Dan Verderosa's Content

Digital Media and Iran's Green Movement: A Look Back with Cameran Ashraf

Dan Verderosa — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:19:16 -0800

December 7 was Student Day in Iran, a day when students traditionally commemorate the deaths of three Iranian students who were protesting the Shah in 1953. This year, the Student Day protests were especially poignant because they demonstrated that Iran's Green Movement is still very much alive. And, like the post-election protests in June, news about the demonstrations was delivered to the world via tools like Twitter and YouTube.

Online news organizations like Tehran Bureau and Enduring America, supported by a number of bloggers, such as the New York Times' Lede Blog and Citizentube, highlighted videos of the Student Day protests like those seen below in order to get the word out:

(If any Persian speakers out there could help translate what is being said in any of these videos please post in the comments section below - your help would be greatly appreciated.)

There has been much debate during the past few months over the role digital media has played in the Iranian election protests and Green Movement. A few weeks ago, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University sponsored a talk by Cameran Ashraf entitled, #iranelection: The digital media response to the 2009 Iranian election, which provided a great look at how the digital media landscape shaped (and continues to shape) the Green Movement. You can watch the entire talk for yourself below:

Because media and information is so segmented between different regions, Ashraf notes, digital media and videos can be a particularly powerful tool for spreading information. Iran has 23-32 million internet users, putting it on par with Eastern Europe and making it something of an outlier in the Middle East, a region with relatively rates of internet access. To demonstrate the level of internet activity used during protests in Iran, Ashraf provides some anecdotal data from a protest that occured on September 18. Within 16 hours of the protest:

over 80 videos had been smuggled out of Iran
300,000 people viewed the videos
250,000 people downloaded the videos from inside Iran

The Government Response: Censorship and Surveillance

Of course, the internet in Iran is not so free. Reporters Without Borders lists Iran as one of its 12 "internet enemies", having blocked over 10 million websites deemed politically or socially offensive. When users try to access these blocked sites, they are invited to report to the authorities via e-mail in case the block is a mistake - a clever trick designed by the regime to create a database of potential dissidents, says Ashraf. In response to the protests that began in June, the Iranian government "virtually shut down the entire internet," reducing data transfer rates by 80%. During and after the protests, the average time to download a video on YouTube was over one hour (from the normal average time of 10 minutes). Opposition and foreign media websites were blocked, and restrictions were placed on file download sizes. Online monitoring was also stepped up, and threatening text messages were sent out by the regime. Ashraf was able to find part of one such text, which reads:

"Respected citizen, according to received information, you have been influenced by anti-security propaganda of foreign-backed media. If you attend any illegal gathering or contact media..."

The Iranian regime has demonstrated that it can be remarkably tech-savvy. It created a crowdsourcing website - www.gerdab.ir - used to identify protesters and dissidents. Pictures of protesters are posted on the site and users are offered rewards to identify them. Many of the pictures used on the site are taken from Iranian citizen media - videos and photos uploaded to YouTube and other sites - and are then often used against the very citizens who uploaded them. Red stamps reading "captured" are placed on the photos after an individual is arrested. As noted by an Iranian that has interned at WITNESS (whose name we will withhold for security reasons), the Gerdab pictures are also used to intimidate Iranians - "by representing protesters as guilty of crimes without any real determination of guilt, and by discouraging others from participating in future protests or uploading media online."

The Green Movement has responded with its own crowdsourcing site - www.gerdabesabz.blogspot.com - used to identify undercover government agents and members of the Basij. It's a great example of the cat and mouse game played online between governments and activists. However, there are ethical concerns with this endeavor, as it is unknown what could happen to those featured on either site.

The government also still relies on traditional repressive techniques simply adapted to the internet, as evidenced by the creation of a cyber crime unit to police the internet for dissident activity. The government has additionally created propaganda sites hosted in the United States and Canada, where there are better infrastructures to keep the sites running. Lastly, the regime has also adopted a nuanced approach to blocking access to mobile networks, blocking texting only in the area of a protest, for example, so that people in other areas of the country are kept unaware of the protest (and of any government action as well).

