Identifying Difficult Problems in Cyberlaw - User contributions [en]

Problem Statement and Introduction

2011-02-05T00:08:55Z

Efletcher:

The average citizen’s ability to capture video in countries around the world – in the form of cheap digital recorders and cell phone cameras – combined with the spread of free online video hosting websites has created a powerful new tool for human rights. But, with some notable exceptions,<ref> See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha-Soltan</ref> this tool has not been harnessed to the extent that it could or should be. In our research, we identified some problems that led to this state of affairs and then attempted to work out practical solutions. This Section is particularly focused on describing the problems we identified.

==Historical Overview==

Video has long been recognized as a uniquely powerful tool with which to document human rights abuse and advocate for change. Videos and photographs from the liberated Nazi concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau documented the horrific abuses of the Holocaust and precipitated the international demand that Nazi leaders be brought to justice.<ref> See http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/liberation_camps_01.shtml</ref> Soon after home televisions proliferated in the United States, video had a tremendous effect on the Civil Rights movement. Stark images of discrimination, segregation, and brutality, such as those surrounding the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas’s public schools in 1957, captured the American attention.<ref> See, e.g., Gene Roberts & Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation 182 (2006) (“the daily visual broadcasts of news as it happened [in Little Rock] had a profound impact on the nation’s understanding of the race drama in the South.”)</ref> Domestically, many Americans, including many of the journalists themselves, were appalled and thus motivated to promote and advocate for change.<ref> See generally id at Chapter 11.</ref> The continued reports out of Little Rock also proved to be a significant source of embarrassment for the United States internationally, which generated an entirely different set of pressures on the Eisenhower administration.<ref>Michael L. Krenn, “Unfinished Business”: Segregation and Diplomacy at the 1958 World’s Fair, 20 Diplomatic History 591 (1996), available at: http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/DH%20articles/African%20Americans/krenn.pdf </ref>

However, at this time the video cameras belonged to large corporations that could afford the new and expensive technology needed to both capture and broadcast video. The networks could exercise a strong amount of editorial control with regards to the quantity and type of content recorded and broadcast.

The spread of camcorders and videocassettes made it easier for individual citizens to document human rights violations and abuse. In the United States, the dramatic home video footage of Rodney King’s 1991 beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers stirred up public awareness and concern over police brutality and discrimination. Shortly thereafter, the human rights organization Witness was created with the goal of putting camcorders in the hands of human rights activists to help them document abuse.<ref> http://www.witness.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=78</ref> At that point in time, however, the means of distribution and broadcast of video were still largely controlled by major networks. Human rights activists could capture video more easily, but they could not guarantee an audience.

In recent years the spread of ubiquitous cheap cell phone cameras combined with free online video hosting has made it possible for millions of people to capture video and broadcast it to the world. While there are examples of poignant videos that have spread in recent years and dramatically captured the public’s attention,<ref> See supra note 1.</ref> video for human rights does not appear to have taken off as one might expect in light of these democratizing technologies.

==The Problems==

The raw number of video-capable devices operating in oppressive regimes suggests capacity for a lot more video sharing than currently occurs.<ref>Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use. While many of the phones operating in oppressive regimes will not have video cameras, it is reasonable to think that a significant portion do have recording capabilities, meaning that millions of such cameras are currently operational.</ref> There are well-documented problems facing the people who share videos online right now that may also serve to prevent the medium from reaching its full potential. This section seeks to identify some of those problems and begin to sketch out the solutions developed more fully in subsequent sections of our project.

===Reprisals===

One of the biggest areas of concern in the human rights media space is reprisals by adversaries, which are typically governments or their officials, but may also include corporate actors or others. The reprisals may be targeted at any person involved in the video recording, production, or dissemination.

First, and perhaps most obviously, the person doing the filming or uploading/exfiltrating the video may be targeted for punishment.<ref>See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8487179.stm (describing the arrest of one Burmese journalist for cooperation with news media and noting that another journalist received a 20 year prison sentence “after a military court found she had provided video for the Democratic Voice of Burma.”)</ref> Authorities may have a number of ways of identifying the source of video that appears online. For example, they could be monitoring or logging Internet traffic within their borders, allowing them to easily track less sophisticated Internet users who attempt to post data. Even more sophisticated users will be vulnerable to governments that use correspondingly sophisticated snooping techniques. In addition, governments might be able to use metadata or circumstantial evidence from the videos after they are broadcast to identify authors. Even if such information is not immediately accessible to the average web user, governments may exert pressure on host websites to reveal information kept internally, such as server logs or private messages.<ref>For example, Yahoo! provided substantial information regarding at least one journalist to the Chinese government in 2005, citing its obligation “to operate within each country's laws.” See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4221538.stm.</ref> Large multinational corporations that serve as content or communication platforms might be particularly susceptible to this form of government pressure because of the interests of their employees and shareholders.<ref>See generally Goldsmith & Wu, Who Controls the Internet 49–86 (2006).</ref>

Second, the person or people filmed in human rights media might be targeted for punishment. After the 2009 protests in Iran, the government circulated photographs and stills from videos in an attempt to identify anti-government protesters.<ref>See http://www.gerdab.ir/fa/pages/?cid=422; http://hub.witness.org/en/node/11999</ref> Traditionally, documentary filmmakers in the human rights arena operated by asking for consent from their subjects,<ref> A discussion regarding informed consent and the need to protect subjects can be found at http://blog.witness.org/2010/06/protecting-yourself-your-subjects-and-your-human-rights-videos-on-youtube/</ref> yet shooting spontaneous video on the street or the use video obtained second-hand may not afford filmmakers the ability to request or obtain consent from subjects. Accordingly, the need to protect the subjects depicted within videos is particularly acute for filmmakers who wish to broadcast recordings of events that may lead to reprisals against subjects of the video. Videographers might also desire to protect the dignity of a subject who has been subjected to certain types of treatment.<ref>For example, the treatment of Emad el-Kabir at the hands of the Egyptian police was particularly gruesome and documented on cell phone video. See http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1581608,00.html. While activists were able to convince the victim to come forward in this case, in future cases they might want to disseminate such footage without providing the name or identity of the victim, particularly if the victim is unknown.</ref>

===Access===

A second set of problems centers around problems of access both by uploaders and by viewers. It is well-known that many repressive regimes block or limit access to the Internet or particular websites.<ref>Or in the case of Egypt, currently, the entire internet.</ref> Undoubtedly, repressive regimes would seek to limit access to content hosting sites for people who would like to upload videos documenting human rights abuses. Even if a website can use technical workarounds that enhance safety and access, such as VPNs, public key encryption, or other methods of evading Internet-blocking, they face the problem of communicating this information to people on the ground in repressive regimes.

Furthermore, some actors have shown a willingness to actively attack human rights websites via DDoS and other methods in order to prevent visitors from uploading or watching video, creating serious access problems for technically unsophisticated websites.<ref>See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/2010_DDoS_Attacks_Human_Rights_and_Media.pdf</ref> It then becomes highly important that any website billing itself as a human rights repository be able to maintain access and uptime for all visitors.

===Audience===

Finally, there is no single place to “go” in order to find new human rights media or video content. In December 2007, Witness created The Hub to provide a central repository for human rights video.<ref>http://hub.witness.org/</ref> However, it discontinued accepting new content in 2009, citing technical difficulties and changing priorities.<ref>See http://blog.witness.org/2010/08/update-on-the-hub-and-witness-new-online-strategy/</ref> At present, the spread of human rights video content appears to be primarily viral, and therefore, a bit haphazard. A number of disjointed avenues exist for distribution, but there is no centralized channel or place that serves as a home for content. One might also be concerned about the authenticity and/or lack of context that accompanies videos posted to disparate, relatively unknown hosts by anonymous authors.

In our view, a host that consistently provides authentic videos of interest to the human rights community, media, and concerned people throughout the world would be a strong step forward. By developing a consistent track record of impact, such a site could then develop a strong reputation encouraging new content to be sent.

==Solutions==

Pharos represents our solutions to many of these problems. Some of the solutions are technical, but many are organizational. It would be entirely possible for actors to tackle some or all of these problems individually, but our hope and belief is that one organization could take on the entire set of issues most effectively. Working with existing organizations and developing a track record of safety, security, judgment, and impact would start a virtuous cycle that could have an immense impact on human rights advocacy throughout the world.

==References==
<references/>

Pharos

2011-02-04T23:51:28Z

Efletcher:

[[Image:Pharos.png|400px]]

Our contribution towards creating a better Internet is a new organization, Pharos, that will serve to enable, protect, and promote human rights media from around the world. Our starting premise is that there is an immense capability to capture video in the form of relatively cheap cell phone cameras and other digital recorders. Importantly, it has also become much easier to post such video online for free. This combination of developments should have led to a dramatic expansion in video to promote human rights and to expose human rights violations, but our view is that this development has not occurred.

Thus we set out to identify the obstacles that might be preventing or inhibiting the spread of human rights media, as well as to study existing services and solutions that could be used to surmount these obstacles. As a whole, we found that existing services are inadequate for a range of reasons including: susceptibility to government pressure, lack of security, lack of publicity, and many others. While our initial discussions and research led us to consider specific solutions to discrete problems, the interwoven nature of many of the problems led us to consider the viability and desirability of a single organization that could meet the many challenges simultaneously.

Accordingly, we propose Pharos as a solution to these many problems in the aggregate. It should be noted, however, that within these pages readers will still find discussions of many discrete problems pertaining to human rights media, as well as corresponding suggestions for solutions that could be implemented immediately by new applications or existing services (e.g. software making it easy to blur the faces of protesters or more secure upload platforms). In our view, Pharos is an ambitious endeavor aimed at solving the many problems inhibiting the spread of human rights media, but addressing any of these problems individually would also be a highly worthwhile endeavor that has the promise of creating a better Internet.

==[[Problem Statement and Introduction]]==
==[[Existing Services]]==
==[[Pharos - Central Idea]]==
==[[Pharos - Organization and Governance]]==
==Pharos - Technical Capabilities==
==[[Challenges]]==

Pharos - Organization and Governance

2011-02-04T00:57:35Z

Efletcher: /* A Wider Network */

Pharos will be built around its core mission: to protect, enable and promote human rights media. The challenge will be to interpret the mission into clear principles, upon which the organization will be able to function deftly and responsibly.

It will have two bodies, the board of directors and the day-to-day team, to establish & to implement these principles. The first will be responsible for formulating a clear statement of Pharos' principles and, in difficult or changing circumstances, interpreting how they should be applied. The implementation team will oversee the functioning of the site, protect the security of the data, and manage relations with other content publishers and users.

