Jeff was a fierce and instrumental friend, advocate, and WITNESS Board member (2011 – 2019), and a tremendous ally to the larger human rights field. He was a vocal champion for human rights as well as a leading voice on the use of technology for good. Jeff was deeply appreciated and valued by his colleagues and activists as one of the smartest, most passionate and committed individuals, with transformational, pioneering ideas on how to help people and change the world. He has been an instrumental Board member, a tireless ally, and a loyal friend and colleague to the WITNESS team and to human rights defenders around the world. Ever challenging the organization to innovate and think bigger, he helped WITNESS grow and be bolder, smarter, and better equipped for a complex, technology-driven world.

His voice, ideas, and commitment to excellence and innovation will have a lasting impact on the future of human rights.

We are deeply grateful to Jeff for his leadership and vision. We will miss him as a passionate and thoughtful friend and as a tireless and brilliant fighter for a more just and equitable world.

Our love and thoughts are with his daughters Fabienne and Paulina, his sisters, and his family.

Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, Executive Director
Regan Ralph, Board President
Peter Gabriel, Founder and Board Chair

In lieu of flowers, donations in Jeffrey’s memory and mission to find a cure for brain cancers may be made to the following:

• Dr. David Reardon’s Research Fund at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, P.O. Box 849168, Boston, MA 02284 (please make checks payable to Dana-Farber and include Dr. Reardon’s Research Fund in the memo section or donate online at www.danafarber.jimmyfund.org/site/Donation2/give)
• Global Coalition for Adaptive Research to continue Jeffrey’s support and mission of curing brain cancer (please make checks payable to GCAR, P.O. Box 49272, Los Angeles, CA 90049- 0272 or donate online at www.GCAResearch.org).

Trust is more important now than ever before. This spring 2019, WITNESS is changing the story. We will highlight the people and communities that fuel our movement, and show that without trust, in our partnerships and for human rights content, there can be no justice.

Cheryl Morris, Community Team @ VIMEO and WITNESS volunteer, reflected on “who can we trust?” As noted in Cheryl’s blog post:

“I am a young, black, first generation American woman from New York City. Following the indictment of George Zimmerman and the murders of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Akai Gurley by the police, I began to feel extremely weary of authority figures and fearful of any potential interactions between my family and friends with the police. When walking through the city, I found myself anxiously crossing the street whenever I saw an officer, my heart racing and palms sweating. It seemed as if anything people of color did could be construed by the police as dangerous…

My growing anxiety over the documented cases of police violence however, led me to become more involved with the community of grassroots activists here in New York. I found local rallies and demonstrations through the Black Lives Matter movement to take part in, in hopes of effecting some change within our country. I began to speak candidly with friends and acquaintances about the fears that myself and many people who look like me feel on a regular basis. I wanted to make sure that future generations of black and brown people would not have to worry about their safety in the way that my generation and generations before me had. Through these activities, I learned that I had people around me that I could lean on when I felt overwhelmed. Through my community I learned that I didn’t have to live in fear every day. Over the past few years, I’ve grown to learn that I could trust the community that I had built around myself — friends, progressive-thinking people of color, and allies.”

For Mother’s Day 2019, we also created a fundraising campaign to encourage individuals to donate $25 in their mother’s name. With a small donation of $25, WITNESS can help many more activists, human rights defenders, and vulnerable people to defend their human rights online and on the ground. 

WITNESS is building a movement based on trust, truth, and transparency – will you join us? Learn more about and donate to the campaign here.

The proposal is a serious threat to online free expression in Europe and freedom of expression globally. It is likely to inspire dangerous copycat laws and encourages increased use of opaque machine-learning algorithms to remove content—including content created by human rights defenders, alternative media, and journalists.

Leaving it up to algorithms to detect “extremist content” will create innumerable false positives and damage human rights content that is critical to ensuring accountability for perpetrators; content for which activists and journalists often risk their lives.

The ideas and concerns expressed in this letter are based on the real-world experiences of WITNESS, our partners, and the 25 other signatories. We are honored to bring together the diverse voices on this letter in defense of online freedom of expression and, specifically, the protection of human rights content.

Read more about this consortium, our opposition to the Regulation on Dissemination of Terrorist Content Online, and the full letter to the European Parliament on our blog.

However, ahead of this year’s formal declaration of his commitments, The Guardian asked technology experts, policymakers, and activists two questions:

• What do you predict Mark Zuckerberg’s 2019 personal challenge will be?
• What do you think Mark Zuckerberg’s 2019 personal challenge should be?

