RightsCon is online again this year and will be taking place from Monday, June 6th to Friday, June 10th 2022. Registration is open until June 3rd with both free and paid tickets options available to everyone: www.rightscon.org/register-2022 

You can catch our team leading sessions alongside long-term partners and allies, offering workshops, community labs, and panels on a range of topics. These topics are priority areas for many of the communities we work with closest across the world. The guidance we will be sharing is sourced from 30 years of working with community defenders on matters at the intersection of video, technology, and human rights. 

RightsCon is one of the many spaces where our guidance is strengthened through the sharing and exchanging of the wisdom of experience in community with other activists.

Here’s where you can find us (and note that you will have to create and account and login to see full details of most sessions):

Monday, June 6th

Getting it right: tackling misinformation with authenticity and provenance infrastructure that works for all

WITNESS Team: Jacobo Castellanos, Raquel Vazquez, Sam Gregory

Time: 1:15 – 2:15pm EDT

To promote participation from a diverse range of people in this session but also in broader discussions around provenance and authenticity infrastructure, our team members will first offer a brief introduction of key provenance and authenticity initiatives and scenarios, and then host an open discussion on stakeholder-centric concerns and opportunities (e.g. content provenance and authenticity in social media and its impact on community, civic and/or independent media). More information here.

Filling in the gaps: activist-led approaches to accessible documentation methods

WITNESS Team: Dalila Mujagic

Time: 2:30 – 3:30pm EDT

To fill the gaps that exist in comprehensive, accessible, and community-led documentation guidance—WITNESS’ Video as Evidence team’s Legal Lead, Dalila Mujagic, joined other facilitators and the Totem Project to create a free, online course on getting started with human rights documentation. The next step is to have activists and their communities lead the conversation on which aspects of the course they want expanded. The goal is to identify remaining gaps in knowledge that are important to participants’ communities to address and have access to. More information here.

Just Joking! Deepfakes, Satire, and the Politics of Synthetic Media

WITNESS Team: Sam Gregory

Time: 2:30 – 3:30 EDT

Around the world, deepfakes are becoming a powerful tool for artists, satirists and activists. But what happens when vulnerable people are not “in on the joke,” or when malign intentions are disguised as humor? This session focuses on the fast-growing intersections between deepfakes and satire, including examples of activism and well as those that attack marginalized communities. Sam Gregory, WITNESS’ Program Director will help participants explore current and potential uses of deepfakes and probe the ethical challenges of democratizing synthetic media production, including how to label these videos as they circulate online, and who is responsible for creating and enforcing best practices, protocols, and laws. More information here. 

Learn more: wit.to/JustJoking.

Wednesday, June 8th

Media Investigation and Documentation of Human Rights Abuses in Nigeria Using Technology 

WITNESS Team: Nkem Agunwa

Time: 5 – 6am EDT

Nigeria is the most populous Black nation on Earth. Many perpetrators of human rights abuses in Nigeria are never held accountable or brought to justice and this had led to further violence contributing to conflicts that are out of control. These abuses include unlawful and arbitrary killings, forced disappearances, torture, degrading treatment or punishment, life-threatening prison conditions, political prisoners, privacy violations, and restrictions on free expression. This session will explore media investigations and documentation of human rights abuses in Nigeria within the last decade that have leveraged technology and social media. More information here.  

How do NGOs ensure a strong, supportive organization culture for teams? Let’s share it out!

WITNESS Team: Sharon Harrison

Time: 7:30 – 8:30 am EDT

Driving strong organizational culture is Job #1 for Human Resources/People Teams in today’s NGOs. WITNESS’ HR Lead Sharon Harrison will join HR/People Team Members from Access Now in a session focused squarely on how NGOs and civil society entities can, and must, drive organizational culture to ensure long-term stability. Spanning employee support strategies, parity, inclusion and equity, and work/life balance, participants from around the globe will have the opportunity to share and inspire. More information here.

Thursday, June 9th

Learnings on tackling internet shutdowns in the MENA region

WITNESS Team: Raja Althaibani, Mahmoud Elmasry

Time: 8:15 – 9:15am EDT

In this session, our team members will shed light on the learnings and expertise from on-the-ground activists in the Middle East and North Africa who document human rights violations during internet shutdowns. This session will examine the different kinds of shutdowns across the Middle East and North Africa used by authoritarian regimes to repress, or help in suppressing protests or uprisings. Furthermore, the learnings shared here can strengthen the available strategies and tools for addressing the human rights impacts of shutdowns. More information here.