[[Image:Internal structure.png|300px|thumb|right|Pharos's Organizational Chart]]
Alongside Pharos' formal organization, we envision a worldwide network that Pharos can promote active and appropriate submissions, as well as providing information to submitters about to do so securely. The network can also supply Pharos with the necessary contextual information to provide alongside the video. While Pharos does not want to reveal any information about the people in the video, it does want to provide information that will help explain where the event occurred, in what circumstances, and related to what underlying factors.

== The Board of Directors ==
The Board of Directors will include a variety of professionals and experts with proven experience in human rights, freedom of expression, human security, and international relations. Like other mission driven organizations, we want to draw members from several different fields to ensure that the principles are written in a rich and thoughtful way. We envision some of the members may be human rights attorneys, former diplomats, professors, journalists, activists, and IT professionals.

Their initial task will be to draw up a clear mission statement and list of principles, upon which Pharos will accept, process, and distribute content. We envision that the mission statement will be 'To Promote Freedom of Expression and Protect Human Rights'. It should provide a clear, but general, vision of why Pharos exists. Ideally, these principles will be sufficient guidelines for how the operations will be carried out day to day. After its initial meetings, the board will only have to meet quarterly to review the operations of Pharos. But in case there are some submissions that are particularly difficult to evaluate, the Board should be on call for

The list of guiding principles will necessarily be more specific. These will determine which videos Pharos will process, publish, and distribute, and which it will not. Other organizations, like CNN's I-Reporter and Witness' The Hub, have formulated content policies that provide useful baselines for Pharos.
[[Image:Cnn i report.PNG|200px|thumb|left|CNN I-Report's submission guidelines]]
[[Image:The hub2.PNG|200px|thumb|left|The Hub's submission guidelines]]
We envision Pharos' list may be similar. It may contain prohibitions against which types of content will not be allowed, unless justifiable to the message -- like on the grounds of extreme violence, cruelty to animals, or explicit sexuality. But because of Pharos' concern for human rights abuses, it must expect that many legitimate videos may include violence, foul language, and sexuality in the context of abuse. The Board will draw up a general rule upon which legitimate versus illegitimate content can be distinguished. Their public guidelines about submissions may resemble CNN I-Report's -- general and user-friendly -- but privately they can hold detailed discussions about particular videos that may walk the line between appropriate and obscene.

In its guiding principles, the Board must also spell out how to approach videos that have been sent anonymously and cannot be verified. Pharos' general policy is that it will accept any content sent to it, and will only publish content related to human rights. The goal is to have a quick turn-around, so that all submissions, after being evaluated and scrubbed clean, will be posted and distributed immediately. Pharos can have a badge system (like CNN's I-Report) that declares whether the video has been verified as accurate and reliable by Pharos standards. A video without a badge will be understood as not necessarily real or trustworthy.

If the content arrives from an unknown source, Pharos must be concerned that it has been edited to misrepresent reality or is a lie outright.
We recognize that there has been a history of forged abuses, including with videos of abuses that have been manufactured to give the appearance of an abuse when there has not been one. We are aware that competing groups, particularly in long-standing conflicts, use allegations of human rights abuse as tools to promote their political agenda, rather than strictly to protect human rights principles. We do not want to be drawn into such disputes, if it is possible.
The Board, relying on its own knowledge and its network of contacts, will have to make the difficult calls whether to publish videos that are suspected of being edited or forged. Other human rights organizations must make similar determinations in whether to publish accounts of abuse, that may have been exaggerated or falsified. Pharos can borrow their insights into how to maker responsible choices on questionable content.

== The Implementation Team ==
The Implementation Team -- made up of a Tech Team and a Content one -- will work according to the directives established by the Board. It will be responsible for ensuring the site operates smoothly, that the content is protected, and that it is distributed promptly and fully to the appropriate publishers. If Pharos hosts content on its own site, the team will ensure that the media is presented in a timely and usable manner.

The Tech team will be charged with matters of security and stability. They will maintain the website, and scrub each video of all identifiable content and metadata.

Pharos may be besieged with videos at certain times (like, if there is a high-profile crisis going on) and it should be built not to crash during an intesnse spurt of activity. The site may also be subject to DDOS attacks, or other attempted take-downs. The tech team must devise a strategy -- whether it involves mirroring, hosting with a major company, or otherwise -- to insulate Pharos from such attacks. Pharos should be reliably available, particularly in the face of attacks from those actors who do not want a certain video to be seen, and during times of crisis when more users want to upload and to view human rights media.

Security of the content must also be a priority of the Tech Team. If Pharos retains unscrubbed versions of the content it receives -- the videos with distinguishing features still visible, or with metadata attached -- they must be protected from any posible intrusion. Pharos must be able to promise its uploaders that no one will ever be able to trace the video back to them. If Pharos keeps any logs of the videos have been submitted, like how they arrived or when they did, these logs should receive similarly high levels of security.

[[Image:Pharos_Slide_-_Encryption_Key_Distribution.png|300px|thumb|right|Pharos' public key encryption]]

If Pharos decides to offer uploaders a public key encryption service, then the Tech team will have to ensure the absolute security of its encryption process. The private key it uses to decrypt the submitted files will have to be guarded so that no technological or human infiltration is possible. We expect the Tech team to hire out a private security firm that can ensure the utmost security is possible.

The Content team will focus more on soliciting media, determining whether it fits the mission, and publishing it as widely and fully as possible. They will use the Board's guiding principles as the basis for their decisions about whether a submission is appropriate for Pharos. They can approach the Board if a video is particularly challenging.

[[Image:Pharos_Diagram_-_right_side_-_dsitribution.png|300px|thumb|right|Content distribution]]

The Content team will be responsible for distributing the media to as many sources as possible. They may also provide contextual information alongside the actual file -- with any information that they can verify about where it was created, at what time, and under what circumstances. They will not reveal anything that could identify how they received the video or who is involved in it.

The Pharos team will cultivate a network of human rights organizations, journalists and academics worldwide, upon whom it can rely when trying to evaluate a video. If they need to learn more about the circumstances in which the video may have been produced, they can call upon this network for general information about the context. If a video is suspect, they may also contact this network to try to determine more about its reliability.

The network will also be useful in soliciting videos. They can distribute their public key via these organizations, which may produce human rights media on their own, or which may be the local contact points for people who are not activists, but have ended up with documentation of abuse on their hardware. These local organizations can instruct people on how to submit their media securely, directing them to Pharos and with guidance on using public keys, Tor, or other methods that will ensure some security.

== A Wider Network ==
Pharos need not be a sole office in a Western country. Though this may be its central place, it could include a worldwide network of localized publishers. Taking the model of human rights organizations, there could be regional or continental Pharos Hubs. The local versions could have more translation and language support tailored to the area, and it could have distribution networks that are focused less on US news media, and more on local media.

A less centralized system would help insure that Pharos does not make decisions that are divorced from local realities. Local hubs will be more attuned to which videos may be forgeries or editing; they will also be able to contextualize videos and provide consumers with fuller explanations of why the abuse occurred and what response would be best.

There could be two main problems with a more dispersed Pharos. First, local offices may be more biased about the content submissions. Because the employees will be more directly invested in the region, they may not publish any video that they consider could harm their political party or movement. A centralized Pharos organization would be more separate from local organizations (and though that makes them less knowledgeable about the context of a video) it makes them less biased in deciding which content to distribute.

Second, local Pharos operations will be more liable to security attacks or governmental requests. If they are working in a country that does not have strong protections on freedom of expression, their site may be blocked or their employees may be subject to prosecution for their work. Moreover, their offices, records, and stored content may be infiltrated or subpoenaed. It will be harder to guarantee uploaders security if the office itself is not immune to attack or investigations. If they use public-private key encryption systems, the key may be more easily compromised as well.

The ideal would be for Pharos to be balanced between a centralized, Western-based office and a worldwide network that can offer more local support and contextualization. Security concerns may be the overriding ones. Pharos must be able to guarantee its uploaders absolute anonymity, and protect its own employees from prosecution or attack. If the organization could maintain this high level of security while still partnering with organizations worldwide, and perhaps even delegating some decision-making and hosting to them, that would ensure that Pharos was better attuned to situations on the ground and protected from forged content.

Existing Services

2011-02-04T00:42:47Z

Efletcher: /* Fourth Quadrant */

Human rights videos are currently disseminated through a variety of traditional and new media outlets. While these services have allowed many important human rights videos to reach an unprecedented audience, they are currently inadequate in two ways. First, none of the existing solutions have the proper alignment of incentives to support human rights media. Second, none of the services provide both secure anonymous uploading mechanisms and tools to ensure the anonymity of the videos’ subjects.

==Alignment of Incentives==

In order to explain why none of the current solutions have adequately solved the problems facing human rights media, it is helpful to plot these solutions using two important variables. First, the horizontal axis measures how susceptible these organizations are to government and financial pressures. Organizations that are more susceptible to pressure can be found on the right-hand side of the chart, while organizations that are resistant to these pressures reside on the left-hand side. Second, the vertical axis looks at the extent to which an organization filters the content it publishes. At the top, non-hierarchical organizations generally take a hands-off approach to the content available on their websites. Hierarchical organizations, on the other hand, exercise great control in the selection and promotion of human rights media. The basic chart is presented below.

[[Image:CurrentOrgs1.png]]

===Mapping the Competition===

====Second Quadrant====
So what organizations currently fill this space? The second quadrant, in the upper right of the chart, includes for-profit, multinational organizations that host user-generated content. YouTube and Facebook are two popular organizations that fall directly into this quadrant.<ref>Other organizations might include Flickr, Vimeo, Veoh, and Metacafe.</ref> Anyone with access can upload content on YouTube and publish it to the world, as long as it does not contain pornography or graphic violence.<ref>See [http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines?gl=GB&hl=en-GB YouTube Community Guidelines].</ref> Although YouTube is well-suited to host and disseminate large amounts of human rights media, it is still subject to outside pressures. Governments can force YouTube to limit the availability of certain content by threatening to block the site in their country. In 2008, for example, YouTube removed a controversial video critical of Islam in order to end Pakistan’s ban of the site.<ref>See Greg Sandoval, [http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines?gl=GB&hl=en-GB Pakiston Welcomes Back YouTube], CNet (Feb. 26, 2008).</ref> Actions such as these demonstrate that sites like YouTube have a serious misalignment of interests and are not perfectly suitable to serve as publishers of human rights media.