WITNESS’ Tech Advocacy Program Manager, Dia Kayyali, was one of the experts asked to predict and advise. Here’s what they had to say:

Will be: Some other, similarly broad, challenge that relates to making Facebook a force for good in the world.

Should be: Take personal responsibility for turning Facebook around as a company. That means publicly committing to creating an ethical and principled company that respects civil society, and ensuring that at every level Facebook makes decisions based on human rights instead of market forces. It means personally committing to a Facebook that doesn’t accidentally make decisions that aid violent regimes, white supremacists and other bad actors. Above all, it means simply being honest about Facebook’s largely detrimental role in global society. That would be the biggest challenge of all.

Shortly after The Guardian ran this piece, Zuckerberg shared his 2019 personal challenge. Following another terrible year for Facebook, Zuckerberg pledged “….to host a series of public discussions about the future of technology in society — the opportunities, the challenges, the hopes, and the anxieties.”

Unfortunately, Dia’s prediction was pretty spot on.

Dia leads WITNESS’ Tech Advocacy program which engages technology companies and supports digital policies that help human rights advocates safely, effectively, and ethically use technology for good. The program includes direct, sustained advocacy to those in leadership positions at companies to ensure that anyone, anywhere can use the power of technology to protect and defend human rights.

This law makes records of police misconduct unavailable to the public. As highlighted in our Profiling the Police project, “The law now gives officers a blanket shield from public disclosure or accountability and unfairly puts the burden on the community to expose abuses and push for accountability.”

According to the letter sent to New York state lawmakers, “Full repeal of 50-a is the only way to guarantee an end to officially sanctioned secrecy for police misconduct and the systemic lack of discipline and accountability for misconduct. The public should have the right to know how police departments respond when officers engage in misconduct.”

The full letter is available here.

photo credit: Adrian Owen/Flickr

Our U.S. program team have been partnering with affected immigrant communities, advocacy groups and allies over the last year and a half. Through our Eyes on ICE program, we provide “know your rights” and video documentation trainings for how to safely and effectively capture details of encounters with ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. The program has provided crucial information and resistance to communities at a time when raids and arrests by the agencies are up significantly across the country.

Al Jazeera spent time with us during a series of trainings in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas earlier this fall and reported on our work with our partners the Equal Voice Network and communities there and throughout the United States.

From “The Listening Post”:

With the president’s ceaseless talking and tweeting about threats like a government shutdown if Democrats refuse to fund his border wall, or that migrant caravan from Honduras, stories about ICE and its sister agency, CBP – Customs and Border Protection – are right up there on the mainstream media’s agenda.

But the role the media play in this particular narrative goes well beyond just covering the story. Over the past year, NGOs and legal advocacy organisations have collaborated with media outlets to track cases of enforcement abuse. And they train communities to use their own media tools to document wrongdoing.

Cases like that of Perla Morales-Luna, Juan Hernandez, or Romulo Avelica Gonzalez are just three examples of thousands that surfaced because they were caught on camera, explains Palika Makam, programme coordinator, WITNESS.

“Eyewitness footage has been so crucial in exposing ICE’s manipulative tactics. Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez was arrested by two ICE agents who were in unmarked vehicles, wearing jackets that only said ‘police’. There’s a reason why they don’t identify themselves, they are trying to use manipulative tactics to get information from immigrants or people who they’ve racially profiled in order to arrest and deport them.”

Watch the full report here:

WITNESS stands by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. As we said recently in a submission to the United Nations, “companies must make a commitment to adhere to international human rights standards, including freedom of expression, even when it affects their financial bottom line or requires them to affirmatively defend attacks on rights by States.” And, even when it means they cannot enter a new market. This is especially true in the case of international technology platforms like Google, which have an enormous impact on freedom of expression, privacy, and other human rights. Entering a market cannot be an excuse for participating in the violation of fundamental rights.

Today’s letter follows an August 28 letter from 14 organizations, including WITNESS, which called on Google to “[Disclose]what steps, if any, Google is taking to safeguard against human rights violations linked to Project Dragonfly and its other Chinese mobile app offerings” and “Guarantee protections for whistle-blowers and other employees speaking out where they see the company is failing its commitments to human rights.” The letter outlined concrete concerns with the project and how it would aid surveillance and censorship. It also builds on two open letters from Google employees calling on the company to drop Project Dragonfly.

