Themes

[Sarah Zarmsky is an Assistant Lecturer and PhD Candidate at the University of Essex Human Rights Centre with a focus on the intersections between new and emerging technologies, human rights, and international criminal law. She is also a Visiting Scholar at the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley. (Twitter: @SZarmsky)  Judy Mionki is an International Criminal and Human...

[Ruwadzano Patience Makumbe is a human rights lawyer. Edward Kahuthia Murimi is a Kenyan lawyer. They are both currently undertaking PhD research as part of the ‘DISSECT: Evidence in International Human Rights Adjudication’ Project (funded by ERC) at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University (Belgium).] Introduction  In November 2020, a conflict broke out in the Tigray region of Ethiopia pitting the Ethiopian...

[Isabella Regan is a PhD candidate in criminology at Erasmus School of Law (Rotterdam, NL), researching public-private power dynamics within online open-source investigations of international crimes.] This blog arises from her thesis on public-private power dynamics within online open-source investigations of international crimes. All comments and feedback are welcome at regan@law.eur.nl.   Over the past decade, online open-source information – such as...

[Vidhya Ramalingam is the Founder and CEO of Moonshot.  Raquel Vazquez Llorente is the Head of Law and Policy, Technology Threats & Opportunities, at WITNESS. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.] This piece is a conversation between two professional communities that use open source information in overlapping contexts, yet are rarely in dialogue. The...

[Kate Pundyk is the former Open Source Investigation Lead at the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab and previously worked at the Berkeley Human Rights Center. She is currently studying at the Oxford Internet Institute on a Rhodes Scholarship.] Author’s note: I am grateful to Adriano Belisario and Jorge Ruiz Reyes for their conversations conceptualizing this article, as well as those who agreed...

[Cris van Eijk is an international lawyer researching what it means to make space 'common', and how international law works to effect that. He holds a BA and LLM in International Law from Leiden University, and a BA in Law from the University of Cambridge.] Introduction Satellite imagery is one of the most important sources of data in open-source intelligence, and today...

[Raquel Vazquez Llorente is the Head of Law and Policy, Technology Threats & Opportunities at WITNESS. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.] Information available on the internet can open a window into international crimes and human rights violations occurring in countries otherwise closed to investigators. Social media platforms have become unforeseen repositories of...

[Raja Althaibani is a Senior Program Manager at WITNESS, who manages the organisation’s MENA program and projects in Syria and Yemen, and specialises in community-based documentation in conflict zones.] [Libby McAvoy is a Legal Advisor for Mnemonic where she specialises in digital evidence archives, litigation support, and open source investigations into international crimes and human rights violations.] [Dalila Mujagic is the Legal...

[Michael Elsanadi is a trainer and researcher with Mnemonic and is currently pursuing an MA in Data in Culture and Society at King’s College London.]  In the past ten years, the open source investigations space has exponentially grown. The increasing presence of OSINT bios, dedicated accounts, and general discussion demonstrates the familiarity and presence of open source investigative reporting and methods...

[Sylvanna M. Falcón is an associate professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is also the director of the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas and the Human Rights Investigations Lab.]  [Alexa Koenig is an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, a lecturer at the School of Journalism, and co-director...

[Eman El-Sherbiny is a freelance digital investigator who has worked on Ukraine, Sudan, Chad and the rest of the MENA region as well as East Africa. In the past, she has led investigations at Sudanese Archive and conducted investigations for the Centre for Information Resilience on Russian aggression in Ukraine.] Open source intelligence, often referred to as OSINT, has been an...

[Billie Burton is the Executive Director of the Ukraine Digital Verification Lab at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and is a Co-Director of the Cameroon Database of Atrocities held at the University of Toronto. She is also a US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation Scholar.] [June Bove is a Wargaming Specialist with Harvard University’s Negotiation Task Force and...