====Third Quadrant====
Actors in the third quadrant also do not provide an ideal platform for promoting human rights media. This space is dominated by traditional news organizations such as the New York Times, CNN, Reuters, and the Associated Press, as well as newer user-generated services like CNN iReport. Although these organizations are subject to many of the same financial pressures as quadrant one organizations, they are generally less willing to cater to oppressive governments. The real problem with using these organizations to promote human rights media, however, is the hierarchical structure they use to select content. Many organizations lack a system by which users can send in their content for publication, forcing them use services like YouTube. Even if an organization does accept user-generated content, editors ultimately decide which information is worthy of the limited time or space they have to present the news. When these large news organizations cover human rights abuses, they often focus on countries where Western powers have some involvement.<ref> For example, one study of the New York Times found that "[a]ttention to abuses occurs primarily in countries that were strategically instrumental during the cold war and in countries where there is clear U.S. involvement." See Caliendo et al., [http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/harvard_international_journal_of_press_politics/v004/4.4caliendo.html All the News That's Fit to Print? New York Times Coverage of Human-Rights Violations].</ref> As a result, important human rights media may not be chosen for publication.

====Fourth Quadrant====
The fourth quadrant contains most of the current human rights organizations., including Amnesty International and Witness.org. These groups are non-profit organizations with a dedicated focus on promoting human rights. Although governments can forcibly remove these organizations, it will be more difficult to pressure them into compromising their ideological positions. Like CNN and the New York Times, however, quadrant four organizations all currently employ hierarchical methods for publishing human rights content, making value judgments about which content the world should see. Some organizations even chose to shoot their own footage of human rights events. Amnesty International, for instance, frequently publishes its own content gathered by affiliates rather than user-generated videos.<ref>See [http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/video-and-audio Amnesty International Video and Audio]. Most of the videos on this site are accompanied by Amnesty International commentary and background on the country being highlighted.</ref> Additionally, organizations like Witness.org have shifted their focus away from curating and hosting human rights videos. The mission of Witness.org is now to encourage people on the ground to produce human rights videos by giving them access to equipment and training.<ref>See [http://www.witness.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=266&Itemid=196 What is WITNESS?].</ref>

[[Image:CurrentOrgs3.png]]

===A Gap in the First Quadrant===

Existing organizations do a good job encouraging people to create human rights media and often bring these videos to the attention of the world, but we believe many of these videos are never seen. There is currently no viable organization for human rights media that is both resistant to pressure and non-hierarchical.

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol that exists in the first quadrant, but it is not a viable solution to the problems we have identified. First, it would be impossible to guarantee that all of the videos on a BitTorrent server were related to human rights, and these servers would likely be overrun by spam and other content. Second, in order to download content using BitTorrent, another user must be hosting that information. In countries with serious human rights abuses, Internet access may not be consistent or users may not wish to host the content for fear of being identified by the government. It will also be difficult to convince users to download videos in the first place, and then continue uploading them. If users stop uploading a video it can disappear from the torrent forever, whereas a video on Pharos would remain available forever. Third, there are simply not enough people on BitTorrent to make it an effective solution. While everyone has access to an Internet browser, BitTorrent requires additional software that most users will not be willing to install. Fourth, BitTorrent lacks an effective interface that would allow users to quickly browse and share important human rights videos. Thus, the effective and timely dissemination of human rights media will require something more than BitTorrent.

Additionally, the Hub was an offshoot of Witness.org that hosted user-submitted human rights media from 2007 to 2009, but it has since shut down. <ref>See [http://hub.witness.org/ Important Update About the Hub].</ref> While over 3000 videos remain on the site, no new videos can be uploaded.<ref>See Priscila Neri, [ http://hub.witness.org/en/HUB2Years 2 Years of the Hub – A Look Back].</ref> This organization served an important function, and we believe Pharos should pick up where the Hub left off. Unlike the Hub, however, Pharos will anonymize all user-generated content and facilitate its publication on other popular news sites.

Pharos is therefore the only organization that will currently occupy the first quadrant. Pharos’ non-profit status leaves it immune to many of the tactics that governments have effectively used against profit-seeking companies. Additionally, the non-hierarchical nature of Pharos’ content publishing allows it to effectively disseminate human rights media and make it widely available.

[[Image:CurrentOrgs2.png]]

==Anonymization==

Pharos offers anonymity in two ways. First, people can upload their human rights videos anonymously, so that oppressive governments cannot trace the video to a specific individual. Second, Pharos offers services to strip metadata and blur identifiable faces in the videos themselves. Neither of these services are currently offered by any of the organizations presented in the section above. Anonymity has simply not been as important in the past, because it was difficult or impossible to trace the origin of a video or identify the people in it. As governments grow increasingly tech-savvy, however, we believe anonymization services will become crucial for human rights organizations that wish to receive important content without putting their sources in danger.

==References==
<references/>

Problem Statement and Introduction

2011-02-01T05:16:55Z

Efletcher:

The average citizen’s ability to capture video in countries around the world – in the form of cheap digital recorders and cell phone cameras – combined with the spread of free online video hosting websites has created a powerful new tool for human rights. But, with some notable exceptions,<ref> See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha-Soltan</ref> it seems that this tool has not been harnessed to the extent that it could or should be. Our project set out to identify the problems that led to this state of affairs as well as identify some of the solutions. This section is particularly focused on setting out the problems we identified.

=Historical Overview=

Video has long been recognized as a uniquely powerful tool with which to document human rights abuse and advocate for change. Videos and photographs from the liberated Nazi concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau documented the horrific abuses of the Holocaust and precipitated the international demand that Nazi leaders be brought to justice.<ref> See http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/liberation_camps_01.shtml</ref> Soon after home televisions proliferated in the United States, video had a tremendous effect on the Civil Rights movement. Stark images of discrimination, segregation, and brutality, such as those surrounding the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas’s public schools in 1957, captured the American attention.<ref> See, e.g., Gene Roberts & Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation 182 (2006) (“the daily visual broadcasts of news as it happened [in Little Rock] had a profound impact on the nation’s understanding of the race drama in the South.”)</ref> Domestically, many Americans, including many of the journalists themselves, were appalled and motivated to promote and advocate for change.<ref> See generally id at Chapter 11.</ref> The continued reports out of Little Rock also proved to be a significant source of embarrassment for the United States internationally, which generated an entirely different set of pressures on the Eisenhower administration.<ref>Michael L. Krenn, “Unfinished Business”: Segregation and Diplomacy at the 1958 World’s Fair, 20 Diplomatic History 591 (1996), available at: http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/DH%20articles/African%20Americans/krenn.pdf </ref>

However, at this time the video cameras belonged to large corporations that could afford the new and expensive technology needed to both capture and broadcast video. The networks could exercise a strong amount of editorial control with regards to the quantity and type of content recorded and broadcast.

The spread of camcorders and videocassettes made it easier for individual citizens to document human rights violations and abuse. In the United States, the dramatic home video footage of Rodney King’s 1991 beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers stirred up public awareness and concern over police brutality and discrimination. Shortly thereafter, the human rights organization Witness was created with the goal of putting camcorders in the hands of human rights activists to help them document abuse.<ref> http://www.witness.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=78</ref> At that point in time, however, the means of distribution and broadcast of video were still largely controlled by major networks. Human rights activists could capture video more easily, but they could not guarantee an audience.

In recent years the spread of ubiquitous cheap cell phone cameras combined with free online video hosting has made it possible for millions of people to capture video and broadcast it to the world. While there are examples of poignant videos that have spread in recent years and dramatically captured the public’s attention,<ref> See supra note 1.</ref> video for human rights does not appear to have taken off as one might expect in light of these democratizing technologies.

=The Problems=

The raw number of video-capable devices operating in oppressive regimes suggests capacity for a lot more video sharing than currently occurs.<ref>Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use. While many of the phones operating in oppressive regimes will not have video cameras, it is reasonable to think that a significant portion do have recording capabilities, meaning that millions of such cameras are currently operational.</ref> There are well-documented problems facing the people who share videos online right now that may also serve to prevent the medium from reaching its full potential. This section seeks to identify some of those problems and begin to sketch out the solutions developed more fully in subsequent sections of our project.

==Reprisals==

One of the biggest areas of concern in the human rights media space is reprisals by adversaries, which are typically governments or their officials, but may also include corporate actors or others. The reprisals may be targeted at any person involved in the video recording, production, or dissemination.

First, and perhaps most obviously, the person doing the filming or uploading/exfiltrating the video may be targeted for punishment.<ref>See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8487179.stm (describing the arrest of one Burmese journalist for cooperation with news media and noting that another journalist received a 20 year prison sentence “after a military court found she had provided video for the Democratic Voice of Burma.”)</ref> Authorities may have a number of ways of identifying the source of video that appears online. For example, they could be monitoring or logging Internet traffic within their borders, allowing them to easily track less sophisticated Internet users who attempt to post data. Even more sophisticated users will be vulnerable to governments that use correspondingly sophisticated snooping techniques. In addition, governments might be able to use metadata or circumstantial evidence from the videos after they are broadcast to identify authors. Even if such information is not immediately accessible to the average web user, governments may exert pressure on host websites to reveal information kept internally, such as server logs or private messages.<ref>For example, Yahoo! provided substantial information regarding at least one journalist to the Chinese government in 2005, citing its obligation “to operate within each country's laws.” See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4221538.stm.</ref> Large multinational corporations that serve as content or communication platforms might be particularly susceptible to this form of government pressure because of the interests of their employees and shareholders.<ref>See generally Goldsmith & Wu, Who Controls the Internet 49–86 (2006).</ref>

Second, the person or people filmed in human rights media might be targeted for punishment. After the 2009 protests in Iran, the government circulated photographs and stills from videos in an attempt to identify anti-government protesters.<ref>See http://www.gerdab.ir/fa/pages/?cid=422; http://hub.witness.org/en/node/11999</ref> Traditionally, documentary filmmakers in the human rights arena operated by asking for consent from their subjects,<ref> A discussion regarding informed consent and the need to protect subjects can be found at http://blog.witness.org/2010/06/protecting-yourself-your-subjects-and-your-human-rights-videos-on-youtube/</ref> yet shooting spontaneous video on the street or the use video obtained second-hand may not afford filmmakers the ability to request or obtain consent from subjects. Accordingly, the need to protect the subjects depicted within videos is particularly acute for filmmakers who wish to broadcast recordings of events that may lead to reprisals against subjects of the video. Videographers might also desire to protect the dignity of a subject who has been subjected to certain types of treatment.<ref>For example, the treatment of Emad el-Kabir at the hands of the Egyptian police was particularly gruesome and documented on cell phone video. See http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1581608,00.html. While activists were able to convince the victim to come forward in this case, in other cases they might want to disseminate such footage without providing the name or identity of the victim if the victim’s identity cannot be ascertained.</ref>

==Access==

A second set of problems centers around problems of access both by uploaders and by viewers. It is well-known that many repressive regimes block or limit access to the Internet or particular websites.<ref>Or in the case of Egypt, now, the entire internet.</ref> Undoubtedly, repressive regimes would seek to limit access to content hosting sites for people who would like to upload videos documenting human rights abuses. Even if a website can use technical workarounds that enhance safety and access, such as VPN, public-key encryption, or other methods of evading Internet-blocking, they face the problem of communicating this information to people on the ground in repressive regimes.