Get related resources from our #EyesOnShutdowns campaign site: wit.to/Internet-Shutdowns 

Inclusive AI governance: the role of civil society organizations in standards development

WITNESS Team: Jacobo Castellanos

Time: 8:15 – 9:15am EDT

This workshop will empower civil society organizations to play a crucial role in European AI governance through participation in technical standards development. While the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act features an array of protections for fundamental rights and public interests, it depends heavily on technical standards development to operationalize these protections for industry. Yet limited civil society involvement in standards development, along with the predominance of industry technologists, leaves a gap in necessary legal and policy expertise.

Workshop attendees, who will mainly represent European civil society organizations with expertise relevant to the AI Act’s “high-risk” categories and fundamental rights, can help to fill this gap. 

The aim of the session is to enable direct participation in standards development, and in the long term through contributions to policy work aimed at expanding their role. Jacobo Castellanos, Program Associate of our Technology Threats and Opportunities program, will be drawing from the feedback and experience of communities across the world who we have worked closely with in identifying priorities for content authentication infrastructures that center human rights. More information on this session here.

Calling on documenters, investigators, and lawyers: let’s talk “solidarity” across the digital evidence labor pipeline

WITNESS Team: Raja Althaibani

Time: 1:30 – 2:30pm EDT

Calling on documenters, investigators, and lawyers: let’s talk ‘solidarity’ across the digital evidence labor pipeline. Across the globe, documenters create and upload content depicting grave harms and violations of fundamental rights. Open source investigators probe, archive, and report on this material. Legal advocates carry a select few forward into case-building initiatives. Open source tools make it technically possible, and, arguably, easier than ever before to conduct a form of rigorous investigation without a clear, methodological need to foster personal relationships among the people involved.

WITNESS and Mnemonic are considering ways to counter such siloed workflows while writing and teaching the upcoming video as evidence guide, “Airstrikes: Visual Documentation and Analysis.” We want to know: how are you doing this in your own work? How do you wish others in our field would approach or work with you?

This community lab will seek to provide helpful tools for articulating good practices, challenges, and possible solutions. More information here. 

We’re sharing resources for those on the ground in Ukraine and Russia – who are navigating immense risks as they capture and share video documentation of potential human rights violations and war crimes. And, we’re sharing resources for those of us witnessing from a distance, so that we amplify grassroots truths and decrease the spread of mis/disinformation. 

Guidance for Frontline Documenters:

Visit our landing page for resources available in Ukranian and Russian here. 

Guidance for Allies:

As many of us watch, share, and try to make sense of the deluge of videos, photos, and reports coming out of Ukraine– much of which is authentic – we must also be vigilant not to amplify content that may be mislabeled or misleading. And the same is especially true for social media platforms like TikTok, which finds itself centrally placed in the flow of misleading videos related to a high stakes conflict like this. Here are tips and tools to help prevent you from sharing deliberate or accidental misinformation: 

• How to Verify Eyewitness Video: From our Video as Evidence Field Guide – we share techniques and tools to help verify that a video found online or sent by a source can be trusted as authentic. This resource is available in multiple languages including Ukrainian and Russian

• Visual Verification Tipsheet: These tips will help you verify images and videos that you see online.

You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and share our resources with your networks. 

“Léo and Pam bring extensive expertise in anti-racist initiatives – through activist academic research, mobile media activism, and organizational development – to WITNESS,” said Yvette Alberdingk-Thijm. “Léo’s anti-oppressive approaches to activists’ collaboration and knowledge sharing and his depth of expertise in how youth use mobile phones for social justice and participation, align deeply with WITNESS’ values and the way we work globally.” She continued, 

“Pam’s global on-the-ground experience in leading organizations toward more sustainable practices, centered in principles of diversity, equity and inclusion, align with our commitment to support equitable power structures within WITNESS itself and within the larger world.”  

