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Photo by Nakita Cheung
When harrowing footage of alleged Sri Lankan troops executing Tamil prisoners emerged in November 2010, the authenticity of the videos could not be verified despite the gross human rights violations depicted.
This became the catalyst for the creation of an app in 2015 that could capture verifiable footage of international war crimes and use it to prosecute the war criminals responsible for these atrocities.
Today, eyeWitness to Atrocities provides this technology free of charge to those seeking justice for victims of war criminals, genocide and other human rights abuses in some of the world’s worst conflict zones.
While a wealth of information is readily available online for prosecutors to use, challenges continue to exist to confirm the reliability and relevance of digital evidence. Footage documenting criminal acts often lacks the metadata to prove claims of when and where it was recorded.
The app adds a timestamp and the user’s GPS-fixed location to the recorded images and videos, which can then be encrypted and uploaded to the system’s secure databanks from anywhere in the world. Users can submit anonymously to protect their identity and ensure their safety.
Once submitted, the video is stored in a virtual evidence locker, where it can only be accessed by a team of legal experts who analyse the footage and identify appropriate authorities who could investigate the cases further, and – if appropriate – pursue criminal charges.
Check out the video of how the app works.
The app removes the risk of footage being tampered with, which reduces the need for extensive authentication and minimizes the potential for human error in the process.
Despite the innovative nature of the technology, eyeWitness continues to face challenges when trying to ensure that digital materials are accepted as evidence during trials. While the core admissibility principles are fairly consistent across jurisdictions, each country responds to digital evidence differently.
Also, footage of the criminal act itself – regardless of how compelling – must be combined with evidence of the scope of the violations and their association to the the masterminds behind these atrocious crimes.
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