Technology

[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...

[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...

[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,...

[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...

[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....

[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...

[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...

[Dr Robin Vanderborght is a researcher in international politics at the University of Antwerp, Belgium Dr Anna Nadibaidze is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark] On April 8, 2025, Palmer Luckey, the founder of defence technology company Anduril Industries, steps on the stage of TED2025 to deliver a talk on the military use of artificial...

[Dr Mando Rachovitsa is an Associate Professor in human rights law at the School of Law, University of Nottingham and the Deputy Director of the Human Rights Law Centre] Although the UK’s ambivalence on adopting a national regulatory framework for AI has received considerable discussion, the UK’s policy and role in advancing the international governance of AI safety remains to be...

[Richard Mackenzie-Gray Scott is the author of State Responsibility for Non-State Actors: Past, Present and Prospects for the Future (Oxford: Hart | Bloomsbury, 2022, re-issued in paperback 2024)] This is the second part of a two-part post; see Part I here. But wait! How silly of me. Apologies for jumping the gun. There are other attribution tests under the ILC Articles...

[Richard Mackenzie-Gray Scott is the author of State Responsibility for Non-State Actors: Past, Present and Prospects for the Future (Oxford: Hart | Bloomsbury, 2022, re-issued in paperback 2024)] This is the first part of a two-part post; see Part II here. Information operations can impact societies in many ways. Whether by undermining specific human rights, for example, as a result of crossing...

[Dr Rupert Barrett-Taylor is a Research Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute focused on the ethical, operational, and epistemological implications of Artificial Intelligence in military operations. Dr Matthew Ford is an academic in the Department of War Studies at the Swedish Defence University (FHS) focusing on war and the data-saturated battlefields of the 21st century] The state’s exclusive control over the legitimate...