Mr. Custódio is an Afro-Brazilian educator and activist researcher. In his teaching, research, and activism, Custódio focuses on processes where underprivileged and discriminated people use multiple media technologies available to act against the inequalities they suffer in their everyday lives. Ms. Mudhray is a South African global transformation and organizational development professional, with deep roots in public health and education campaigns post-apartheid, who works to develop a more equal, respectful, inclusive, responsible and dignified world. 

Read more about Leonardo Custódio here and via his website here.

Read more about Pam Mudhray here. 

This resource-based campaign incorporates learnings from participants at our mis/disinformation West Africa convening and seeks to build resilience in communities most at risk of mis/information and empower them to push back against it. The campaign will support communities with the right skills and tools to identify the threats and prioritize solutions that are contextually relevant to the African continent. 

We have seen the ease in which videos and audios, often crudely edited or even simply recycled and re-contextualized can perpetuate and renew cycles of violence. The emergence of deepfakes and other forms of synthetic media enable more seamless, more accessible abilities to make someone appear to say or do something they never did.  Also, the advancement of technology developed to mislead makes it increasingly difficult to detect and verify misleading content. 

WITNESS is focused on proactive approaches to protecting marginalized voices and human rights as emerging technologies intersect with the pressures of misinformation, disinformation and rising digital authoritarianism. The campaign would adopt a hybrid approach in reaching its objective and would run for six months. There would be physical engagement at the grassroots, including training of community based organizations, activists and journalists on combating mis/disinformation and using video as a tool to elevate the truth amongst other on-the-ground interventions. Simultaneously, the campaign would apply online engagement to reach the set target. 

We implore you to join us in amplifying this campaign by 

• Resharing some of the videos and graphics from the campaign page
• Using the hashtag #VerifyBeforeSharing
• Downloading and sharing the report from our mis/disinformation West Africa convening
• Advocating to stakeholders including tech platforms to implement the recommendations of the report.

FFDW and WITNESS Collaborate to Preserve Authentic Human Rights Records 

FFDW’s commitment to WITNESS will support the creation, authentication, and preservation of trusted documentation

Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW) is proud to announce our grant to WITNESS, an international nonprofit organization that helps people use video and technology to create, preserve, and use human rights records. FFDW and WITNESS will work together to explore how the decentralized web can enable human rights records to be authenticated and preserved in ways that protect privacy, autonomy, and user control. WITNESS will also identify how the decentralized web can support the work of activists, civic journalists, and smartphone witnesses who go to great lengths to capture human rights accounts, building upon a 30-year history bridging the needs of communities with the global technology systems in which they live and work.

It has never been more critical that people have access to trustworthy human rights records. Technology has made it easier than ever to capture content, and video has become a key tool to document human rights abuse and share the truth. Yet, it is also easier than ever to manipulate media. Anyone with general editing software can create shallowfakes, and deepfakes make it possible to digitally alter a video to change someone’s appearance or identity or make them say something they never said. These tools enable bad actors to disrupt democracy, spread misinformation, and undermine trust in human rights accounts overall. 

Additionally, as the internet has become increasingly centralized, human rights records are vulnerable to corporate control or single-point failures. Internet shutdowns have become a tactic to suppress vital information. And when content is removed en masse from private sector platforms, we run the risk of human rights truths being lost forever. The decentralized web can help safeguard these records: it allows activists and others to authenticate and record ownership of human rights accounts that they’ve captured, establishing trust in those records. It can also protect against reliance on central and privatized infrastructure by storing data on a distributed and secure network. 

The FFDW grant will enable WITNESS to support communities to preserve human rights records that are at risk of being lost, misrepresented, or manipulated, and explore how decentralized technology can support these efforts. The multi-pronged approach will include: 

• Developing community-based archives to gather and preserve important evidence;
• Influencing authenticity infrastructure (an emerging set of technologies that helps track the provenance and manipulations of media to combat misinformation) to ensure the terms for trust are set by at-risk communities and not just technology companies; and 
• Encouraging learning and sharing between at-risk-communities to develop ground-tested resources, tools, and practices. 

“Everyday, a growing number of civic journalists and smartphone witnesses are creating and preserving human rights records,” said WITNESS Program Director Sam Gregory. “Whether their efforts lead to justice is shaped by an ecosystem of emerging technologies that are often distant and unaccountable to their needs. We’re optimistic that decentralized web technology can help us further our efforts to safeguard the voices and narratives of historically marginalized groups and ensure they can be leveraged to bring accountability.”