Furthermore, some actors have shown a willingness to actively attack human rights websites via DDoS and other methods in order to prevent visitors from uploading or watching video, creating serious access problems for technically unsophisticated websites.<ref>See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/2010_DDoS_Attacks_Human_Rights_and_Media.pdf</ref> It then becomes highly important that any website billing itself as a human rights repository be able to maintain access and uptime for all visitors.

==Audience==

Finally, there is no single place to “go” in order to find new human rights media or video content. In December 2007, Witness created The Hub to provide a central repository for human rights video.<ref>http://hub.witness.org/</ref> However, they discontinued accepting new content in 2009, citing technical difficulties and changing priorities.<ref>See http://blog.witness.org/2010/08/update-on-the-hub-and-witness-new-online-strategy/</ref> At present, the spread of human rights video content appears to be primarily viral, and therefore, a bit haphazard. A number of disjointed avenues exist for distribution, but there is no centralized channel or place that serves as a home for content. One might also be concerned about the authenticity and/or lack of context that accompanies videos posted to disparate, relatively unknown hosts by anonymous authors.

In our view, a host that consistently provides authentic videos of interest to the human rights community, media, and concerned people throughout the world would be a strong step forward. By developing a consistent track record of impact, such a site could then develop a strong reputation encouraging new content to be sent.

=Solutions=

Pharos represents our solutions to many of these problems. Some of the solutions are technical, but many are organizational. It would be entirely possible for actors to tackle some or all of these problems individually, but our hope and belief is that one organization could take on the entire set of issues most effectively. Working with existing organizations and developing a track record of safety, security, judgment, and impact would start a virtuous cycle that could have an immense impact on human rights advocacy throughout the world.

=References=
<references/>

Problem Statement and Introduction

2011-02-01T05:08:56Z

Efletcher:

The average citizen’s ability to capture video in countries around the world – in the form of cheap digital recorders and cell phone cameras – combined with the spread of free online video hosting websites has created a powerful new tool for human rights. But, with some notable exceptions,<ref> See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha-Soltan</ref> it seems that this tool has not been harnessed to the extent that it could or should be. Our project set out to identify the problems that led to this state of affairs as well as identify some of the solutions. This section is particularly focused on setting out the problems we identified.

=Historical Overview=

Video has long been recognized as a uniquely powerful tool with which to document human rights abuse and advocate for change. Videos and photographs from the liberated Nazi concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau documented the horrific abuses of the Holocaust and precipitated the international demand that Nazi leaders be brought to justice.<ref> See http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/liberation_camps_01.shtml</ref> Soon after home televisions proliferated in the United States, video had a tremendous effect on the Civil Rights movement. Stark images of discrimination, segregation, and brutality, such as those surrounding the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas’s public schools in 1957, captured the American attention.<ref> See, e.g., Gene Roberts & Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation 182 (2006) (“the daily visual broadcasts of news as it happened [in Little Rock] had a profound impact on the nation’s understanding of the race drama in the South.”)</ref> Domestically, many Americans, including many of the journalists themselves, were appalled and motivated to promote and advocate for change.<ref> See generally id at Chapter 11.</ref> The continued reports out of Little Rock also proved to be a significant source of embarrassment for the United States internationally, which generated an entirely different set of pressures on the Eisenhower administration.<ref>Michael L. Krenn, “Unfinished Business”: Segregation and Diplomacy at the 1958 World’s Fair, 20 Diplomatic History 591 (1996), available at: http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/DH%20articles/African%20Americans/krenn.pdf </ref>

However, at this time the video cameras belonged to large corporations that could afford the new and expensive technology needed to both capture and broadcast video. The networks could exercise a strong amount of editorial control with regards to the quantity and type of content recorded and broadcast.

The spread of camcorders and videocassettes made it easier for individual citizens to document human rights violations and abuse. In the United States, the dramatic home video footage of Rodney King’s 1991 beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers stirred up public awareness and concern over police brutality and discrimination. Shortly thereafter, the human rights organization Witness was created with the goal of putting camcorders in the hands of human rights activists to help them document abuse.<ref> http://www.witness.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=78</ref> At that point in time, however, the means of distribution and broadcast of video were still largely controlled by major networks. Human rights activists could capture video more easily, but they could not guarantee an audience.

In recent years the spread of ubiquitous cheap cell phone cameras combined with free online video hosting has made it possible for millions of people to capture video and broadcast it to the world. While there are examples of poignant videos that have spread in recent years and dramatically captured the public’s attention,<ref> See supra note 1.</ref> video for human rights does not appear to have taken off as one might expect in light of these democratizing technologies.

=The Problems=

The raw number of video-capable devices operating in oppressive regimes suggests capacity for a lot more video sharing than currently occurs. There are well-documented problems facing the people who share videos online right now that may also serve to prevent the medium from reaching its full potential. This section seeks to identify some of those problems and begin to sketch out the solutions developed more fully in subsequent sections of our project.

==Reprisals==

One of the biggest areas of concern in the human rights media space is reprisals by adversaries, which are typically governments or their officials, but may also include corporate actors or others. The reprisals may be targeted at any person involved in the video recording, production, or dissemination.

First, and perhaps most obviously, the person doing the filming or uploading/exfiltrating the video may be targeted for punishment.<ref>See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8487179.stm (describing the arrest of one Burmese journalist for cooperation with news media and noting that another journalist received a 20 year prison sentence “after a military court found she had provided video for the Democratic Voice of Burma.”)</ref> Authorities may have a number of ways of identifying the source of video that appears online. For example, they could be monitoring or logging Internet traffic within their borders, allowing them to easily track less sophisticated Internet users who attempt to post data. Even more sophisticated users will be vulnerable to governments that use correspondingly sophisticated snooping techniques. In addition, governments might be able to use metadata or circumstantial evidence from the videos after they are broadcast to identify authors. Even if such information is not immediately accessible to the average web user, governments may exert pressure on host websites to reveal information kept internally, such as server logs or private messages.<ref>For example, Yahoo! provided substantial information regarding at least one journalist to the Chinese government in 2005, citing its obligation “to operate within each country's laws.” See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4221538.stm.</ref> Large multinational corporations that serve as content or communication platforms might be particularly susceptible to this form of government pressure because of the interests of their employees and shareholders.<ref>See generally Goldsmith & Wu, Who Controls the Internet 49–86 (2006).</ref>

Second, the person or people filmed in human rights media might be targeted for punishment. After the 2009 protests in Iran, the government circulated photographs and stills from videos in an attempt to identify anti-government protesters.<ref>See http://www.gerdab.ir/fa/pages/?cid=422; http://hub.witness.org/en/node/11999</ref> Traditionally, documentary filmmakers in the human rights arena operated by asking for consent from their subjects,<ref> A discussion regarding informed consent and the need to protect subjects can be found at http://blog.witness.org/2010/06/protecting-yourself-your-subjects-and-your-human-rights-videos-on-youtube/</ref> yet shooting spontaneous video on the street or the use video obtained second-hand may not afford filmmakers the ability to request or obtain consent from subjects. Accordingly, the need to protect the subjects depicted within videos is particularly acute for filmmakers who wish to broadcast recordings of events that may lead to reprisals against subjects of the video. Videographers might also desire to protect the dignity of a subject who has been subjected to certain types of treatment.<ref>For example, the treatment of Emad el-Kabir at the hands of the Egyptian police was particularly gruesome and documented on cell phone video. See http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1581608,00.html. While activists were able to convince the victim to come forward in this case, in other cases they might want to disseminate such footage without providing the name or identity of the victim if the victim’s identity cannot be ascertained.</ref>

==Access==

A second set of problems centers around problems of access both by uploaders and by viewers. It is well-known that many repressive regimes block or limit access to the Internet or particular websites.<ref>Or in the case of Egypt, now, the entire internet.</ref> Undoubtedly, repressive regimes would seek to limit access to content hosting sites for people who would like to upload videos documenting human rights abuses. Even if a website can use technical workarounds that enhance safety and access, such as VPN, public-key encryption, or other methods of evading Internet-blocking, they face the problem of communicating this information to people on the ground in repressive regimes.

Furthermore, some actors have shown a willingness to actively attack human rights websites via DDoS and other methods in order to prevent visitors from uploading or watching video, creating serious access problems for technically unsophisticated websites.<ref>See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/2010_DDoS_Attacks_Human_Rights_and_Media.pdf</ref> It then becomes highly important that any website billing itself as a human rights repository be able to maintain access and uptime for all visitors.

==Audience==

Finally, there is no single place to “go” in order to find new human rights media or video content. In December 2007, Witness created The Hub to provide a central repository for human rights video.<ref>http://hub.witness.org/</ref> However, they discontinued accepting new content in 2009, citing technical difficulties and changing priorities.<ref>See http://blog.witness.org/2010/08/update-on-the-hub-and-witness-new-online-strategy/</ref> At present, the spread of human rights video content appears to be primarily viral, and therefore, a bit haphazard. A number of disjointed avenues exist for distribution, but there is no centralized channel or place that serves as a home for content. One might also be concerned about the authenticity and/or lack of context that accompanies videos posted to disparate, relatively unknown hosts by anonymous authors.

In our view, a host that consistently provides authentic videos of interest to the human rights community, media, and concerned people throughout the world would be a strong step forward. By developing a consistent track record of impact, such a site could then develop a strong reputation encouraging new content to be sent.

=Solutions=

Pharos represents our solutions to many of these problems. Some of the solutions are technical, but many are organizational. It would be entirely possible for actors to tackle some or all of these problems individually, but our hope and belief is that one organization could take on the entire set of issues most effectively. Working with existing organizations and developing a track record of safety, security, judgment, and impact would start a virtuous cycle that could have an immense impact on human rights advocacy throughout the world.

=References=
<references/>

Problem Statement and Introduction

2011-02-01T04:32:54Z

Efletcher:

The average citizen’s ability to capture video in countries around the world – in the form of cheap digital recorders and cell phone cameras – combined with the spread of free online video hosting websites has created a powerful new tool for human rights. But, with some notable exceptions,<ref> See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha-Soltan</ref> it seems that this tool has not been harnessed to the extent that it could or should be. Our project set out to identify the problems that led to this state of affairs as well as identify some of the solutions. This section is particularly focused on setting out the problems we identified.