The Green Movement's Online Strategy: A "Hydra Approach"

Yet for all the regime's efforts, the Green Movement has maintained its strength and momentum. To quote Ashraf:

"The Green Movement's response, basically, has been to create a digital movement whose leader is itself, whose central organizing structure is viral, with ebbs and flows that adapt to the constantly changing and shifting digital and social landscape in post-election Iran."

The Green Movement has adopted what Ashraf calls a "hydra approach." Each individual within the Green Movement is a leader, which makes the regime's attempts to squash it akin to, in Bill Clinton's words, trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. The Green Movement is dependent upon Web sites, but it is not dependent upon any one Web site. Activists will set up a blog to advertise a protest, and when it is taken down, a new blog is put up. The Movement is also adept at bringing its online work to bear in the physical world. For example, stencils and flyers are created online and shared throughout "Blogistan", then printed out and used during protests.

International Support: Pluses and Minuses

The Green Movement also has considerable international support. Internet activists around the globe, notes Ashraf, helped Iranians circumvent the restrictions put in place by the Iranian regime. They also helped shame and force media attention with the #cnnfail hashtag on Twitter (more on hashtags here), in addition to providing a valuable resource for news organizations shut out from events on the ground. Perhaps most importantly, international support provided a safe avenue to get videos and images out of the country and hosted thousands of media files for the opposition.

But not all of the international support was helpful to Iranians. Ashraf notes that widespread distributed denial-of-service, or DDOS attacks intended to hurt government capabilities by targeting regime-affiliated Web sites, actually hurt the Green Movement by slowing down the internet in Iran even more than it already had been (a Google search for gerdab.ir, for example, still garners dozens of hits for web pages urging or directing DDOS attacks on the site). Cultural differences also hampered the effect of international support. Ashraf argues that in the U.S., one of many countries whose citizens provided online support for the Green Movement, activists and the media got "bored" because the revolution was not happening on "American time" (Iranians, Ashraf said, prefer to do things more slowly) - international digital activists can be fickle.

A Twitter Revolution? Not Quite

Much has been made in Western media about the impact of Twitter, but Ashraf, like many other commentators (see articles here and here), is skeptical about the impact of Twitter. One area in which Twitter, made a difference, however, was in communicated the continued support of the world to the Green Movement after the Western media stopped covering the events in Iran and began covering the death of Michael Jackson. It was also instrumental in getting news of torture out of Iran. Below are a few direct Tweets from Iran, some of which were used as sources by the media (all of which were later proven to be accurate):

"they hang ppls from roof in evin by hand & foot and beat 24/7 with electric cable - situ serious - these ppls need help"

"@ night in Evin nobody can sleep from sound of screaming.. Evin is full & ppls are 10 in 1 room"

"men in Evin is raped - some with glass bottle breaking in body - hospital sources say what they see is terrible"

But Ashraf argues that the impact of Twitter within Iran has been "grossly overstated". According to the Web Ecology Project, between June 7 and June 26, 2009, there were over 2 million tweets about the election in Iran, with about 480,000 users taking part. Of those users, Ashraf estimates only 12-50 were actually inside Iran. The real value of Twitter was in its ability to bring together activists around the globe in a "digital media and activism commons". This argument is echoed by Clay Shirky: "the most important tools during the Tehran protests were mobile phones, whether to send text messages, photos, or videos. Twitter, predominantly, was a gateway to western attention."

The ineffectiveness of Twitter within Iran is mirrored in some emerging academic studies on the role of information and communication technology in international affairs. Patrick Philippe Meier's analysis of the relationship between internet access and the frequency of protests under repressive regimes concludes that the relationship is insignificant.

What, then, are we to make of the role of digital media in promoting human rights? Clearly, both the repressors and the revolutionaries can artfully use the tools of Web 2.0 to augment their abilities to bring change offline (as discussed in my previous post). Some tools, like Twitter, might not be useful for some tasks, but are crucial for others. Video has clearly made a significant impact by documenting not only the abuses committed by the Iranian regime, but also the dedication of the Green Movement. Organizations like WITNESS can learn from the experiences of the Green Movement as they seek to use video and other digital media for advocacy purposes.

