Tech

US plans to profile human rights abuses in Ukraine


America announced today it will fund data collection on the conflict in Ukraine. Outside lay the groundwork for war crimes prosecutionsThis move will share vital, real-time data with humanitarian organisations.

The newly established conflict observatory will use open source investigative techniques and satellite imagery to monitor the conflict in Ukraine and gather evidence of possible war crimes. A spokesperson for the US State Department confirmed in an email.

Conflict Observatory partners include Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Laboratory, the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative, the artificial intelligence company PlanetScape Ai, and Esri, an information systems company geographic information, according to the State Department. Press Release. Nathaniel Raymond, a lecturer at Yale’s Jackson School, said the Observatory will have access to commercial satellite data and images from the US government. of Global Affairs and a fellow at the Humanitarian Research Laboratory.

Raymond himself is no stranger to using technology to investigate conflicts and crises. Over a decade ago, he was the operations director of Sentinel satellite projectco-founded by actor George Clooney, used satellite imagery to track the conflict in South Sudan and recognized human rights violations. This is the first initiative of its kind but would be too costly and resource-intensive for other organizations to replicate.

“This kind of work is laborious,” said Alexa Koenig, executive director at the Center for Human Rights at UC Berkeley Law School. “I think in terms of money and capacity, we’re at a point where a lot of these organizations need to think about the information environment they’re working in. Open source information can be invaluable at the preliminary investigation stage, as you are planning humanitarian relief or conducting a legal investigation. “

No data that the Observatory will use and disseminate is classified; satellite images will be obtained from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency commercial contract with private companies. But having access to multiple types of data in one place, rather than spread across many different entities and the ability to analyze it, makes it powerful. While the Observatory will use public data, it has no plans to make its data open source, unlike many other humanitarian projects, according to Raymond.

“The level of detail and the rapidity with which, in some cases, image data can be collected means it could be valuable to those looking to target civilians,” he said. and protected infrastructure such as hospitals and shelters.

Raymond is particularly aware of these risks. While he was at the Satellite Sentinel, a report the team published may have led to kidnap of a group of Chinese road workers of the South Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Although the image was de-identified by removing latitude and longitude, Raymond said that locals could have recognized the terrain and located the convoy.



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