=Historical Overview=

Video has long been recognized as a uniquely powerful tool with which to document human rights abuse and advocate for change. Videos and photographs from the liberated Nazi concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau documented the horrific abuses of the Holocaust and precipitated the international demand that Nazi leaders be brought to justice.<ref> See http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/liberation_camps_01.shtml</ref> Soon after home televisions proliferated in the United States, video had a tremendous effect on the Civil Rights movement. Stark images of discrimination, segregation, and brutality, such as those surrounding the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas’s public schools in 1957, captured the American attention.<ref> See, e.g., Gene Roberts & Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation 182 (2006) (“the daily visual broadcasts of news as it happened [in Little Rock] had a profound impact on the nation’s understanding of the race drama in the South.”)</ref> Domestically, many Americans, including many of the journalists themselves, were appalled and motivated to promote and advocate for change.<ref> See generally id at Chapter 11.</ref> The continued reports out of Little Rock also proved to be a significant source of embarrassment for the United States internationally, which generated an entirely different set of pressures on the Eisenhower administration.<ref>Michael L. Krenn, “Unfinished Business”: Segregation and Diplomacy at the 1958 World’s Fair, 20 Diplomatic History 591 (1996), available at: http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/DH%20articles/African%20Americans/krenn.pdf </ref>

However, at this time the video cameras belonged to large corporations that could afford the new and expensive technology needed to both capture and broadcast video. The networks could exercise a strong amount of editorial control with regards to the quantity and type of content recorded and broadcast.

The spread of camcorders and videocassettes made it easier for individual citizens to document human rights violations and abuse. In the United States, the dramatic home video footage of Rodney King’s 1991 beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers stirred up public awareness and concern over police brutality and discrimination. Shortly thereafter, the human rights organization Witness was created with the goal of putting camcorders in the hands of human rights activists to help them document abuse.<ref> http://www.witness.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=78</ref> At that point in time, however, the means of distribution and broadcast of video were still largely controlled by major networks. Human rights activists could capture video more easily, but they could not guarantee an audience.

In recent years the spread of ubiquitous cheap cell phone cameras combined with free online video hosting has made it possible for millions of people to capture video and broadcast it to the world. While there are examples of poignant videos that have spread in recent years and dramatically captured the public’s attention,<ref> See supra note 1.</ref> video for human rights does not appear to have taken off as one might expect in light of these democratizing technologies.

=The Problems=

The raw number of video-capable devices operating in oppressive regimes suggests capacity for a lot more video sharing than currently occurs. There are well-documented problems facing the people who share videos online right now that may also serve to prevent the medium from reaching its full potential. This section seeks to identify some of those problems and begin to sketch out the solutions developed more fully in subsequent sections of our project.

==Reprisals==

One of the biggest areas of concern in the human rights media space is reprisals by adversaries, which are typically governments or their officials, but may also include corporate actors or others. The reprisals may be targeted at any person involved in the video recording, production, or dissemination.

First, and perhaps most obviously, the person doing the filming or uploading/exfiltrating the video may be targeted for punishment.<ref>See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8487179.stm (describing the arrest of one Burmese journalist for cooperation with news media and noting that another journalist received a 20 year prison sentence “after a military court found she had provided video for the Democratic Voice of Burma.”)</ref> Authorities may have a number of ways of identifying the source of video that appears online. For example, they could be monitoring or logging internet traffic within their borders, allowing them to easily track less sophisticated internet users who attempt to post data. Even more sophisticated users will be vulnerable to governments that use correspondingly sophisticated snooping techniques. In addition, governments might be able to use metadata or circumstantial evidence from the videos after they are broadcast to identify authors. Even if such information is not immediately accessible to the average web user, governments may exert pressure on host websites to reveal information kept internally, such as server logs or private messages.<ref>For example, Yahoo! provided substantial information regarding at least one journalist to the Chinese government in 2005, citing its obligation “to operate within each country's laws.” See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4221538.stm.</ref> Large multinational corporations that serve as content or communication platforms might be particularly susceptible to this form of government pressure because of the interests of their employees and shareholders.<ref>See generally Goldsmith & Wu, Who Controls the Internet 49–86 (2006).</ref>

Second, the person or people filmed in human rights media might be targeted for punishment. After the 2009 protests in Iran, the government circulated photographs and stills from videos in an attempt to identify anti-government protesters.<ref>See http://www.gerdab.ir/fa/pages/?cid=422; http://hub.witness.org/en/node/11999</ref> Traditionally, documentary filmmakers in the human rights arena operated by asking for consent from their subjects,<ref> A discussion regarding informed consent and the need to protect subjects can be found at http://blog.witness.org/2010/06/protecting-yourself-your-subjects-and-your-human-rights-videos-on-youtube/</ref> yet shooting spontaneous video on the street or the use video obtained second-hand may not afford filmmakers the ability to request or obtain consent from subjects. Accordingly, the need to protect the subjects depicted within videos is particularly acute for filmmakers who wish to broadcast recordings of events that may lead to reprisals against subjects of the video. Videographers might also desire to protect the dignity of a subject who has been subjected to certain types of treatment.<ref>For example, the treatment of Emad el-Kabir at the hands of the Egyptian police was particularly gruesome and documented on cell phone video. See http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1581608,00.html. While activists were able to convince the victim to come forward in this case, in other cases they might want to disseminate such footage without providing the name or identity of the victim if the victim’s identity cannot be ascertained.</ref>

==Access==

A second set of problems centers around problems of access both by uploaders and by viewers. It is well-known that many repressive regimes block or limit access to the internet or particular websites.<ref>Or in the case of Egypt, now, the entire internet.</ref> Undoubtedly, repressive regimes would seek to limit access to content hosting sites for people who would like to upload videos documenting human rights abuses. Even if a website can use technical workarounds that enhance safety and access, such as VPN, public-key encryption, or other methods of evading internet-blocking, they face the problem of communicating this information to people on the ground in repressive regimes.

Furthermore, some actors have shown a willingness to actively attack human rights websites via DDoS and other methods in order to prevent visitors from uploading or watching video, creating serious access problems for technically unsophisticated websites.<ref>See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/2010_DDoS_Attacks_Human_Rights_and_Media.pdf</ref> It then becomes highly important that any website billing itself as a human rights repository be able to maintain access and uptime for all visitors.

==Audience==

Finally, there is no single place to “go” in order to find new human rights media or video content. In December 2007, Witness created The Hub to provide a central repository for human rights video.<ref>http://hub.witness.org/</ref> However, they discontinued accepting new content in 2009, citing technical difficulties and changing priorities.<ref>See http://blog.witness.org/2010/08/update-on-the-hub-and-witness-new-online-strategy/</ref> At present, the spread of human rights video content appears to be primarily viral, and therefore, a bit haphazard. A number of disjointed avenues exist for distribution, but there is no centralized channel or place that serves as a home for content. One might also be concerned about the authenticity and/or lack of context that accompanies videos posted to disparate, relatively unknown hosts.

In our view, a host that consistently provides authentic videos of interest to the human rights community, media, and concerned people throughout the world would be a strong step forward. By developing a consistent track record of impact, such a site could then develop a strong reputation encouraging new content to be sent.

=Solutions=

Pharos represents our solutions to many of these problems. Some of the solutions are technical, but many are organizational. It would be entirely possible for actors to tackle some or all of these problems individually, but our hope and belief is that one organization could take on the entire set of issues most effectively. Working with existing organizations and developing a track record of safety, security, judgment, and impact would start a virtuous cycle that could have an immense impact on human rights advocacy throughout the world.

=References=
<references/>

Problem Statement and Introduction

2011-02-01T04:24:37Z

Efletcher:

The average citizen’s ability to capture video in countries around the world – in the form of cheap digital recorders and cell phone cameras – combined with the spread of free online video hosting websites has created a powerful new tool for human rights. But, with some notable exceptions,<ref> See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha-Soltan</ref> it seems that this tool has not been harnessed to the extent that it could or should be. Our project set out to identify the problems that led to this state of affairs as well as identify some of the solutions. This section is particularly focused on setting out the problems we identified.

I. Historical Overview

Video has long been recognized as a uniquely powerful tool with which to document human rights abuse and advocate for change. Videos and photographs from the liberated Nazi concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau documented the horrific abuses of the Holocaust and precipitated the international demand that Nazi leaders be brought to justice.<ref> See http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/liberation_camps_01.shtml</ref> Soon after home televisions proliferated in the United States, video had a tremendous effect on the Civil Rights movement. Stark images of discrimination, segregation, and brutality, such as those surrounding the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas’s public schools in 1957, captured the American attention.<ref> See, e.g., Gene Roberts & Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation 182 (2006) (“the daily visual broadcasts of news as it happened [in Little Rock] had a profound impact on the nation’s understanding of the race drama in the South.”)</ref> Domestically, many Americans, including many of the journalists themselves, were appalled and motivated to promote and advocate for change.<ref> See generally id at Chapter 11.</ref> The continued reports out of Little Rock also proved to be a significant source of embarrassment for the United States internationally, which generated an entirely different set of pressures on the Eisenhower administration.<ref>Michael L. Krenn, “Unfinished Business”: Segregation and Diplomacy at the 1958 World’s Fair, 20 Diplomatic History 591 (1996), available at: http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/DH%20articles/African%20Americans/krenn.pdf </ref>

However, at this time the video cameras belonged to large corporations that could afford the new and expensive technology needed to both capture and broadcast video. The networks could exercise a strong amount of editorial control with regards to the quantity and type of content recorded and broadcast.

The spread of camcorders and videocassettes made it easier for individual citizens to document human rights violations and abuse. In the United States, the dramatic home video footage of Rodney King’s 1991 beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers stirred up public awareness and concern over police brutality and discrimination. Shortly thereafter, the human rights organization Witness was created with the goal of putting camcorders in the hands of human rights activists to help them document abuse.<ref> http://www.witness.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=78</ref> At that point in time, however, the means of distribution and broadcast of video were still largely controlled by major networks. Human rights activists could capture video more easily, but they could not guarantee an audience.

In recent years the spread of ubiquitous cheap cell phone cameras combined with free online video hosting has made it possible for millions of people to capture video and broadcast it to the world. While there are examples of poignant videos that have spread in recent years and dramatically captured the public’s attention,<ref> See supra note 1.</ref> video for human rights does not appear to have taken off as one might expect in light of these democratizing technologies.

II. The Problem

The raw number of video-capable devices operating in oppressive regimes suggests capacity for a lot more video sharing than currently occurs. There are well-documented problems facing the people who share videos online right now that may also serve to prevent the medium from reaching its full potential. This section seeks to identify some of those problems and begin to sketch out the solutions developed more fully in subsequent sections of our project.