The battle for a free Iran is not yet over, as the Student Day protests have shown, but what is already clear is that while protests and demonstrations are the "meat" of the movement, many important parts of the fight have and will occur online - through Tweets, texts, and videos.

READ MORE

For more on the Iranian protests, check out these blog posts and videos on The Hub. To read more about the use of technology during conflicts and the impact of digital media on human rights, see these two reports:

New Technologies in Emergencies and Conflicts: The Role of Information and Social Networks

Digital Media in Conflict-Prone Societies

What Can Civil Society Learn from Evgeny Morozov’s Critique of Web 2.0?

Dan Verderosa — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:07:03 -0800

It's easy to get excited about the potential power of the internet to fight government impunity, curb human rights abuses, and induce democratic reforms in authoritarian states. New Media experts like Clay Shirky see enormous potential in social media. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have all gotten a lot of attention for their roles in protests movements from Iran to Burma to Moldova, demonstrating that they can be powerful tools for change. But Evgeny Morozov, Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University and contributing editor at Foreign Policy, isn't so sure we should be celebrating such successes so soon. Morozov writes in the summer 2009 issue of Dissent Magazine that the tools of Web 2.0 can just as easily be used to foment hatred and violence or secure government control in authoritarian states.

In the video below, Morozov discusses his ideas at a TED Conference:

Morozov's views touch upon a number of ethical issues that we here at WITNESS have been thinking and blogging about related to video advocacy in an open, socially-networked world. The broad point is that the internet is a neutral medium that can be used for good or ill. The key is to learn to use it in such a way that promotes positive change and human rights while minimizing the dangers that come along with it.

One important issue Morozov highlights is the danger posed by governments using social networking sites to spy on their own citizens, especially the politically and socially active. Says Morozov:

"[B]oth Facebook and Twitter give Iran's secret services superb platforms for gathering open source intelligence about the future revolutionaries, revealing how they are connected to each other. These details are now being shared voluntarily, without any external pressure. Once regimes used torture to get this kind of data; now it's freely available on Facebook." (Priscila Néri discusses this in her blog post on the Iran protests.)

Indeed, the Iranian government is moving forward along those lines. Last week, as reported in The Guardian, Iran created a special task force to police the internet. The head of the task force, Colonel Mehrdad Omidi, was quoting as saying, "Given the spread of internet use, police must confront crimes taking place in the web atmosphere, a special committee has been set up to monitor the internet and deal with crimes... such as fraud... insults and the spreading of lies." He also pledged to intervene in "political matters... should there be an illegal act." Perhaps more worrisome are reports that the Iranian government this week began sending SMS messages to citizens warning them that they had been identified as past protesters and should stop participating in protest events. Iran is already listed by Reporters Without Borders as one of its 12 'internet enemies,' having blocked an estimated 10 million Web sites deemed politically or socially offensive. In the days after the contested June election, Iran reportedly purchased equipment used to monitor internet and e-mail communications. During last summer's election protests there were also reports of the Iranian security services using fake Twitter accounts to infiltrate protest groups and spread disinformation.

As WITNESS and the organizations it partners with begin to use more social networking and new media technology to produce and distribute videos, the ability of repressive governments to use that same technology against those involved with and featured in the videos will have to be weighed in along with more traditional security concerns. The structures of social networks mean that if one person's data or information is insecure, his or her connections' might be as well. Cyber-security risks will have to be taken into account and explained when seeking an individual's informed consent to use footage of them in a video.

While government censorship, monitoring, and infiltration are serious concerns, there are ways for human rights advocates and civil society members to defend against them. In Iran for example, members of the ‘Twitterverse' such as Twitspam outed government infiltrators on Twitter by identifying suspected fraudulent accounts. Other social platforms have built-in means of defense. Wikipedia for example features discussion, or Talk pages, which offer the opportunity to discuss improvements to a particular Wikipedia page. As the Tamil Tigers Talk page demonstrates, such discussion can include whether misinformation is being spread on a page. The Talk pages model might be suitable for adaptation to networks in order to protect against infiltrators and misinformation. Perhaps the most impactful way for civil society to overcome government disruption is the use of online anonymity systems like Tor. Borne out of a U.S. military project, Tor is an open source system that allows users in countries where certain sites are blocked or where online action is monitored to access blocked sites and to do so completely anonymously. That way, a pro-democracy blogger in China can keep his identity secret from the government and a user in Syria can access Web sites blocked by the government.

