Sam Gregory talks livestreaming and human rights in WIRED Magazine

As technology continually evolves, WITNESS works to keep pace with innovations that can aid and protect human rights. It began over 20 years ago with camcorders, and today we’re working with top technologists and corporations to ensure that the rules and tools of digital technology (think: privacy policies and social media platforms) take into account the needs of human rights defenders.

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.