A. Reprisals

One of the biggest areas of concern in the human rights media space is reprisals by adversaries, which are typically governments or their officials, but may also include corporate actors or others. The reprisals may be targeted at any person involved in the video recording, production, or dissemination.

First, and perhaps most obviously, the person doing the filming or uploading/exfiltrating the video may be targeted for punishment.<ref>See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8487179.stm (describing the arrest of one Burmese journalist for cooperation with news media and noting that another journalist received a 20 year prison sentence “after a military court found she had provided video for the Democratic Voice of Burma.”)</ref> Authorities may have a number of ways of identifying the source of video that appears online. For example, they could be monitoring or logging internet traffic within their borders, allowing them to easily track less sophisticated internet users who attempt to post data. Even more sophisticated users will be vulnerable to governments that use correspondingly sophisticated snooping techniques. In addition, governments might be able to use metadata or circumstantial evidence from the videos after they are broadcast to identify authors. Even if such information is not immediately accessible to the average web user, governments may exert pressure on host websites to reveal information kept internally, such as server logs or private messages.<ref>For example, Yahoo! provided substantial information regarding at least one journalist to the Chinese government in 2005, citing its obligation “to operate within each country's laws.” See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4221538.stm.</ref> Large multinational corporations that serve as content or communication platforms might be particularly susceptible to this form of government pressure because of the interests of their employees and shareholders.<ref>See generally Goldsmith & Wu, Who Controls the Internet 49–86 (2006).</ref>

Second, the person or people filmed in human rights media might be targeted for punishment. After the 2009 protests in Iran, the government circulated photographs and stills from videos in an attempt to identify anti-government protesters.<ref>See http://www.gerdab.ir/fa/pages/?cid=422; http://hub.witness.org/en/node/11999</ref> Traditionally, documentary filmmakers in the human rights arena operated by asking for consent from their subjects,<ref> A discussion regarding informed consent and the need to protect subjects can be found at http://blog.witness.org/2010/06/protecting-yourself-your-subjects-and-your-human-rights-videos-on-youtube/</ref> yet shooting spontaneous video on the street or the use video obtained second-hand may not afford filmmakers the ability to request or obtain consent from subjects. Accordingly, the need to protect the subjects depicted within videos is particularly acute for filmmakers who wish to broadcast recordings of events that may lead to reprisals against subjects of the video. Videographers might also desire to protect the dignity of a subject who has been subjected to certain types of treatment.<ref>For example, the treatment of Emad el-Kabir at the hands of the Egyptian police was particularly gruesome and documented on cell phone video. See http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1581608,00.html. While activists were able to convince the victim to come forward in this case, in other cases they might want to disseminate such footage without providing the name or identity of the victim if the victim’s identity cannot be ascertained.</ref>

B. Access

A second set of problems centers around problems of access both by uploaders and by viewers. It is well-known that many repressive regimes block or limit access to the internet or particular websites. Undoubtedly, repressive regimes would seek to limit access to content hosting sites for people who would like to upload videos documenting human rights abuses. Even if a website can use technical workarounds that enhance safety and access, such as VPN, public-key encryption, or other methods of evading internet-blocking, they face the problem of communicating this information to people on the ground in repressive regimes.

Furthermore, some actors have shown a willingness to actively attack human rights websites via DDoS and other methods in order to prevent visitors from uploading or watching video. It then becomes highly important that any website billing itself as a human rights repository be able to maintain access and uptime for all visitors.

C. Audience

Finally, there is no single place to “go” in order to find new human rights media or video content. In December 2007, Witness created The Hub to provide a central repository for human rights video. However, they discontinued accepting new content in 2009, citing technical difficulties and changing priorities. At present, the spread of human rights video content appears to be primarily viral, and therefore, a bit haphazard. A number of disjointed avenues exist for distribution, but there is no centralized channel or place that serves as a home for content. One might also be concerned about the authenticity and/or lack of context that accompanies videos posted to disparate, relatively unknown hosts.

In our view, a host that consistently provides authentic videos of interest to the human rights community, media, and concerned people throughout the world would be a strong step forward. By developing a consistent track record of impact, such a site could then develop a strong reputation encouraging new content to be sent.

III. Solutions

Pharos represents our solutions to many of these problems. Some of the solutions are technical, but many are organizational. It would be entirely possible for actors to tackle some or all of these problems individually, but our hope and belief is that one organization could take on the entire set of issues most effectively. Working with existing organizations and developing a track record of safety, security, judgment, and impact would start a virtuous cycle that could have an immense impact on human rights advocacy throughout the world.

==References==
<references/>

Problem Statement and Introduction

2011-02-01T04:17:57Z

Efletcher:

The average citizen’s ability to capture video in countries around the world – in the form of cheap digital recorders and cell phone cameras – combined with the spread of free online video hosting websites has created a powerful new tool for human rights. But, with some notable exceptions,<ref> See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha-Soltan</ref> it seems that this tool has not been harnessed to the extent that it could or should be. Our project set out to identify the problems that led to this state of affairs as well as identify some of the solutions. This section is particularly focused on setting out the problems we identified.

I. Historical Overview

Video has long been recognized as a uniquely powerful tool with which to document human rights abuse and advocate for change. Videos and photographs from the liberated Nazi concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau documented the horrific abuses of the Holocaust and precipitated the international demand that Nazi leaders be brought to justice.<ref> See http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/liberation_camps_01.shtml</ref> Soon after home televisions proliferated in the United States, video had a tremendous effect on the Civil Rights movement. Stark images of discrimination, segregation, and brutality, such as those surrounding the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas’s public schools in 1957, captured the American attention.<ref> See, e.g., Gene Roberts & Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation 182 (2006) (“the daily visual broadcasts of news as it happened [in Little Rock] had a profound impact on the nation’s understanding of the race drama in the South.”)</ref> Domestically, many Americans, including many of the journalists themselves, were appalled and motivated to promote and advocate for change.<ref> See generally id at Chapter 11.</ref> The continued reports out of Little Rock also proved to be a significant source of embarrassment for the United States internationally, which generated an entirely different set of pressures on the Eisenhower administration.<ref>Michael L. Krenn, “Unfinished Business”: Segregation and Diplomacy at the 1958 World’s Fair, 20 Diplomatic History 591 (1996), available at: http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/DH%20articles/African%20Americans/krenn.pdf </ref>

However, at this time the video cameras belonged to large corporations that could afford the new and expensive technology needed to both capture and broadcast video. The networks could exercise a strong amount of editorial control with regards to the quantity and type of content recorded and broadcast.

The spread of camcorders and videocassettes made it easier for individual citizens to document human rights violations and abuse. In the United States, the dramatic home video footage of Rodney King’s 1991 beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers stirred up public awareness and concern over police brutality and discrimination. Shortly thereafter, the human rights organization Witness was created with the goal of putting camcorders in the hands of human rights activists to help them document abuse. At that point in time, however, the means of distribution and broadcast of video were still largely controlled by major networks. Human rights activists could capture video more easily, but they could not guarantee an audience.

In recent years the spread of ubiquitous cheap cell phone cameras combined with free online video hosting has made it possible for millions of people to capture video and broadcast it to the world. While there are examples of poignant videos that have spread in recent years and dramatically captured the public’s attention, video for human rights does not appear to have taken off as one might expect in light of these democratizing technologies.

II. The Problem

The raw number of video-capable devices operating in oppressive regimes suggests capacity for a lot more video sharing than currently occurs. There are well-documented problems facing the people who share videos online right now that may also serve to prevent the medium from reaching its full potential. This section seeks to identify some of those problems and begin to sketch out the solutions developed more fully in subsequent sections of our project.

A. Reprisals

One of the biggest areas of concern in the human rights media space is reprisals by adversaries, which are typically governments or their officials, but may also include corporate actors or others. The reprisals may be targeted at any person involved in the video recording, production, or dissemination.

First, and perhaps most obviously, the person doing the filming or uploading/exfiltrating the video may be targeted for punishment. Authorities may have a number of ways of identifying the source of video that appears online. For example, they could be monitoring or logging internet traffic within their borders, allowing them to easily track less sophisticated internet users who attempt to post data. Even more sophisticated users will be vulnerable to governments that use correspondingly sophisticated snooping techniques. In addition, governments might be able to use metadata or circumstantial evidence from the videos after they are broadcast to identify authors. Even if such information is not immediately accessible to the average web user, governments may exert pressure on host websites to reveal information kept internally, such as server logs or private messages. Large multinational corporations that serve as content or communication platforms might be particularly susceptible to this form of government pressure because of the interests of their employees and shareholders.

Second, the person or people filmed in human rights media might be targeted for punishment. After the 2009 protests in Iran, the government circulated photographs and stills from videos in an attempt to identify anti-government protestors. Traditionally, documentary filmmakers in the human rights arena operated by asking for consent from their subjects, yet shooting spontaneous video on the street or the use video obtained second-hand may not afford filmmakers the ability to request or obtain consent from subjects. Accordingly, the need to protect the subjects depicted within videos is particularly acute for filmmakers who wish to broadcast recordings of events that may lead to reprisals against subjects of the video. Videographers might also desire to protect the dignity of a subject who has been subjected to certain types of treatment.

B. Access

A second set of problems centers around problems of access both by uploaders and by viewers. It is well-known that many repressive regimes block or limit access to the internet or particular websites. Undoubtedly, repressive regimes would seek to limit access to content hosting sites for people who would like to upload videos documenting human rights abuses. Even if a website can use technical workarounds that enhance safety and access, such as VPN, public-key encryption, or other methods of evading internet-blocking, they face the problem of communicating this information to people on the ground in repressive regimes.

Furthermore, some actors have shown a willingness to actively attack human rights websites via DDoS and other methods in order to prevent visitors from uploading or watching video. It then becomes highly important that any website billing itself as a human rights repository be able to maintain access and uptime for all visitors.

C. Audience

Finally, there is no single place to “go” in order to find new human rights media or video content. In December 2007, Witness created The Hub to provide a central repository for human rights video. However, they discontinued accepting new content in 2009, citing technical difficulties and changing priorities. At present, the spread of human rights video content appears to be primarily viral, and therefore, a bit haphazard. A number of disjointed avenues exist for distribution, but there is no centralized channel or place that serves as a home for content. One might also be concerned about the authenticity and/or lack of context that accompanies videos posted to disparate, relatively unknown hosts.

In our view, a host that consistently provides authentic videos of interest to the human rights community, media, and concerned people throughout the world would be a strong step forward. By developing a consistent track record of impact, such a site could then develop a strong reputation encouraging new content to be sent.