Google’s October 26th response was lackluster. The company notes that it hasn’t committed to building a censored search engine, but it also doesn’t explain how the project could possibly comply with Google’s previous public statements about upholding human rights and freedom of expression.

Read the letter in full below:

OPEN LETTER: RESPONSE TO GOOGLE on PROJECT DRAGONFLY, China and Human Rights

To: Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer, Google Inc

cc: Ben Gomes, Vice President of Search; Kent Walker, Senior Vice President of Global Affairs; Scott Beaumont, Vice President, Greater China & Korea

11 December 2018

Dear Mr Pichai,

We are writing to ask you to ensure that Google drops Project Dragonfly and any plans to launch a censored search app in China, and to re-affirm the company’s 2010 commitment that it won’t provide censored search services in the country.

We are disappointed that Google in its letter of 26 October[1] failed to address the serious concerns of human rights groups over Project Dragonfly. Instead of addressing the substantive issues set out in the August letter,[2] Google’s response – along with further details that have since emerged about Project Dragonfly – only heightens our fear that the company may knowingly compromise its commitments to human rights and freedom of expression, in exchange for access to the Chinese search market.

We stand with current and former Google employees speaking out over recent ethical scandals at the company, including Project Dragonfly. We wholeheartedly support the message from hundreds of Google employees asking Google to drop Dragonfly in their open letter of 27 November, and commend their bravery in speaking out publicly. We echo their statement that their “opposition to Dragonfly is not about China: we object to technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be.” [3]

New details leaked to the media strongly suggest that if Google launches such a product it would facilitate repressive state censorship, surveillance, and other violations affecting nearly a billion people in China. Media reports state that Google has built a prototype that censors “blacklisted” search terms including “human rights”, “student protest” and “Nobel Prize”, including in journalistic content, and links users’ search queries to personal phone numbers.[4] The app would also force users to sign in to use the service, track and store location information and search histories, and provide “unilateral access” to such data to an unnamed Chinese joint venture company, in line with China’s data localization law – allowing the government virtually unfettered access to this information.[5]

Facilitating Chinese authorities’ access to personal data, as described in media reports, would be particularly reckless. If such features were launched, there is a real risk that Google would directly assist the Chinese government in arresting or imprisoning people simply for expressing their views online, making the company complicit in human rights violations. This risk was identified by Google’s own security and privacy review team, according to former and current Google employees. Despite attempts to minimize internal scrutiny, a team tasked with assessing Dragonfly concluded that Google “would be expected to function in China as part of the ruling Communist Party’s authoritarian system of policing and surveillance,” according to a media report.[6]

Actively aiding China’s censorship and surveillance regime is likely to set a terrible precedent for human rights and press freedoms worldwide. A recent Freedom House report warned that the Chinese government is actively promoting its model of pervasive digital censorship and surveillance around the world.[7] Many governments look to China’s example, and a major industry leader’s acquiescence to such demands will likely cause many other regimes to follow China’s lead, provoking a race to the bottom in standards. It would also undermine efforts by Google and other companies to resist government surveillance requests in order to protect users’ privacy and security,[8] emboldening state intelligence and security agencies to demand greater access to user data.

Google’s letter makes several specific points that are directly contradicted by other sources. The letter states that it is “not close” to launching a search product in China, and that before doing so the company would consult with key stakeholders. However, as reported by the media, comments made in July by Ben Gomes, Google’s Head of Search, suggested the product could be “six to nine months [to launch]” and stressed the importance of having a product ready to be “brought off the shelf and quickly deployed” so that “we don’t miss that window if it ever comes.”[9]

The letter also states that Google worked on Dragonfly simply to “explore” the possibility of re-entering the Chinese search market, and that it does not know whether it “would or could” launch such a product. Yet media reports based on an internal Google memo suggest that the project was in a “pretty advanced state” and that the company had invested extensive resources to its development.[10]

Google’s decision to design and build Dragonfly in the first place is troubling. Google’s own AI Principles commit the company not to “design or deploy” (emphasis added) technologies whose purpose contravenes human rights. Given the company’s history in China and the assessment of its own security team, Google is well aware of the human rights implications of providing such an application. Moreover, Google’s letter fails to answer many questions about what steps, if any, the company is taking to safeguard human rights, including with respect to its current Chinese mobile app offerings, consistent with its commitments.