Among the key initiatives that will benefit is a human rights archives program. WITNESS has decades of experience supporting activists to preserve critical documentation in contexts such as Brazil, Myanmar, Syria, the United States, and Yemen. The FFDW grant will support a range of frontline actors to create and sustain community archives that preserve documentation of state violence and war crimes, while centering grassroots needs. This work is closely linked to WITNESS’ ongoing efforts shaping a set of standards for authenticity infrastructure.

“We’re proud to support WITNESS with this grant,” said FFDW Board Chair Marta Belcher. “FFDW’s mission is to preserve humanity’s most important information, and this collaboration with WITNESS is a natural fit to further these efforts.”

Learn more about FFDW grant programs here!

“As accomplished leaders in the fields of human rights, technology, and movement-building from the Global South and North, Monica, Polly, and Inca will each bring unique perspectives and lived experiences to WITNESS’ work, which is rooted in its global network of activists. Their appointments underscore the organization’s commitment to building and supporting equitable power structures within a human rights framework,” said Yvette Alberdingk-Thijm, WITNESS’ Executive Director. She continued, “We are grateful to the tremendous energy and leadership provided by Regan and Peter and appreciate their continued support and service to WITNESS and the global human rights movement.” 

Ms. Aleman is senior program officer on the BUILD team at the Ford Foundation. She is a longtime advocate for Indigenous and women’s rights across Latin America and globally. Ms. Fields is a twenty year veteran of philanthropy in fields spanning global health, education, technology and the arts. Ms. Mohamed is an internationally recognized facilitator, trainer, and for her expertise in leading nonprofit organizations addressing youth development, sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice, gender equity, and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI).

Read more about Monica Aleman here. 

Read more about Polly fields here.

Read more about Inca A. Mohamed here. 

The convening will explore and prioritize pragmatic solutions for the defense against misinformation and disinformation particularly, as it affects grassroots communities in Africa.

The exponential spread of mis/disinformation presents a real threat to democracies, digital safety and human rights. Also, the advancement of technology developed to mislead makes it increasingly difficult to verify content. We have also seen the ease in which videos and audios, often crudely edited or even simply recycled and re-contextualised can perpetuate and renew cycles of violence. Furthermore, the emergence of deepfakes and other forms of synthetic media enable more seamless, more accessible abilities to make someone appear to say or do something they never did, and manipulate audio and video. 

WITNESS is focused on proactive approaches to protecting marginalised voices and human rights as emerging technologies intersect with the pressures of misinformation, disinformation and rising digital authoritarianism. The convening will bring together leading Journalists, human rights defenders, activists, fact checkers, CSOs and technology platforms to prioritise multiple solution approaches to the threat of mis/disinformation.

The convening will inform the development of resources, guidance and training modules that would help build resilience in communities to mitigate the harmful threat of mis/disinformation. 

For media queries, please contact: nkem@witness.org.

Shutdowns can take various forms, including platform-specific blockages that target popular apps and sites, mobile data shutdowns, bandwidth throttling, or total internet blackouts. All of these types of shutdowns are intended to disrupt the ability to communicate information and expose violations in real-time. They often occur during protests, elections, and periods of political instability, and are often accompanied by heightened state repression, military offensives, and violence. Shutdowns violate human rights, severely disrupt people’s lives and livelihoods, and also have a global economic impact.

Documenting human rights violations is as important as ever during an internet shutdown. Even if information cannot be shared in the moment, documentation can be a way to preserve voices that authorities are trying to silence, and to secure evidence of abuses that can be used to demand accountability later on. Of course, the repressive context and the technological impediments of an internet shutdown make documenting violations — and maintaining that documentation securely — much more challenging and risky. 

Through our work with activists who have experienced internet shutdowns, we have learned some useful tips and approaches to capturing and preserving video documentation during internet shutdowns that we are sharing in this newly launched campaign: #EyesOnShutdowns.

Get more context by reading our blog: wit.to/Eyes-On-Shutdowns

Find key tip sheets, videos, and more on our project page: wit.to/Internet-Shutdowns

As a global organization committed to supporting communities to use video and technology for justice, WITNESS aligns with the central ethos of this conference. This year, we continue to build on our history of participating in this space as presenters, facilitators, and attendees. 