III. Solutions

Pharos represents our solutions to many of these problems. Some of the solutions are technical, but many are organizational. It would be entirely possible for actors to tackle some or all of these problems individually, but our hope and belief is that one organization could take on the entire set of issues most effectively. Working with existing organizations and developing a track record of safety, security, judgment, and impact would start a virtuous cycle that could have an immense impact on human rights advocacy throughout the world.

==References==
<references/>

Problem Statement and Introduction

2011-02-01T04:08:59Z

Efletcher:

The average citizen’s ability to capture video in countries around the world – in the form of cheap digital recorders and cell phone cameras – combined with the spread of free online video hosting websites has created a powerful new tool for human rights. But, with some notable exceptions,</ref> it seems that this tool has not been harnessed to the extent that it could or should be. Our project set out to identify the problems that led to this state of affairs as well as identify some of the solutions. This section is particularly focused on setting out the problems we identified.

I. Historical Overview

Video has long been recognized as a uniquely powerful tool with which to document human rights abuse and advocate for change. Videos and photographs from the liberated Nazi concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau documented the horrific abuses of the Holocaust and precipitated the international demand that Nazi leaders be brought to justice. Soon after home televisions proliferated in the United States, video had a tremendous effect on the Civil Rights movement. Stark images of discrimination, segregation, and brutality, such as those surrounding the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas’s public schools in 1957, captured the American attention. Domestically, many Americans, including many of the journalists themselves, were appalled and motivated to promote and advocate for change. The continued reports out of Little Rock also proved to be a significant source of embarrassment for the United States internationally, which generated an entirely different set of pressures on the Eisenhower administration.

However, at this time the video cameras belonged to large corporations that could afford the new and expensive technology needed to both capture and broadcast video. The networks could exercise a strong amount of editorial control with regards to the quantity and type of content recorded and broadcast.

The spread of camcorders and videocassettes made it easier for individual citizens to document human rights violations and abuse. In the United States, the dramatic home video footage of Rodney King’s 1991 beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers stirred up public awareness and concern over police brutality and discrimination. Shortly thereafter, the human rights organization Witness was created with the goal of putting camcorders in the hands of human rights activists to help them document abuse. At that point in time, however, the means of distribution and broadcast of video were still largely controlled by major networks. Human rights activists could capture video more easily, but they could not guarantee an audience.

In recent years the spread of ubiquitous cheap cell phone cameras combined with free online video hosting has made it possible for millions of people to capture video and broadcast it to the world. While there are examples of poignant videos that have spread in recent years and dramatically captured the public’s attention, video for human rights does not appear to have taken off as one might expect in light of these democratizing technologies.

II. The Problem

The raw number of video-capable devices operating in oppressive regimes suggests capacity for a lot more video sharing than currently occurs. There are well-documented problems facing the people who share videos online right now that may also serve to prevent the medium from reaching its full potential. This section seeks to identify some of those problems and begin to sketch out the solutions developed more fully in subsequent sections of our project.

A. Reprisals

One of the biggest areas of concern in the human rights media space is reprisals by adversaries, which are typically governments or their officials, but may also include corporate actors or others. The reprisals may be targeted at any person involved in the video recording, production, or dissemination.

First, and perhaps most obviously, the person doing the filming or uploading/exfiltrating the video may be targeted for punishment. Authorities may have a number of ways of identifying the source of video that appears online. For example, they could be monitoring or logging internet traffic within their borders, allowing them to easily track less sophisticated internet users who attempt to post data. Even more sophisticated users will be vulnerable to governments that use correspondingly sophisticated snooping techniques. In addition, governments might be able to use metadata or circumstantial evidence from the videos after they are broadcast to identify authors. Even if such information is not immediately accessible to the average web user, governments may exert pressure on host websites to reveal information kept internally, such as server logs or private messages. Large multinational corporations that serve as content or communication platforms might be particularly susceptible to this form of government pressure because of the interests of their employees and shareholders.

Second, the person or people filmed in human rights media might be targeted for punishment. After the 2009 protests in Iran, the government circulated photographs and stills from videos in an attempt to identify anti-government protestors. Traditionally, documentary filmmakers in the human rights arena operated by asking for consent from their subjects, yet shooting spontaneous video on the street or the use video obtained second-hand may not afford filmmakers the ability to request or obtain consent from subjects. Accordingly, the need to protect the subjects depicted within videos is particularly acute for filmmakers who wish to broadcast recordings of events that may lead to reprisals against subjects of the video. Videographers might also desire to protect the dignity of a subject who has been subjected to certain types of treatment.

B. Access

A second set of problems centers around problems of access both by uploaders and by viewers. It is well-known that many repressive regimes block or limit access to the internet or particular websites. Undoubtedly, repressive regimes would seek to limit access to content hosting sites for people who would like to upload videos documenting human rights abuses. Even if a website can use technical workarounds that enhance safety and access, such as VPN, public-key encryption, or other methods of evading internet-blocking, they face the problem of communicating this information to people on the ground in repressive regimes.

Furthermore, some actors have shown a willingness to actively attack human rights websites via DDoS and other methods in order to prevent visitors from uploading or watching video. It then becomes highly important that any website billing itself as a human rights repository be able to maintain access and uptime for all visitors.

C. Audience

Finally, there is no single place to “go” in order to find new human rights media or video content. In December 2007, Witness created The Hub to provide a central repository for human rights video. However, they discontinued accepting new content in 2009, citing technical difficulties and changing priorities. At present, the spread of human rights video content appears to be primarily viral, and therefore, a bit haphazard. A number of disjointed avenues exist for distribution, but there is no centralized channel or place that serves as a home for content. One might also be concerned about the authenticity and/or lack of context that accompanies videos posted to disparate, relatively unknown hosts.

In our view, a host that consistently provides authentic videos of interest to the human rights community, media, and concerned people throughout the world would be a strong step forward. By developing a consistent track record of impact, such a site could then develop a strong reputation encouraging new content to be sent.

III. Solutions

Pharos represents our solutions to many of these problems. Some of the solutions are technical, but many are organizational. It would be entirely possible for actors to tackle some or all of these problems individually, but our hope and belief is that one organization could take on the entire set of issues most effectively. Working with existing organizations and developing a track record of safety, security, judgment, and impact would start a virtuous cycle that could have an immense impact on human rights advocacy throughout the world.

==References==
<references/> See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha-Soltan

Problem Statement and Introduction

2011-02-01T04:06:01Z

Efletcher:

The average citizen’s ability to capture video in countries around the world – in the form of cheap digital recorders and cell phone cameras – combined with the spread of free online video hosting websites has created a powerful new tool for human rights. But, with some notable exceptions,</ref> it seems that this tool has not been harnessed to the extent that it could or should be. Our project set out to identify the problems that led to this state of affairs as well as identify some of the solutions. This section is particularly focused on setting out the problems we identified.

I. Historical Overview

Video has long been recognized as a uniquely powerful tool with which to document human rights abuse and advocate for change. Videos and photographs from the liberated Nazi concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau documented the horrific abuses of the Holocaust and precipitated the international demand that Nazi leaders be brought to justice. Soon after home televisions proliferated in the United States, video had a tremendous effect on the Civil Rights movement. Stark images of discrimination, segregation, and brutality, such as those surrounding the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas’s public schools in 1957, captured the American attention. Domestically, many Americans, including many of the journalists themselves, were appalled and motivated to promote and advocate for change. The continued reports out of Little Rock also proved to be a significant source of embarrassment for the United States internationally, which generated an entirely different set of pressures on the Eisenhower administration.

However, at this time the video cameras belonged to large corporations that could afford the new and expensive technology needed to both capture and broadcast video. The networks could exercise a strong amount of editorial control with regards to the quantity and type of content recorded and broadcast.

The spread of camcorders and videocassettes made it easier for individual citizens to document human rights violations and abuse. In the United States, the dramatic home video footage of Rodney King’s 1991 beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers stirred up public awareness and concern over police brutality and discrimination. Shortly thereafter, the human rights organization Witness was created with the goal of putting camcorders in the hands of human rights activists to help them document abuse. At that point in time, however, the means of distribution and broadcast of video were still largely controlled by major networks. Human rights activists could capture video more easily, but they could not guarantee an audience.

In recent years the spread of ubiquitous cheap cell phone cameras combined with free online video hosting has made it possible for millions of people to capture video and broadcast it to the world. While there are examples of poignant videos that have spread in recent years and dramatically captured the public’s attention, video for human rights does not appear to have taken off as one might expect in light of these democratizing technologies.

II. The Problem

The raw number of video-capable devices operating in oppressive regimes suggests capacity for a lot more video sharing than currently occurs. There are well-documented problems facing the people who share videos online right now that may also serve to prevent the medium from reaching its full potential. This section seeks to identify some of those problems and begin to sketch out the solutions developed more fully in subsequent sections of our project.

A. Reprisals

One of the biggest areas of concern in the human rights media space is reprisals by adversaries, which are typically governments or their officials, but may also include corporate actors or others. The reprisals may be targeted at any person involved in the video recording, production, or dissemination.

First, and perhaps most obviously, the person doing the filming or uploading/exfiltrating the video may be targeted for punishment. Authorities may have a number of ways of identifying the source of video that appears online. For example, they could be monitoring or logging internet traffic within their borders, allowing them to easily track less sophisticated internet users who attempt to post data. Even more sophisticated users will be vulnerable to governments that use correspondingly sophisticated snooping techniques. In addition, governments might be able to use metadata or circumstantial evidence from the videos after they are broadcast to identify authors. Even if such information is not immediately accessible to the average web user, governments may exert pressure on host websites to reveal information kept internally, such as server logs or private messages. Large multinational corporations that serve as content or communication platforms might be particularly susceptible to this form of government pressure because of the interests of their employees and shareholders.

Second, the person or people filmed in human rights media might be targeted for punishment. After the 2009 protests in Iran, the government circulated photographs and stills from videos in an attempt to identify anti-government protestors. Traditionally, documentary filmmakers in the human rights arena operated by asking for consent from their subjects, yet shooting spontaneous video on the street or the use video obtained second-hand may not afford filmmakers the ability to request or obtain consent from subjects. Accordingly, the need to protect the subjects depicted within videos is particularly acute for filmmakers who wish to broadcast recordings of events that may lead to reprisals against subjects of the video. Videographers might also desire to protect the dignity of a subject who has been subjected to certain types of treatment.

