This project, launched in 2018, covers the work of WITNESS and El Grito de Sunset Park — a community organization in Sunset Park, Brooklyn — to find new ways to use eyewitness video and open source data to expose abuses by some NYPD and begin to illustrate how police abuse is part of a larger systemic problem. The project serves as a case study for advocates, journalists, legal experts and technologists interested in exploring new forms of storytelling through the analysis and curation of human rights videos.

You can learn more about our “Profiling the Police” project here. Watch the project’s promotional video below.

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:

Join WITNESS Senior Program Manager Priscila Neri and a panel of experts on October 18 in New York City as they lead a seminar to provide a toolkit so that beginners can learn, and video experts can brush up on, what’s involved. It will offer technology tips and provide links to useful tools; discuss how video journalism differs from print, including ethical responsibilities; and show the power of video in changing the narrative.

Other panelists include:

Erica Anderson, Erica Anderson, lead for U.S. partnerships with News Lab at Google. She will talk about the tools that Google provides to verify the authenticity of videos that journalists use from third parties.

Sara Obeidat, a co-producer at Rain Media working on films for FRONTLINE, including Inside Yemen, Separated and The Pension Gamble, which will be coming out in October. She also is the Enterprise Fellow at FRONTLINE.

The moderator will be OPC Secretary Paula Dwyer of Bloomberg News.

You can RSVP here.

Whether it be hateful slurs directed at Muslim immigrants, acts of discrimination that target indigenous peoples, or violence against minority populations in South and Southeast Asia, hatred towards vulnerable communities is increasingly gaining momentum. Viral videos shared on social media in recent times have particularly played an important role in exposing violations against humanity that stoke the flames of hatred and prejudice.

To ensure that video footage of acts of hatred is verifiable and has evidentiary value in a court of law, there are certain tips and techniques that will augment the efforts of activists, journalists, filmmakers and citizens on the ground. It’s important to understand how you can help as a witness to hate-fuelled crime.

Translations in Burmese, Tamil and Sinhala will be available soon.
To learn more, follow our Asia-Pacific team on Twitter and Facebook.

ICE continues to surveil, target, and harass immigrant communities, often showing up at homes in nondescript clothing, identifying as police officers, or using fabricated stories to gain entry. In an escalating climate of fear and uncertainty for immigrant communities, WITNESS and IDP remain committed to protecting immigrant communities and supporting activists and organizers. 

Filming these encounters on a cellphone or other device, if possible, can help expose illegal activity and human rights abuses committed by ICE officers, deter violence, substantiate reports and serve as evidence. However, if footage isn’t captured and/or shared safely and ethically, there can be unintended harm to both the person being filmed and the person filming.

Join our webinar to learn more about the opportunities and perils for filming ICE, and how to safely, ethically and effectively document encounters. Register to attend #EyesOnICE here!

Stay tuned for information about our next webinar on July 18th that will cover community responses to ICE and documentation efforts already being deployed.

For general Know Your Rights information on encounters with ICE, check out IDP’s website (available in multiple languages). And check out our tip sheet for filming ICE below (also available in Spanish).

Webinar Presenters:

Michelle Paris is the Staff Attorney, Training & Resources Director at IDP. She brings to the work several years as a public defender in the Criminal Defense Practice at The Bronx Defenders, where she developed a keen understanding of the challenges of representing immigrant clients. Michelle was previously awarded an Equal Justice Works Fellowship focused on indigent defense for defendants with mental health issues. Michelle is a graduate of Stanford Law School where she was a student attorney with Stanford Law’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. She was also Board Member of the Stanford Black Law Students Association, a coordinator and translator for the Housing Pro Bono Program, a Juvenile Detention Facility Teacher for Street Law, an Editor for the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and a member of the Stanford Latino Law Students Association.

Palika Makam is the Program Coordinator for WITNESS’ US work. She supports activists and communities to use video safely, ethically and effectively to document human rights violations involving police and immigration officials, and protect the rights of LGBTQ, minority, indigenous and vulnerable communities around the country. Palika brings to the work several years of training activists to use video for change in New York, Ferguson, Cape Town and The West Bank. Media she’s helped produce has been used as evidence in human rights abuse court cases, utilized for human rights campaigns, and screened in classrooms and at the UN. Palika was previously awarded an Emerging Activist Fellowship with The Social Change Initiative. She holds a BA in Journalism and Social and Cultural Analysis from NYU, and MA in International Development concentrating in human rights and media from The New School. She is a board member of The Truth Telling Project based in Ferguson, MO, and a youth board member of the ACLU Illinois Chapter.

Update: WITNESS would like to thank the Immigrant Defense Project and the over 300 people that logged on for the Eyes on Ice Webinar on June 13th. If you were unable to catch the webinar live, video and audio from the full presentation has been made available below via WITNESS’ YouTube. Find additional resources from the webinar here.

The New Media Ventures Innovation Fund selects six innovative and changemaking startups from a pool of hundreds of applicants, all of whom are finding ways to use cutting-edge technology to advance social and environmental causes and to mobilize underrepresented communities.