RightsCon is taking place online from June 7th to 11th. Those who have registered can catch the WITNESS team presenting in the following panels, community labs, and strategy sessions: 

TUESDAY, JUNE 8TH

Authenticity Infrastructure against mis/disinformation: What’s that? Who’s it for? What are the risks and benefits?

Time: 2:45-3:45 PM EST 

Type: Panel

WITNESS Team: Sam Gregory (Program Director)

On social media, shallowfaked images and videos with false captions or simple edits frequently deceive us. Deepfakes threaten to make discerning visual truth from falsehood even harder. Now proposals for ‘authenticity infrastructure’ are proliferating. These promise more robust ways to help us understand the media content we consume, and whether images, video and audio have been manipulated, mis-contextualized or edited, and when and by who. 

Featuring leading civil society experts and advocates in this area with experience in trust technology, verification, OSINT, press freedom, digital security and human rights as well as private sector pioneers this panel will highlight the initiatives in this emerging area, the key human rights questions, how to understand this in a global context, and how we balance critical trade-offs. You’ll come away with a much stronger understanding of the baseline of this emerging area of content tracking and its relevance to the mis/disinformation discussion as well as fundamental human rights questions.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9TH

“Hey you, stop filming! Defending smartphone witnessing and the Right to Record globally. What do we need to do?

Time: 7:45-8:45 AM EST

Type: Community Lab/Strategy Session

WITNESS Team: Adebayo Okeowo (Program Manager- Africa), Jackie Zammuto (Program Manager – United States), Victor Ribeiro (Senior Program Manager – Latin America and Caribbean),  Arul Prakkash (Senior Program Manager- Asia), Sam Gregory (Program Director)

As more and more people globally take out their phones to film state violence, authorities resist.  Our Right to Record is key. This right to film people with power has become even more critical during COVID and the many uprisings for social and racial justice globally.  Yet in every country worldwide, whether there are legal protections or not, the right to record is undermined and ignored in practice and witnesses threatened or harmed.

Learning from each other, we’ll identify how the right to record is exercised and suppressed, and how it relates to other struggles we currently face. Connecting the dots, we’ll identify concrete priorities for moving the right to record forward practically at national and global levels!

FRIDAY, JUNE 11TH

Manipulated Media, manipulated realities: Confronting deepfakes and shallowfakes in a global context 

Time: 9:45-10:45 AM EST 

Type: Community Lab/Strategy Session

WITNESS Team:  Indira Cornelio (Communications Coordinator – Latin America), Mahmoud Saber (Communications Consultant- Middle East and North Africa) Adebayo Okeowo (Program Manager- Africa), Jackie Zammuto (Program Manager – United States), Victor Ribeiro (Senior Program Manager – Latin America and Caribbean),  Arul Prakkash (Senior Program Manager- Asia), Sam Gregory (Program Director)

AI-manipulated videos and memes are now being normalised in politics, culture, and social media sharing. Authoritarian governments are already taking advantage of this, either by discrediting the content they do not like or, in some cases, creating manipulated media to devalue or to distract. 

Building from this we will ask the question: what are human rights defenders and journalists concerned about? With a particular focus on the MENA region but not exclusively, this session will also build on the work WITNESS has done in Brazil, sub-Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia, and the United States focused on understanding manipulated media trends and emerging threats like deepfakes in existing contexts of gender-based violence, misinformation and disinformation and closing civil society space. We will explore from non-US/European perspectives and non-majority voices how deepfakes and shallowfakes are being handled, manipulated, or used by governments, the public and platforms amid COVID and growing state repression.  

Copyright: the ‘Double-Edged Sword’ for Human Rights

Time: 12:15-1:15 PM EST 

Type: Panel

WITNESS Team: Yvonne Ng (Archives Program Manager) 

Copyright regulation can have benefits, as well as unintended consequences, for free expression and human rights around the world. Propelled by copyright that calls for sharing of source code, open source technology can support human rights investigations. At the same time, open source projects are subject to copyright regulations that may not adequately protect non-infringing uses and can affect rights to free expression when they are the subject of a content takedown notice. Copyright regulations are also used to infringe on human rights when people seeking to suppress journalism they find objectionable pose as copyright holders and submit takedown notices.