Full Description
From videos of rights violations, to satellite images of environmental degradation, to eyewitness accounts disseminated on social media, human rights practitioners have access to more data today than ever before. To say that mobile technologies, social media, and increased connectivity are having a significant impact on human rights practice would be an understatement. Modern technology - and the enhanced access it provides to information about abuse - has the potential to revolutionise human rights reporting and documentation, as well as the pursuit of legal accountability.
However, these new methods for information gathering and dissemination have also created significant challenges for investigators and researchers. For example, videos and photographs depicting alleged human rights violations or war crimes are often captured on the mobile phones of victims or political sympathisers. The capture and dissemination of content often happens haphazardly, and for a variety of motivations, including raising awareness of the plight of those who have been most affected, or for advocacy purposes with the goal of mobilising international public opinion. For this content to be of use to investigators it must be discovered, verified, and authenticated. Discovery, verification, and authentication have, therefore, become critical skills for human rights organisations and human rights lawyers.
This book is the first to cover the history, ethics, methods, and best-practice associated with open source research. It is intended to equip the next generation of lawyers, journalists, sociologists, data scientists, other human rights activists, and researchers with the cutting-edge skills needed to work in an increasingly digitized, and information-saturated environment.
Contents
Aryeh Neier: Foreword
Section One
Sam Dubberley, Alexa Koenig, Daragh Murray: Introduction
1: Christoph Koettl, Daragh Murray, Sam Dubberley: The History of the Use of Open Source Investigation for Human Rights Reporting
2: Alexa Koenig: The History of Open Source Investigations for Legal Accountability
3: Lindsay Freeman: Prosecuting Grave International Crimes Using Open Source Evidence: Lessons from the International Criminal Court
4: Ella McPherson, Isabel Guenette Thornton, Matt Mahmoudi: Open Source Investigations and the Technology-Driven Knowledge Controversy in Human Rights Fact-Finding
5: Scott Edwards: Open Source Investigations for Human Rights: Current and Future Challenges
Section Two
6: Paul Myers: How to Conduct Discovery Using Open Source Methods
7: Yvonne Ng: How to Effectively Preserve Open Source Information
8: Jeff Deutsch and Niko Para: Targeted Mass Archiving of Open Source Information: A Case Study
9: Aric Toler: How to Verify User-Generated Content
10: Micah Farfour: The Role and Use of Satellite Imagery in Open Source Investigations
Section Three
11: Zara Rahman and Gabriela Ivens: Ethics in Open Source Investigations
12: Sam Dubberley, Margaret Satterthwaite, Sarah Knuckey, Adam Brown: Open Source Investigations: Vicarious Trauma, PTSD, and Tactics for Resilience
13: Joseph Guay, Lisa Rudnick: Open Source Investigations: Understanding Digital Threats, Risks, and Harms
Section Four
14: Fred Abrahams, Daragh Murray: Open Source Information: Part of the Puzzle
15: Alexa Koenig, Lindsay Freeman: Open Source Investigations for Legal Accountability: Challenges and Best Practices
