We set out to develop an app, called CameraV, that could capture more information (metadata) and do so securely (through encryption) so that your authenticated media can more quickly make it to audiences that matter and in a format that could be trusted.

Al Jazeera reports on the app we co-developed with The Guardian Project in their new documentary “The Bigger Brother”. The piece highlights a beta test of CameraV conducted in Rio with our partners at Coletivo Papo Reto. You can watch the documentary here:

This report is part of a seven-part series from Al Jazeera called “Rebel Geeks” profiling people and organizations who are “challenging power structures and offering a different vision of our technological future.”

For more information about the app, go here and to download it, go to the Google Play Store. (The app is currently only available for Android.)

For Kelly Matheson, WITNESS’ Senior Attorney and Program Manager, it was an opportunity to reconnect with old allies.

“I had the honor of marching alongside young people who will be asking the US Supreme Court to determine whether or not our federal government is obligated to protect our air, water and atmosphere.” she says, referring to Our Children’s Trust. The group is one she worked with extensively when she led WITNESS’ involvement in the TRUST Campaign, an effort to fight for climate justice in the United States by pressuring governments across the country to implement science-based climate recovery plans.

For Martin Tzanev, WITNESS’ Video Technology Specialist, the People’s Climate March provided the opportunity to test InformaCam, an open source mobile application we’re developing with The Guardian Project that improves verification of mobile media files.

Martin brought us together, reminded us to follow the methodologies we teach others when filming large scale events in teams, and sent us out to shoot using the InformaCam app. This week he’s sifting through the videos we gathered to learn more about what evidentiary stories can be told via the metadata InformaCam collects.

Below are some photos we took along the way.

Meantime, we keep Kelly’s words in mind: “From Selma and Stonewall to the US Supreme Court, the civil rights and LGBT movements have taught us the power that grassroots activism — combined with hard fought legal battles — has in protecting our basic rights.”

Here’s to those who organized and participated in Sunday’s march, and especially to those who have been and continue to fight for climate justice.

Select an image to view slideshow.

Resources & Ideas

InformaCam does a lot of things. At its heart though is a metadata standard we believe will improve the verifiability of videos taken by activists and citizen witnesses alike. For WITNESS’ thoughts and ideas on metadata, see:

• Metadata is Powerful, and the NSA Knows It
• How Video Metadata Can Help Rhinos, Not Poachers
• How An Eyewitness Mode Helps Activists (and Others) Be Trusted

For more information about InformaCam, visit The Guardian Project.

Images: Photos by WITNESS’ Sarah Kerr and Jackie Zammuto.

Next come some particulars such as WITNESS’ Human Rights Channel, which curates and contextualizes video from around the world; our work with YouTube to implement a blurring feature into its editing suite in order to protect the identity of victims and those coming forth with human rights abuse allegations; and, finally, our work with The Guardian Project on the creation of ObscuraCam and InformaCam, two mobile apps developed to improve human rights abuse documentation.

About: The RJI Futures Lab is a testing venue for innovative news and advertising methods and technologies. Housed in the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism, the lab provides an environment where professionals, students, faculty and outside partners prototype and test innovations that move journalism forward.

To help resolve this, WITNESS and the Guardian Project are developing InformaCam, the first mobile app seeking to enrich metadata in order to address issues of authentication for digital media. Funding for its initial development came from a grant we won in the Knight News Challenge, a strong supporter of media innovation.

We recently held an online event with our partners at the Guardian Project to give an update on the beta release of InformaCam. You can watch it here:

The influential media publication Journalism.co.UK explains InformaCam well:

InformaCam, which is in beta on Android, aims to improve the way content is collected and shared, both to help with verification and security of the content. There is also the option for organizations to create their own version, as the technology has been made open-source.

A beta version has been launched with the aim of encouraging organizations, from human rights bodies to news outlets, to “tinker and play” and consider the ways they can use it to support their work.

When content is captured, so too is a multitude of additional metadata, ranging from movement and speed to air pressure, temperature and light. It can also identify WiFi networks and active Bluetooth in the vicinity.

Users can also add additional text as well as tag the image to identify key characters. Meanwhile, the metadata is “encrypted in a secure location”.

As Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, WITNESS’ Executive Director, noted during the event, today’s mobile phones put incredible cameras in the world’s hands and this allows more people than ever to document and share cases of abuse. That said, Yvette explains, “One of the key challenges [with citizen video] is around authentication and verification. Meaning, if I share this really important story, how can I make sure that that story can be trusted?”

In other words, from a the perspective of newsrooms, human rights investigators and legal teams: what trusted tools can those documenting abuse use that helps verify video authenticity? We believe InformaCam can be part of the answer.

Watch the video above or visit Journalism.co.UK: InformaCam app ‘to help verify citizen media more securely’.