For a quick lesson in how Tor works, watch this video:

Morozov also highlights the rise of internet companies dedicated to removing or burying complaints against other companies so that they do not show up on internet searches. These companies frequently target sites like The Consumerist, but could easily target rights groups as well. On the less legal side of things, distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks can be used to shut down sites containing harmful content. It is not too hard to imagine that a government might use similar tactics and technology to bury Web sites and web-based videos alleging that it was committing human rights violations. Indeed, Russia has been thescene of many such attacks. Mass DDOS attacks have been launched against the Web sites of Human Rights in Russia, Memorial, and the newspaper Kommersant, to name a few. In Burma, pro-democracy Web sites were attacked leading up to the first anniversary of the monks' uprising. Morozov highlights the story of Georgian blogger CYXYMU, who in 2008 was pushed off numerous blogging platforms by persistent DDOS attacks. Morozov calls him a "digital refugee."

Another problem identified by Morozov, which has important implications for video advocacy, is how to ensure that relevant - and authentic - videos and images rise above the din of extraneous and sometimes fraudulent videos that flood the internet. (See my previous post on Sri Lanka for one example.) How do rights groups and advocates separate the digital wheat from the digital chaff? Morozov illustrates this issue using the example of YouTube videos that support false findings about vaccine safety. In the human rights world, governments, NGOs, and civil society groups must face the problem of verifying footage shot by anonymous third-parties. Locating and debunking fraudulent or doctored video is paramount. Regarding his example, Morozov asks "whether a technology company such as YouTube (and ultimately its parent company, Google) should verify scientific claims made in the videos uploaded to the site; if yes, how should they go about it?" (YouTube recently introduced YouTube Direct, which allows media organizations to "request, review, and rebroadcast" video directly from users, providing a level of editorial oversight.) This question can easily be applied to human rights organizations and claims of rights abuses. Morozov is optimistic that algorithms and programs will be created to form an "electronic lie detector" that will be able to differentiate between the two.

Perhaps another option would be to create a Web site in the model of Snopes.com that investigates the veracity of human rights-related videos and images that arise on the internet. Such a site could bring to bear the focused expertise of the human rights community to separate verifiable from fraudulent data. Wikipedia's Talk pages model could also be applied here. Indeed, the bulk of the discussion on Talk pages consists of debate over whether information is false or misleading.

As Shirky argues, the social platforms of Web 2.0 offer unprecedented opportunities to create positive change. But such opportunities will not realize themselves. In Morozov's words, "[c]yberspace politics is a zero-sum game." While initiatives like Ushahidi have been used to garner real-time data about conflicts and rights abuses that can be used to save lives and promote positive change, similar initiatives, according to Morozov, are used for ill by xenophobic Russian nationalist groups to identify the locations of ethnic populations in that country. Rights groups can post videos documenting human rights abuses, but hostile groups can flood the web with remixed videos in order to discredit the originals and disrupt advocacy efforts.

The dilemma posed by Web 2.0 is perhaps best framed as an economic equation that encapsulates each of the issues discussed above. On the supply side is the issue of how to ensure access to accurate, authentic data while weeding out bogus information and keeping data providers secure. Morozov is reasonably certain that this side of the equation will ultimately be solved. More problematic is the demand side - how do we use verifiable documentation of human rights violations safely, ethically, and effectively once we have access to it? That, hopefully, is an issue that WITNESS, by empowering human rights groups to use video for change, can help to solve.

We'd like to hear your thoughts on these issues:

Do you agree with Morozov or is he too pessimistic about Web 2.0 and social media?
How can we use social media platforms more securely?
How do we bring order and a standard of veracity social media platforms while maintaining the freedom of Web 2.0?

