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Modern technology is helping the state watch its citizens.
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But that same technology it also letting citizens watch the state.
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We know that Facebook is spying on us,
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we know that Google is spying on us.
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But those mediums can also become mediums of counter forensics.
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We are watching the watchers.
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We are reversing the forensic gaze.
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The rise of social media and the proliferation of smart phones has made it easier than ever for people to consume news.
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But not all this information is true.
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Some governments use these platforms to disseminate propaganda, and monitor citizens behavior.
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Now this technology has also helped to turn the tables on the powerful.
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Every comment, every photo, every video, is a clue to ultimately getting at the truth.
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The big challenge is to figure out how we find all those clues and ultimately use them almost like pieces in a puzzle.
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Alexa Koenig is a law professor and investigator.
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She gathers evidence from multiple digital sources, to investigate some of the biggest human rights abuses in the 21st century.
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So many war crime cases fall apart at fairly early stages of prosecution.
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One of the big challenges is that prosecutors are over-relying on witness testimony.
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And of course with time and trauma, a testimony becomes fallible.
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Miss Koenig's team has helped investigate atrocities in Myanmar, Syria and Yemen.
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Unlike traditional investigators, her team uses open source evidence.
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So we brought together people doing big data analytics,
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satellite imagery, remote sensing, people who were
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thinking through how cellphones could be harnessed and support the stories of survivors.
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The team has investigated atrocities in Myanmar in 2017.
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The evidence proved that the army had used Facebook's
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wide reach in the country to post false information
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inciting hatred against the Rohingya Muslim minority.
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This type of evidence is gaining traction and is being used by the international criminal courts.
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Open source information that you can find online
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is increasingly being used by groups like the United Nations
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and by the International Criminal Court.
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It released its first ever arrest warrant based on
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information pulled from social media in Libya.
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Meanwhile, Bellingcat, a group
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of open source experts, has been investigating the poisoning
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of a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal
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and his daughter in 2018.
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They have made some striking discoveries.
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Bellingcat disclosed the names of three Russian agents who they allege were involved in the attack,
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strengthening the suspicion that it was sanctioned by the Russian State.
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In response, the Russian authorities claimed that
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the men were tourists, but Bellingcat proved that
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the three men were high ranking members of the Russian army.
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One of the agents had even been honored by President Vladimir Putin personally.
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What Bellingcat did was they began to comb social media
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and find the profiles of the people
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who were thought to have been involved,
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that Russia was saying were just tourists,
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and ultimately establish the true identities
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in a way that really shocked the world.
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Bellingcat cross referenced photo and video
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evidence released by the British and Russian authorities,
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with social media to find the men's true identities.
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This is not the first time the state has been accused of trying to cover its tracks.
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Governments are trying to release false information about things that have taken place.
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We need to not only establish what has taken place,
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but to deconstruct government statements that are misleading.
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Eyal Weizman is an open source expert based in the UK.
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The most recent incident which he has investigated
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raises questions about the death of Palestinians during an Israeli airstrike.
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In 2018, these two boys were sitting on a roof top.
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They were killed moments after taking this selfie.
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The Israeli armed forces said they fired
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non-lethal warning shots to clear the area of civilians.
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They call this tactic 'knocking on the roof.
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Hours later, the Israeli army released a video which appears to show four warning shots, followed by the main strike.
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But forensic architecture stitched together mobile phone and CCTV footage disputing their claim.
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They allege the Israeli army did not release a video of the first shots which killed the boys.
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Instead, it substituted it with a video of the third strike from another angle.
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The Israeli army denied distorting evidence.
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Investigating state operations isn't cheap.
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It takes time and resources.
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One big question is always where's the money coming from to do this kind of work.
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There are some individual donors who really believe in the power of technology for social good.
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And increasingly we still do see some states that are
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really interested in the power and possibility
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of pulling together information.
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The evidence and practices of groups
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such as Bellingcat and forensic architecture are open to everyone.
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This evidence is traceable and verifiable.
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But lawmakers must approach it with caution.
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The use of this evidence in court is in its infancy and raises several problems.
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I think so few judges today are trained in ways to really
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interrogate what makes for a good digital investigation,
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that there's really a two-fold risk.
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The first risk is that they're going to look at this very
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slick sexy package and they're gonna find it so convincing,
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that they ultimately don't interrogate
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the underlying bits of information.
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The second risk, of course, is that they're just going
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to look at this and say I have no way to understand
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the original sources of this information,
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and so they dismiss it out of hand.
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It is increasingly difficult
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to separate fact from fiction.
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But crowdsource investigations offer a new way.
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Giving a voice to victims and holding the powerful to account.