We urge Google to heed concerns from its own employees and from organizations and individuals across the political spectrum by abandoning Project Dragonfly and reaffirming its commitment not to provide censored search services in China. We also note that the letter makes no reference to whistle-blowers, and thus we urgently repeat our call to the company that it must publicly commit to protect the rights of whistle-blowers and other workers voicing rights concerns.

We welcome that Google has confirmed the company “takes seriously” its responsibility to respect human rights. However, the company has so far failed to explain how it reconciles that responsibility with the company’s decision to design a product purpose-built to undermine the rights to freedom of expression and privacy.

Signed, the following organizations:

Access Now

ActiveWatch – Media Monitoring Agency (MMA)

Adil Soz – International Foundation for Protection of Freedom of Speech

Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB)

Amnesty International

Article 19

Articulo 12 – Son Tus Datos

Association for Progressive Communications

Asociacion para una Ciudadania Participativa

Bolo Bhi

Briar Project

Bytes for All (B4A)

Cartoonists Rights Network, International (CRNI)

Center for Democracy & Technology

Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR)

Center for Independent Journalism (CIJ)

Child Rights International Network (CRIN)

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF)

Foro de Periodismo Argentino (FOPEA)

Freedom of the Press Foundation

Freedom Forum

Fundación Datos Protegidos (Chile)

Fundacion Internet Bolivia

Globe International Center (GIC)

Hong Kong Journalists Association

Human Rights in China (HRIC)

Human Rights First

Human Rights Watch

Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC)

Independent Journalism Center (IJC)

Index on Censorship

Initiative for Freedom of Expression – Turkey

Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)

International Campaign for Tibet

International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)

International Tibet Network Secretariat

Internet Sans Frontières

Latin American Observatory of Regulation, Media and Convergence – OBSERVACOM

Media Rights Agenda (MRA)

Mediacentar Sarajevo

NetBlocks

Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD)

New America’s Open Technology Institute

Norwegian PEN

OpenMedia

Pacific Island News Association

Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA)

PEN International

PEN America

Privacy International

Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

Software Freedom Law Center, India (SFLC.in)

South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO)

Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA)

Students for a Free Tibet

Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM)

Tibet Action Institute

Việt Tân

WITNESS

World Uyghur Congress

Signed in individual capacity (affiliations for identification purposes only):

Chinmayi Arun

Assistant Professor, National Law University Delhi

Arturo J. Carrillo

Clinical Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School

Richard Danbury

Associate Professor, Journalism, De Montfort University Leicester

Ronald Deibert

Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab, University of Toronto

Molly K. Land

Professor of Law and Human Rights, University of Connecticut School of Law                                                                                  

Rebecca MacKinnon

Director, Ranking Digital Rights                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Deirdre K. Mulligan

Associate Professor, School of Information and Faculty Director, Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, University of California, Berkeley

Paloma Muñoz Quick

Director, Investor Alliance for Human Rights (IAHR)                                                                                                                 

Edward Snowden

President, Freedom of the Press Foundation

Lokman Tsui

Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

——

[1] Letter from Kent Walker, Senior Vice President for Global Affairs at Google, responding to concerns of multiple human rights organizations and individuals, 26 October 2018, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ASA17/9552/2018/en/

[2] Letter to Sundar Pichai from multiple human rights organizations and individuals, 28 August 2018, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4792329-Google-Dragonfly-Open-Letter.html

[3] Google employees, ‘We are Google employees. Google must drop Dragonfly’, 27 September 2018, https://medium.com/@googlersagainstdragonfly/we-are-google-employees-google-must-drop-dragonfly-4c8a30c5e5eb

[4] Ryan Gallagher, ‘Google China Prototype Links Searches to Phone Numbers’, The Intercept, 14 September 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/09/14/google-china-prototype-links-searches-to-phone-numbers/ ;  Jack Poulson, Letter to Senate Commerce Committee, 24 September 2018, https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/328-jack-poulson-dragonfly/87933ffa89dfa78d9007/optimized/full.pdf

[5] Ryan Gallagher and Lee Fang, ‘Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans To Closely Track Search Users In China’, The Intercept, 21 September 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/google-suppresses-memo-revealing-plans-to-closely-track-search-users-in-china/

[6] Ryan Gallagher, ‘Google Shut Out Privacy and Security Teams from Secret China Project’, The Intercept, 29 November 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/11/29/google-china-censored-search/