Should You Believe Your Eyes? Allegations of Doctored Video from Sri Lanka

Dan Verderosa — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:57:50 -0700

UPDATE, 7 JANUARY 2010: As groundviews' citizen journalist Sanjana Hattotuwa tells us in the comments field below, the UN has just confirmed the authenticity of the video and called on the Sri Lankan government to take appropriate action. Read the full press release here (thanks Sanjana!).

UPDATE, 15 DECEMBER: According to an independent investigator specializing in video forensics hired by The Times (UK), the Sri Lanka execution video is indeed authentic. According to the investigator, who is an instructor at the FBI National Academy, the video contains no evidence of editing, digital manipulation, or other special effects, but does contain subtle details consistent with a real shooting, such as smoke coming from gun barrels after shots are fired. Additionally, the expert found strong evidence that actors were not used - at that range, blanks would still cause serious injury or death, and the victims fall backward in a very realistic motion after being shot. The video was also found to have an embedded code matching the software found in Nokia mobile phones (The Sri Lankan government's investigators had claimed the video was shot on a sophisticated camera, not a mobile phone, as Channel 4 News had said).

Also contributing to the mounting evidence against the Sri Lankan government are the statements of retired General Sarath Fonseka, who claims that Sri Lankan Defense Minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, ordered the army to shoot surrendering Tamil leaders rather than imprison them. Fonseka is currently running for president against Rajapaksa, and has said he is not against a war crimes investigation.

UPDATE, 26 OCTOBER: Two new claims have been made concerning the veracity of the Sri Lanka video and investigations into its authenticity. Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a U.S.-based pressure group, sponsored a study of the video by an as yet unnamed U.S.-based forensics company. According to TamilNet, the study found that the video was not tampered with or doctored. The study also cast doubt on the Sri Lankan inquiry that deemed the video fraudulent, stating that the experts had analyzed a second generation video from News Channel 4's Web site, not the original footage.

Also notable is a blog post from News Channel 4 journalist Jonathan Miller, who broke the story of the Sri Lanka video. Miller compares the Sri Lanka video to another video had covered that showed members of the Scorpions, a Serb militia, executing Bosnian Muslims near Srebrenica. Miller discusses the decision to air the Sri Lanka video, criticism of its veracity, and the reasons he believes it is authentic:

"While it’s true that Tamil Tiger insurgents were known to masquerade in government uniforms, what makes the video credible is that telltale casual dialogue between the killers as they dispatch their helpless captives. (...) In rough provincial Sinhala accents, they jokingly argue over who gets to shoot whom. (...) They take turns, mockingly play-acting the popular folk game ‘kurupiti gahanawa wage’ – ‘Your Turn, My Turn.'

With different parties coming to different conclusions and with each arguably having its own biases, a definitive statement on the video's veracity cannot yet be made. What is clear however, is that the international community has, in part because of the video, taken an increased interest in alleged human rights abuses committed in Sri Lanka. The U.S. State Department has released a report in which it repeats calls for an independent analysis of the video and an inquiry into crimes committed by both the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE (Read Miller's take on the report). A U.N. spokesman has raised the possibility of a Gaza-style rights inquiry.

Imagine that you click on a link to a news story or turn on the nightly news to see a video that shows eight men, stripped nude, bound, and blindfolded, coldly executed by soldiers on a muddy field. After shooting one prisoner, a soldier laughs and says, “It’s like he jumped.” Would you accept such a video as evidence of war crimes or be skeptical of its legitimacy? To whom do we turn in making that decision, and how do we incorporate this type of video, often shot by citizen bystanders or perpetrators, into advocacy efforts when the authenticity of footage is in doubt?

In August, the video described above was released by the group Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) and broadcast by Channel 4 News in the UK. It apparently shows Sri Lankan soldiers executing Tamils. (The BBC provides a brief history of the conflict as well as a more comprehensive analysis of Sri Lanka.) According to JDS, the footage was apparently shot for fun on a cell phone and circulated by soldiers in January before being smuggled out of Sri Lanka in August. Channel 4 News brought in an external, independent human rights investigator of Sinhalese ethnicity to examine the footage, and he found it to be genuine. Still, Channel Four News cautioned viewers that they could not verify the video's authenticity or veracity. Here's the report they aired on August 25, 2009:

