One of the main remote sensing datasets used for human rights research is ‘fire data’. Fire data is an algorithm applied to measurements taken from space with environmental monitoring sensors aboard satellites. The algorithm uses those measurements to pinpoint thermal anomalies (also known as hotspots) or active fires on earth. The data was originally intended to track forest fires globally in near-real time but has also been used to monitor smoke related to health issues, observe security at oil pipelines, track fishing vessels, and verify human rights abuses, among other applications. There are currently three openly available datasets varying in spatial resolution and historical record: MODIS Collection 6, VIIRS S-NPP 375m and VIIRS NOAA-20 375m. While I will provide a brief explanation of the MODIS sensor, the focus will be on VIIRS fire data and how it is used to support the documentation of human rights abuses.  

Rumours of possible voter intimidation and potential protest were rife ahead of the U.S. Presidential Election on 3 November, 2020. In response, Amnesty International Berkeley Digital Verification Corps (DVC) began preparations to carry out real-time open source monitoring of social media during the elections — a massive undertaking that required planning, coordination, and a thoroughly considered methodology. 

In mid-October 2019, protests erupted across Chile in response to a fare increase on public transport. Regular protests continued for months as protesters’ demands expanded to include calls for a more just society in which the state guarantees basic rights such as those to health, water, quality education and social security. State security forces—primarily the Carabineros de Chile (Chilean national police)—responded to the protests with widespread use of force, causing thousands of injuries. Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab and Digital Verification Corps analyzed over 200 photos and videos documenting widespread human rights violations by the Carabineros between 18 October and 30 November, 2019, including excessive use of force, torture and other ill-treatment,, and violation of the right to personal integrity.

On 15 November 2019, Iran erupted in protest. Abrupt rises in fuel costs, a direct consequence of the sudden withdrawal of state subsidies, ignited nearly two weeks of nationwide demonstrations. Protesters soon went beyond economic grievances in their chants and slogans, calling for a radical overhaul of the political system, including constitutional reforms and an end to the Islamic Republic.

Amnesty International investigation ‘A web of impunity: The killings Iran’s internet shutdown hid’ is the latest addition to a mounting pile of evidence highlighting a disturbing trend– hiding human rights violations through internet shutdowns. This tactic is fast becoming a favourite of rights-violating governments around the world. 

This post is documentation of the RightsCon session titled ‘Using data ethically in humanitarian, human rights, and open source investigations,’ hosted by The Engine Room. The session was organized and moderated by Laura Guzmán (The Engine Room) and co-facilitated by Jonathan Drake (American Association for the Advancement of Science), Sophie Dyer (Amnesty International, FemOS) and Gabriela Ivens (Human Rights Watch). We drew upon research conducted by The Engine Room for the Human Rights, Big Data and Technology Project at the University of Essex. To encourage open and honest discussion, participants’ comments were documented but not attributed.

In September 2019, Huthi forces in Yemen attacked the Aramco Biqayq oil facility in Saudi Arabia using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or “drones”. 

This month, Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps (DVC) launched a new collaboration with the Human Rights Program at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, Mexico. Universidad Iberoamericana joins the award-winning programme as the seventh DVC partner – alongside the University of Hong Kong; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Toronto; the University of Cambridge; the University of Essex; and the University of Pretoria.

Amnesty International’s Decoders is a platform for digital volunteers around the world. It enables them to use their computers or phones to help Amnesty researchers sift through large quantities of pictures, information and documents using aspects of crowd-sourcing, micro-tasking, gamification and collaboration.

The summer of 2020 brought new waves of protests around the world some in cities and countries  that have long known unrest, and some in places unused to such large-scale demonstrations. 

It has been three years since an estimated 740,000 Rohingya fled the Myanmar military’s targeted campaign of violence in Rakhine State for refugee camps in Bangladesh. Yet for the Rohingya remaining in Myanmar, life is still full of danger and human rights violations continue. In January, as part of an ongoing case about alleged genocide by Myanmar, the United Nations’ top court issued an order for the Myanmar state to protect the Rohingya. Yet, as we did in 2017, Amnesty International continues to receive video and photographs depicting human rights violations in Rakhine State. This blog will explain how we verified the location of some of the video footage Amnesty International has recently received, and how it shows the extent to which human rights abuses continue against the Rohingya today.

As recent university graduates, we had exciting plans for the new year, the new decade. We hoped to secure jobs, to travel and more in 2020. These plans came to halt with the COVID-19 pandemic. Like others, we found ourselves in lockdown: alone at home with social media, and confronted by the longstanding tragedies of racial injustice and sexual violence worldwide. Unlike some, we had experience managing the stress that can come with viewing large volumes of violent content online. As open source researchers at The Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley, we’d received training on exactly this – and yet we were struggling. How were others coping?