Mobil-Eyes-Us aims to support frontline activists who are using live video in more meaningful ways, other than through the usual ‘likes’ and ‘hearts’ from those watching these feeds. We look at existing and new technology that can turn viewers of live video into active witnesses who can provide guidance, leverage, and solidarity in real time.

Most recently a small-scale pilot of the Mobil-Eyes-Us project launched during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The pilot in Rio involved collaboration with frontline activists in communities affected by human rights violations to share a series of live-streams and provide ‘distant witnesses’ with the opportunity to witness directly what was happening, and move from being viewers to active witnesses taking action in support of frontline communities.

To learn more about our Mobil-Eyes-Us Project and Tech Advocacy, please click here.

To learn more about New Media Ventures, please click here.

First Draft News is a coalition formed in June 2015, which provides a platform for experts to share tips and tools to gather and verify eyewitness media. Its new partner network aims to expand “trust and truth in reporting information that emerges online.” The network bringing together major social network platforms as well as global newsrooms, and organizations to provide guidance, help shape policies, and provide resources and trainings to journalists and reporters using social media and the web.  

The partner network will work in conjunction with social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to find ways to streamline the verification of eyewitness media as well as increase news literacy amongst its users.

Alongside WITNESS, partners of the network include: The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, CNN, ABC News (Australia), AJ+, ProPublica, European Journalism Centre, and Amnesty International and more.

To learn more about the network and for a full list of partners, visit firstdraftnews.com/partner-network.

To learn more about First Draft News, visit https://firstdraftnews.com/. 

Over the past week, people across the United States – from Minnesota, to Louisiana, to Texas, and in between – have been robbed of those rights. For this denial and the senseless loss of life, we are grieving.

But we maintain our steadfast commitment to supporting those working for change. We must move, with great urgency, on a path that leads to equality for all.

Featured image is a detail from a photograph by Grace Ghinger in the project Preserve the Baltimore Uprising 2015. The original photograph can be seen here. 

A disturbing number of these violent incidents are filmed by bystanders who capture and then share the footage as a source of entertainment. Use the right search terms on the most popular video hosting sites and you’ll find thousands of them.

The WITNESS Media Lab and WML Curation Fellow Karen Stevenson have just announced a new project which will source and analyze “data from eyewitness videos of violent acts against transgender and gender-nonconforming people that have been captured, posted, engaged with, and shared for entertainment.” From the announcement blog, Karen continues:

We believe that the findings can raise greater awareness and spark discussion of the cultural and political climate that is fostering discrimination, dehumanizing victims, and encouraging violence. In partnership with advocacy groups, activists, and academics, we will review and distribute the data along with resources and tools that will help them more effectively use eyewitness videos for their work.

Our aim is to share this information to inform and create guidance for advocacy groups, journalists, law enforcement, tech companies and more to help prevent re-victimization and end this discrimination.

Read the full announcement here and stay tuned for more analysis coming during Pride Month and into July.

Western Sahara is one of the world’s last remaining colonies, included in the UN’s list of 17 “non-self-governing territories.” Human rights violations are routinely committed by the occupying country, Morocco, against its indigenous Sahrawi population. Yet, due to the strict limitations imposed on the press, foreigners, and human rights monitors, very rarely do reports, footage, testimony or other evidence of abuse emerge and come  to the attention of the international community.

Watching Western Sahara aims to ensure that these videos are seen and used to monitor human rights in Western Sahara–something traditional institutions of human rights investigators and international correspondents have thus far been prevented from doing.

The project launch comes just weeks before the annual United Nations Security Council vote on whether to continue the peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, known as MINURSO. The April 28 vote will mark the 25th anniversary of the ceasefire and the creation of MINURSO   which, as many advocates have pointed out, is the only modern UN peacekeeping mission that does not include a human rights monitoring mandate. It also comes weeks after Morocco expelled a large part of MINURSO staff from the territory, sparking the most serious diplomatic and military crisis since the 1991 ceasefire. This year also marks the 40th anniversary of Morocco’s occupation.

More about this project and Western Sahara can be found here: https://lab.witness.org/launching-watching-western-sahara/ and https://lab.witness.org/projects/citizen-video-in-western-sahara/

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FiSahara uses film to entertain, convey knowledge and empower refugees from the Western Sahara, who have lived in exile in remote camps in Southwestern Algeria since 1975. @FiSahara

Meedan (creators of Checkdesk platform) builds digital tools for global journalism and translation with a focus on open source investigation of digital media and crowdsourced translation of social media. With commercial, media and university partners, we support research, curriculum development, and new forms of digital storytelling. Other Checkdesk projects include Bellingcat. @Checkdesk

The WITNESS Media Lab is dedicated to addressing the challenges of finding, verifying, and contextualizing eyewitness videos to advance its use as a powerful tool for human rights documentation and advocacy. It is a project of WITNESS and collaboration with the News Lab at Google. @WITNESS_Lab

Top still from an Equipe Media video of a protest in Laayoune in response to the death of political prisoner Brahim Saika on April 15, 2016.