The UN has called for investigations into the video and possible war crimes. Human Rights Watch has stated that while they cannot verify the video’s authenticity, an external expert found nothing with which to dispute its authenticity. HRW has since called for an international inquiry. The Sri Lankan government has denied its military has practiced executions, and their own investigation have determined the video was faked, stating that the video was shot on a camcorder, not a cell phone, that the audio track had been dubbed over, and that digital effects were used. That investigation’s impartiality, however, has been called into question by the UN, whose representatives have said that the experts used by Sri Lanka have close ties to the government there, including two military officers. Meanwhile, the Asian Tribune has reported that another version of the video has surfaced online (an 'original' version), purportedly demonstrating that the military men in the video were actually Tamil Tigers and that a different soundtrack had been dubbed over the original.

How do experts determine if a video is authentic or not? Digital image forensic analysts look carefully for anything out of the ordinary and can use tools to show where images have been blurred or spliced or if other digital effects have been applied to images or video. The technology and expertise available for digital forensics is new, and unfortunately it remains more difficult to authenticate video than still images. (For more information and examples of fake or doctored images and video, Neal Krawetz, an expert in digital image forensics, maintains a very informative blog on the subject.)

A recent study performed by psychologists at the University of Warwick demonstrates that doctored video can induce people to provide false eyewitness evidence. Visual proof, whether real or not, has a significant effect on how we perceive events. Plainly, seeing is indeed believing. But given that video can be faked convincingly using low tech methods such as staging an event for the cameras or doctored using high-tech video editing techniques and CGI (as this example demonstrates), should we always believe our eyes? Perhaps more importantly, what steps can the propagators of human rights video take to ensure that video they receive from external sources is legitimate? This question will become more and more important as video advocacy becomes more open and social media-based and as technology improves and access to it expands.

Maintaining the perceived reality of video will be paramount. But in a web-based world, it would be infeasible for experts to examine every bit of footage that finds its way online. Is it enough to caution, as Channel 4 News did, “We cannot verify the authenticity or veracity of this footage”? Absent concrete means of authentication, perhaps the best advocates and human rights groups can do is to use their in-house expertise to provide context through which to view and understand a given video. On the Hub, WITNESS contacts users who post videos whose authenticity is in question, and also contacts local groups who may be able to contextualize the footage. But still, WITNESS does not vouch for the veracity, accuracy, or authenticity of content uploaded to the Hub, and encourages users to perform their own fact-checking and verification processes. Viewers and advocates alike must be vigilant. Like those surrounding the Sri Lanka video, in an open, technologically advanced landscape, questions about verifying authenticity abound.

I chose to embed the original Channel 4 News report containing the footage in question in this post because it does provide context for the alleged human rights violations seen in the video and because they so clearly caution that they cannot verify the video's authenticity. Also, I wanted you to be able to see the footage for yourself after reading about different groups' thoughts on its veracity. I also included a link to what the Asian Tribune termed the “original” version of the video in the interest of impartiality and because the accompanying article also provides important context.

The video itself has made its way onto YouTube along with videos claiming to disprove the allegations and documenting the Sri Lankan government's response. However, there is little in the way of substantive debate over the video's authenticty in the YouTube commentary beyond name-calling and sniping from both sides. Most comments focus on the conflict between the Tamils and Sri Lankan government in general.

Somewhat obscured by the controversy over the Sri Lankan video's authenticity are the ramifications of the video if it is real. How might the Sri Lankan government respond? Would it acquiesce to international demands for an investigation into war crimes committed during the long war between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan military or would it stonewall and continue to deny any crimes occurred? In the United Arab Emirates, the release of a video showing a relative of the UAE's crown prince torturing a man has reportedly been detained under house arrest, but his current status is uncertain (more in this post by Masha Medvedkov). Could something similar occur in Sri Lanka?

We want to hear from you:

What should advocates do to ensure a video they may use is authentic?

What indicators can be used to determine authenticity?

What can/should video-sharing sites like the Hub or YouTube do to tackle the issue of fake or doctored video?

What other ethical issues does the Sri Lanka video raise – safety concerns, respect for individuals' dignity, etc.?