In association with the International Commission of Jurists

OSINT Tag

10 Dec

[Christine Carpenter is an international lawyer, and a Gates Cambridge Scholar and PhD Candidate in international relations and politics at the University of Cambridge] To live in a crisis zone today is to be watched, recorded, and broadcasted—often without one’s knowledge or consent. Digital evidence plays a central role in investigating international crimes and human rights abuses—as has been demonstrated vis-à-vis Israel’s atrocities...

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10 Dec

[Christiane Wilke is a Professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa and collaborates with Airwars on a project examining legal and factual claims in US military civilian casualty assessments] How do we look at genocide, and how does the vantage point shape what we see? Armed conflicts and genocides are frequently represented using the aerial perspective: satellite images, drone video footage,...

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09 Dec

[Dr. Giuliana Rotola is a space law and policy specialist whose work spans sustainability, governance, Indigenous methodologies, and post-colonial approaches to space norms. She is fellowship coordinator at the Palestine Space Institute.] Earth Observation as Witness to Systematic Destruction International law defines genocide as acts committed with the intent to destroy a protected group. Amnesty International's December 2024 report argues that Israel’s offensive on Gaza includes such prohibited...

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09 Dec

[Laliv Melamed is a professor of digital film cultures at Goethe University, Frankfurt] On the evening of 27 October 2023, the IDF spokesperson released a CGI (computer-generated imaging) model of Al Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex. The model draws on what is by now a familiar arsenal of digital forensics. It is based on data collected from aerial imagery, maps, and...

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08 Dec

[Dr. Akanksha Bisoyi is a post-doctoral researcher at the Professorship of Law, Innovation and Legal Design, Technical University of Munich in Germany]  Introduction Photographs as legal tools for truth-telling reflect the aphorism ‘seeing is believing’. These images range from visual depictions of war crimes to human rights violations, affirming their role in the objective portrayal of historical events. Photographs are forensic evidentiary mediums that are, paradoxically,...

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08 Dec

[Marina Aksenova is an associate professor of international and comparative criminal law at IE University] Introduction The two projects inspiring this post – Cartography of Genocide by Forensic Architecture and Anatomy of Genocide by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 – have in common the idea of a multi-dimensional approach to international law. In the case...

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08 Dec

[Stefania Di Stefano is a postdoctoral researcher in online content moderation at Cnam, Paris.  Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi is an assistant professor of public international law at Sciences Po Law School, Paris. Barrie Sander is an assistant professor of international law at Leiden University – Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs. Dimitri Van Den Meerssche is senior lecturer in law at Queen Mary University of...

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28 Nov

[Dr. Imar de Vries is a media scholar at Utrecht University whose research explores the cultural histories, social imaginaries, and ideologies surrounding media, communication, and emerging digital technologies Dr. Henning Lahmann is an assistant professor at eLaw – Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University Law School] In 2010, at a conference organised by independent Dutch investigative journalism platform Follow...

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28 Nov

[Rossella Pulvirenti is a Senior Lecturer in Manchester Law School (UK), specialising in international criminal law and human rights, with a specific focus on evidence and witnesses’ rights] The evidentiary landscape of international criminal justice is undergoing a profound transformation through the use of open-source intelligence (OSINT). OSINT marks the third major revolution in evidentiary approaches to prosecuting mass atrocity crimes....

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27 Nov

[Guillen Torres Sepulveda is Open Source Investigations Specialist with the Human Rights Center, Berkeley School of Law. Pınar Yolum is Professor of Trustworthy AI at the Department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University] Open-source investigation is the practice of collecting, verifying, and analyzing publicly available information to answer investigative questions.  These questions vary from fact-checking to human rights monitoring to...

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25 Nov

[Lydia Millar is a PhD candidate at Queen's University Belfast and manager of the Digital Investigation Lab at the School of Law. Felipe Castillejo Gaitán is a Colombian Human Rights and OSINT Researcher, former co-coordinator of the Hertie School Digital Verification Corps] How did your respective open-source investigation labs begin? Lydia (Queen’s University Belfast): In October 2023, the School of Law at Queen’s University...

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24 Nov

[Isabella Regan is PhD researcher at the department of Law, Society and Crime of Erasmus School of Law, Rotterdam, focusing on public and private open-source investigations and atrocity crimes. Alexa Koenig, PhD, MA, JD, is a research professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, faculty director of UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center, and director and co-founder of the center's Investigations...

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