[7] Freedom House, ‘Freedom on the Net 2018: The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism’, October 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2018/rise-digital-authoritarianism

[8] Reform Government Surveillance Coalition

[9] Ryan Gallagher, ‘Leaked Transcript Of Private Meeting Contradicts Google’s Official Story On China’, The Intercept, 9 October 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/10/09/google-china-censored-search-engine/

[10] Ryan Gallagher and Lee Fang, ‘Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China’, The Intercept, 21 September 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/google-suppresses-memo-revealing-plans-to-closely-track-search-users-in-china/

At a time when the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the processes of creating media, managing what we see, and moderating content is becoming increasingly important, WITNESS is glad to be joining the Partnership on AI. We look forward to engaging with others in the Partnership on AI (PAI)to address critical challenges around key focus areas of our Tech Advocacy work including misinformation and disinformation, content moderation, privacy, and facial recognition and deepfakes/synthetic media. There’s a critical opportunity now to ensure that AI is used in a rights-protecting and rights-enhancing way, to ensure that marginalized voices are part of the process of development and implementation and that ethical considerations about when AI is used are front-and-center. WITNESS will be co-chairing the new Working Group on Social and Societal Influence, which is beginning with a focus on AI and media.

From the PAI website:

We are excited to announce that we have added 10 new organizations to the growing Partnership on AI community. The latest cohort of new members represents a diverse range of sectors, including media and telecommunications businesses, as well as civil rights organizations, academia, and research institutes.

These new members will bring valuable new perspectives. For example, the addition of media organizations will be crucial at a time when AI-enabled techniques in synthetic news and imagery may pose challenges to what people see and believe, but also may help to authenticate and verify information.

PAI is also committed to ensuring geographic diversity in exploring AI’s hard questions, and as a result, the latest group of new members includes organizations from Australia, Canada, Italy, South Korea, United Kingdom, and the United States, allowing us to bring together important viewpoints from around the world.

The following organizations join the Partnership on AI in November 2018:

Autonomy, Agency and Assurance Innovation (3A) Institute
American Psychological Association
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
DataKind
The New York Times
OPTIC Network
PolicyLink
Samsung Electronics
The Vision and Image Processing Lab at University of Waterloo
WITNESS

Partnership on AI Executive Director Terah Lyon, said “We are proud to welcome a diverse new group of organizations and perspectives to the Partnership on AI, and I look forward to seeing the impact of their contributions. Technology is a series of decisions made by humans, and by involving more viewpoints and perspectives in the AI debate we will be able to improve the quality of those decisions.”

Matthew Postgate, Chief Product and Technology Officer at the BBC, said: “I am delighted that the BBC has joined the Partnership on AI. The use of machine learning and data enabled services offer incredible opportunities for the BBC and our audience, but also present serious challenges for society. We will only realise the benefits and solve the challenges by coming together with other media and technology organisations in the interests of citizens. Partnership on AI and its member base provide the platform to do just that, and I am committed to ensuring the BBC plays an active part.”

Nick Rockwell, Chief Technology Officer at the New York Times, said: “Our mission at The New York Times is to help people better understand the world, so it is imperative that we understand and participate in the ways technology is changing our lives. At The Times, we already use artificial intelligence in many ways to deepen our readers engagement with our journalism, always in accordance with ethical guidelines and our commitment to our reader’s privacy, so we are both deeply excited and deeply concerned about the power of artificial intelligence to impact society. We are excited to join the Partnership on AI to continue to deepen our understanding, and to help shape the future of this technology for good.”

Jake Porway, Founder and Executive Director at DataKind, said: “We couldn’t be more aligned to the Partnership on AI’s cause as our mission at DataKind is virtually synonymous — to create a world in which data science and AI are used ethically and capably in the service of humanity. There’s huge potential to reach this goal together, and we’re particularly excited to play the role of connector between the many technology companies in the group committed to making positive social change and the needs on the ground that they could support.”

The new cohort of members will participate in the Partnership’s existing Working Groups and will join new projects and work beginning with the Partnership’s upcoming All Partners Meeting.

The Partnership on AI exists to study and formulate best practices on AI, to advance the public’s understanding of AI, and to provide a platform for open collaboration between all those involved in, and affected by, the development and deployment of AI technologies.

To succeed in this mission, we need deep involvement from diverse voices and viewpoints that represent a wide range of audiences, geographies, and interests.

We welcome questions from organizations interested in learning more about membership. To contact us, please see the forms available here.

