this background, which will include case studies from the US and Brazil, to brainstorm community security practices, both digital and physical. Participants will leave with a knowledge of these tactics and ways to make their own community safer.

State Hall: Room 1215
Hands-on Session

• Track Securing Our Spaces
• Audience Intermediate
• Hashtag #CommunitySecurity
• View Track Info Securing Our Spaces

Friday, June 16, 4:00 – 5:30pm

“Video for Revolution”
The whole WITNESS team at AMC, including Pali, Jackie, and Dia, will be adding to the conference’s hands-on offerings with this panel. This session will help participants create videos for advocacy and evidence. We’ll be providing exercises and materials, so come ready to participate and learn!

From the Arab Spring to Ferguson, video has amplified voices and exposed human rights abuses. This session will explore how we utilize video for revolution. We’ll facilitate a discussion on how activists around the world are using video now, and provide practical tips on the right to record, filming the police and protests, basic digital and physical security, and media preservation. Participants will walk away knowing how to safely, ethically and effectively use video for evidence and advocacy.

State Hall: Room 118
Hands-on Session

• Track General
• Audience Everyone
• Hashtag #VideoForChange

Sunday, June 18, 1:00 – 2:30pm

Dia will also be participating in “Collaborative Security.” This panel, organized by digital security trainer Sarah Aoun, is an iteration of a similar session that happened at the Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia, Spain. This panel brought together digital security trainers with experience working outside the US and Europe but often dealing with security resources created from those perspectives. At AMC, we’ll be talking about similar issues of “security colonialism,” including the failure of digital security to integrate physical security issues.

Security education should ideally be a collaboration between people with technical knowledge and those with lived experiences. This isn’t often the case. The reality is that cis, male, white trainers continue to train folks who couldn’t be more different from them. We will learn how to re-center security trainings around communities, empower movements, and adopt a participatory approach to digital safety.

State Hall: Room 125
Strategy Session

• Track Securing Our Spaces
• Audience Intermediate
• Hashtag #CollabSecurity
• View Track Info Securing Our Spaces

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!

Happily, WITNESS was one of five nonprofits chosen, and the result, Eyes on the Ground, is now online. It begins like so:

With recent uprisings in Ferguson, Missouri, and the ongoing fighting in the Middle East, citizen-captured footage has become a vital part of conflict coverage in the media. Videos filmed by ordinary people on the front lines flood social media and video sharing services, including YouTube, where 100 hours of new footage is uploaded every minute.

That, of course, is where WITNESS comes in. Take Ferguson, for instance.

In August, as protesters in Ferguson, Missouri met disproportionate police power, Jackie Zammuto, WITNESS’ Digital Engagement Coordinator, initiated what we call a Surge Response to get resources into the hands of citizen witnesses and organizations that were filming events.

This included direct outreach to specific community groups along with targeted messaging across online platforms to share WITNESS materials that range from guides and videos on filming protests and police misconduct to guides on how to film human rights violations. (For resources shared, see The WITNESS Blog.)

Coming at Ferguson from another angle was Madeleine Bair, WITNESS’ Human Rights Channel Curator, who pulled together citizen video from Ferguson and provided context regarding the specific challenges surrounding video documentation of the event. “Video reports from a range of witnesses, activists, and media reveal not only a pattern of hostility and abuse of power exercised by authorities, but targeted reprisals for documenting police activities,” wrote Madeleine in an article on The WITNESS Blog about the documented harassment and arrests of filmers and journalists.

Recently, New Yorker staff writer Susan Orleans posted on Twitter that she’s always surprised to see her own stories once they’re published. They seem strange to her.

So too, as an organization, reading a profile about the things we do. There’s always more you think could be said, or different aspects of your work you think could be emphasized.

Still though, the article gives a fairly comprehensive overview of many of the things we do, and we hope you give it a read. We also thank Medium for including WITNESS in Storytelling for Good and encourage you to view all five organizations they profiled. Each is doing exceptional work.

About Medium: Medium is a publishing community and platform founded by Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone.

Image: Modified screenshot of Eyes on the Ground on Medium.