B. Access

A second set of problems centers around problems of access both by uploaders and by viewers. It is well-known that many repressive regimes block or limit access to the internet or particular websites. Undoubtedly, repressive regimes would seek to limit access to content hosting sites for people who would like to upload videos documenting human rights abuses. Even if a website can use technical workarounds that enhance safety and access, such as VPN, public-key encryption, or other methods of evading internet-blocking, they face the problem of communicating this information to people on the ground in repressive regimes.

Furthermore, some actors have shown a willingness to actively attack human rights websites via DDoS and other methods in order to prevent visitors from uploading or watching video. It then becomes highly important that any website billing itself as a human rights repository be able to maintain access and uptime for all visitors.

C. Audience

Finally, there is no single place to “go” in order to find new human rights media or video content. In December 2007, Witness created The Hub to provide a central repository for human rights video. However, they discontinued accepting new content in 2009, citing technical difficulties and changing priorities. At present, the spread of human rights video content appears to be primarily viral, and therefore, a bit haphazard. A number of disjointed avenues exist for distribution, but there is no centralized channel or place that serves as a home for content. One might also be concerned about the authenticity and/or lack of context that accompanies videos posted to disparate, relatively unknown hosts.

In our view, a host that consistently provides authentic videos of interest to the human rights community, media, and concerned people throughout the world would be a strong step forward. By developing a consistent track record of impact, such a site could then develop a strong reputation encouraging new content to be sent.

III. Solutions

Pharos represents our solutions to many of these problems. Some of the solutions are technical, but many are organizational. It would be entirely possible for actors to tackle some or all of these problems individually, but our hope and belief is that one organization could take on the entire set of issues most effectively. Working with existing organizations and developing a track record of safety, security, judgment, and impact would start a virtuous cycle that could have an immense impact on human rights advocacy throughout the world.

==References==

Problem Statement and Introduction

2011-02-01T04:03:27Z

Efletcher:

The average citizen’s ability to capture video in countries around the world – in the form of cheap digital recorders and cell phone cameras – combined with the spread of free online video hosting websites has created a powerful new tool for human rights. But, with some notable exceptions, it seems that this tool has not been harnessed to the extent that it could or should be. Our project set out to identify the problems that led to this state of affairs as well as identify some of the solutions. This section is particularly focused on setting out the problems we identified.

I. Historical Overview

Video has long been recognized as a uniquely powerful tool with which to document human rights abuse and advocate for change. Videos and photographs from the liberated Nazi concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau documented the horrific abuses of the Holocaust and precipitated the international demand that Nazi leaders be brought to justice. Soon after home televisions proliferated in the United States, video had a tremendous effect on the Civil Rights movement. Stark images of discrimination, segregation, and brutality, such as those surrounding the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas’s public schools in 1957, captured the American attention. Domestically, many Americans, including many of the journalists themselves, were appalled and motivated to promote and advocate for change. The continued reports out of Little Rock also proved to be a significant source of embarrassment for the United States internationally, which generated an entirely different set of pressures on the Eisenhower administration.

However, at this time the video cameras belonged to large corporations that could afford the new and expensive technology needed to both capture and broadcast video. The networks could exercise a strong amount of editorial control with regards to the quantity and type of content recorded and broadcast.

The spread of camcorders and videocassettes made it easier for individual citizens to document human rights violations and abuse. In the United States, the dramatic home video footage of Rodney King’s 1991 beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers stirred up public awareness and concern over police brutality and discrimination. Shortly thereafter, the human rights organization Witness was created with the goal of putting camcorders in the hands of human rights activists to help them document abuse. At that point in time, however, the means of distribution and broadcast of video were still largely controlled by major networks. Human rights activists could capture video more easily, but they could not guarantee an audience.

In recent years the spread of ubiquitous cheap cell phone cameras combined with free online video hosting has made it possible for millions of people to capture video and broadcast it to the world. While there are examples of poignant videos that have spread in recent years and dramatically captured the public’s attention, video for human rights does not appear to have taken off as one might expect in light of these democratizing technologies.

II. The Problem

The raw number of video-capable devices operating in oppressive regimes suggests capacity for a lot more video sharing than currently occurs. There are well-documented problems facing the people who share videos online right now that may also serve to prevent the medium from reaching its full potential. This section seeks to identify some of those problems and begin to sketch out the solutions developed more fully in subsequent sections of our project.

A. Reprisals

One of the biggest areas of concern in the human rights media space is reprisals by adversaries, which are typically governments or their officials, but may also include corporate actors or others. The reprisals may be targeted at any person involved in the video recording, production, or dissemination.

First, and perhaps most obviously, the person doing the filming or uploading/exfiltrating the video may be targeted for punishment. Authorities may have a number of ways of identifying the source of video that appears online. For example, they could be monitoring or logging internet traffic within their borders, allowing them to easily track less sophisticated internet users who attempt to post data. Even more sophisticated users will be vulnerable to governments that use correspondingly sophisticated snooping techniques. In addition, governments might be able to use metadata or circumstantial evidence from the videos after they are broadcast to identify authors. Even if such information is not immediately accessible to the average web user, governments may exert pressure on host websites to reveal information kept internally, such as server logs or private messages. Large multinational corporations that serve as content or communication platforms might be particularly susceptible to this form of government pressure because of the interests of their employees and shareholders.

Second, the person or people filmed in human rights media might be targeted for punishment. After the 2009 protests in Iran, the government circulated photographs and stills from videos in an attempt to identify anti-government protestors. Traditionally, documentary filmmakers in the human rights arena operated by asking for consent from their subjects, yet shooting spontaneous video on the street or the use video obtained second-hand may not afford filmmakers the ability to request or obtain consent from subjects. Accordingly, the need to protect the subjects depicted within videos is particularly acute for filmmakers who wish to broadcast recordings of events that may lead to reprisals against subjects of the video. Videographers might also desire to protect the dignity of a subject who has been subjected to certain types of treatment.

B. Access

A second set of problems centers around problems of access both by uploaders and by viewers. It is well-known that many repressive regimes block or limit access to the internet or particular websites. Undoubtedly, repressive regimes would seek to limit access to content hosting sites for people who would like to upload videos documenting human rights abuses. Even if a website can use technical workarounds that enhance safety and access, such as VPN, public-key encryption, or other methods of evading internet-blocking, they face the problem of communicating this information to people on the ground in repressive regimes.

Furthermore, some actors have shown a willingness to actively attack human rights websites via DDoS and other methods in order to prevent visitors from uploading or watching video. It then becomes highly important that any website billing itself as a human rights repository be able to maintain access and uptime for all visitors.

C. Audience

Finally, there is no single place to “go” in order to find new human rights media or video content. In December 2007, Witness created The Hub to provide a central repository for human rights video. However, they discontinued accepting new content in 2009, citing technical difficulties and changing priorities. At present, the spread of human rights video content appears to be primarily viral, and therefore, a bit haphazard. A number of disjointed avenues exist for distribution, but there is no centralized channel or place that serves as a home for content. One might also be concerned about the authenticity and/or lack of context that accompanies videos posted to disparate, relatively unknown hosts.

In our view, a host that consistently provides authentic videos of interest to the human rights community, media, and concerned people throughout the world would be a strong step forward. By developing a consistent track record of impact, such a site could then develop a strong reputation encouraging new content to be sent.

III. Solutions

Pharos represents our solutions to many of these problems. Some of the solutions are technical, but many are organizational. It would be entirely possible for actors to tackle some or all of these problems individually, but our hope and belief is that one organization could take on the entire set of issues most effectively. Working with existing organizations and developing a track record of safety, security, judgment, and impact would start a virtuous cycle that could have an immense impact on human rights advocacy throughout the world.

Problem Statement and Introduction

2011-01-27T19:45:35Z

Efletcher: New page: Placeholder for the problem statement/introduction.

Placeholder for the problem statement/introduction.

Pharos

2011-01-27T19:45:09Z

Efletcher:

Our group’s work led to a proposal for a new organization, Pharos, that will serve to enable, protect, and promote human rights media from around the world. Our starting premise is that there is an immense capability to capture video in the form of relatively cheap cell phone cameras and other digital recorders. Importantly, it has also become much easier to post such video online for free. This combination of developments should have led to a dramatic expansion in video to promote human rights, but our view was that this development has not occurred.

Thus we set out to identify the obstacles that might be preventing or inhibiting the spread of human rights media, as well as existing services and solutions that could be used to surmount these obstacles. As a whole, it seemed that existing services were inadequate for a range of reasons including: susceptibility to government pressure, lack of security, lack of publicity, and many others. While our initial discussions and research led us to consider discrete solutions to discrete problems, the interwoven nature of many of the problems led us to consider the viability and desirability of a single organization that could meet the many challenges simultaneously.

Accordingly, we propose Pharos as a solution to these many problems in the aggregate. It should be noted, however, that within these pages readers will still find discussions of many discrete problems pertaining to human rights media, as well as suggestions for solutions that could be implemented immediately by a new application or existing service (e.g. software making it easy to blur the faces of protesters or more secure upload platforms). In our view, addressing any of these problems would be a highly worthwhile endeavor that has the promise of creating a better internet.

Table of Contents:

# [[Problem Statement/Introduction]]
# Existing Services
# [[Central Idea|Pharos - central idea]]
# Pharos - organization and governance
# Pharos - technical capabilities
# Challenges

Pharos

2011-01-27T19:44:33Z

Efletcher:

Our group’s work led to a proposal for a new organization, Pharos, that will serve to enable, protect, and promote human rights media from around the world. Our starting premise is that there is an immense capability to capture video in the form of relatively cheap cell phone cameras and other digital recorders. Importantly, it has also become much easier to post such video online for free. This combination of developments should have led to a dramatic expansion in video to promote human rights, but our view was that this development has not occurred.

Thus we set out to identify the obstacles that might be preventing or inhibiting the spread of human rights media, as well as existing services and solutions that could be used to surmount these obstacles. As a whole, it seemed that existing services were inadequate for a range of reasons including: susceptibility to government pressure, lack of security, lack of publicity, and many others. While our initial discussions and research led us to consider discrete solutions to discrete problems, the interwoven nature of many of the problems led us to consider the viability and desirability of a single organization that could meet the many challenges simultaneously.

Accordingly, we propose Pharos as a solution to these many problems in the aggregate. It should be noted, however, that within these pages readers will still find discussions of many discrete problems pertaining to human rights media, as well as suggestions for solutions that could be implemented immediately by a new application or existing service (e.g. software making it easy to blur the faces of protesters or more secure upload platforms). In our view, addressing any of these problems would be a highly worthwhile endeavor that has the promise of creating a better internet.

Table of Contents:

# Problem Statement/Introduction
# Existing Services
# [[Central Idea|Pharos - central idea]]
# Pharos - organization and governance
# Pharos - technical capabilities
# Challenges