Justice has triumphed in Bukavu, where two commanders of the rebel militia called Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) have received life sentences for murder and torture, both constituting crimes against humanity, as well as pillage and arson. All 100 victims party to the proceedings have been awarded reparations ranging from 5,000 USD to 25,000 USD.

In 2012, the villages of Kamananga and Lumenje (South Kivu) were the theatre of barbarous attacks by the FDLR. Alleging the villagers’ support to a rival local militia, militiamen led by commanders Gilbert Ndayambaje (alias Rafiki Castro) and Evariste Nizeimana (alias Kizito) looted both villages, killed and tortured civilians and burned buildings to the ground.

Read more about the case

“We are delighted with this verdict,” says Daniele Perissi, Head of the DRC program at TRIAL International. “Impunity in DRC is rampant, including among armed groups’ commanders. This sends a strong warning signal to anyone committing abuses who might think their military power places them above the law.”

Videos are shown as evidence for the first time in DRC

This success is the result of a close cooperation between many actors, among which three NGOs: TRIAL International, whose mandate is to fight impunity for international crimes; WITNESS, which specializes in the use of video to defend human rights; and eyeWitness to Atrocities, which has developed a unique tool to record, file and verify videos used in judiciary proceedings. Together, they assisted the victims’ lawyers in collecting the strongest incriminating evidence, including verified video footage and photos – a first in the Congolese judiciary.

Isabelle Myabe, Program Manager at WITNESS, explains: “As part of the investigative process, we trained lawyers working on the case in the best practices of capturing and preserving video as evidence. During a fact-finding mission in July 2017, one of the lawyers documented evidence of mass graves in the targeted villages. An extract of this video was presented in the trial.”

In order to be admissible in court, the collected material had to go through a rigorous verification procedure, to ensure there had not been any tampering.

“During the investigatory missions, information was collected with the eyeWitness app to strengthen the evidentiary value of the footage presented in court”, says Wendy Betts, Project Director at eyewitness to Atrocities. “The app allows photos and video to be captured with information that can firstly verify when and where the footage was taken, and secondly can confirm that the footage was not altered. The transmission protocols and secure server system set up by eyeWitness creates a chain of custody that allows this information to be presented in court.”

Learn more about the use of audiovisual as evidence

“The atmosphere in court switched dramatically”

On the base of the collected evidence, TRIAL International assisted the victims’ lawyers to build their legal strategy.

“When the footage was shown, the atmosphere in the hearing chamber switched dramatically” testifies Guy Mushiata, DRC human rights coordinator for TRIAL International. “Images are a powerful tool to convey the crimes’ brutality and the level of violence the victims have suffered.”

TRIAL International, eyeWitness to Atrocities and WITNESS hope that this double condemnation will prompt other lawyers to use audiovisual evidence in criminal proceedings. They will continue to collaborate to help disseminate this practice in Eastern DRC.

Image credit: Augustin Safari Macumu/TRIAL International

###

WITNESS makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to use video and technology to protect and defend human rights. 

TRIAL International’s on this case has been conducted in the framework of the Task Force for International Criminal Justice, an informal network of international actors collaborating to support the work of Congolese military jurisdictions in the investigation and prosecution of mass crimes in DRC.  

The work of TRIAL International on mass crimes cases in DRC would not be possible without the support of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and the Belgian Development Cooperation.

Media contacts

TRIAL International
Noémi Manco, Communications Officer (In Switzerland, French and English)
n.manco@trialinternational.org
+41 79 192 37 44

Guy Mushiata, Human Rights Coordinator (In DRC, French and Swahili)
g.mushiata@trialinternational.org
+243 81 085 80 47

eyeWitness to Atrocities
Nyangala Zolho, Communications Coordinator (In UK, English)
Nyangala.Zolho@int-bar.org
+44 33 00 240 789

WITNESS
Isabelle Mbaye, Program Manager (In Spain, French and English)
isabelle@witness.org
+1 646 249 4992

Wong is the former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer focusing on internet, privacy, and innovation policy. Prior to joining the Obama administration, Nicole served as Twitter’s Legal Director for Products and, from 2004 – 2011, as Google’s Vice President and Deputy General Counsel. She frequently speaks on issues related to law and technology, including five appearances before the U.S. Congress.

Wong also spoke about WITNESS’ work and how it empowers grassroots activists to use video for change and justice.

You can find the podcast here.