 Okay, so it is said that history is written by the victors, but in the era of information We just have to dig out the truth and expose the lies The Syrian archive is a group of volunteers dedicated to documenting human rights violations committed by all sides during the Syrian conflict With over 2,000 incidents preserved and more hours of online footage than there have been hours of conflict The Syrian archive is the only tool to gather and verify all this data Without further ado, I present to you the Syrian archive team Hello, everyone, my name is Hadil Khatid and I'm Jeff Torich First of all, I would like to thank you for being here and thank the CCC for inviting us. It's really We appreciate being able to present here What we'll be going through in the next 30 minutes is an overview of the project the background Specific problems that we have identified while working on user-generated content our methodology and three case studies as well as our plans for 2017 So we have started this work in Turkey in 2014 working with journalists lawyers and human rights activists And the project is about a platform that collects, verifies Preserve and analyze visual documentation of human rights violations And the goal is to create an evidence-based tool that can be used for reporting Advocacy accountability by journalists human rights defenders and lawyers Since then we have been collaborating with a number of groups The United Nations or CHR, which is the investigation team based in Geneva doing investigations on Syria since 2012 We've been working with them on investigation related to Aleppo since they got the mandate to do this from the Security Council a few weeks ago We've been also working with human rights watch related to class immunizations research in Syria Amnesty International as well with their digital document digital verification corpse team, which is a group of young professionals from Berkeley University and Essex University who are helping us doing in-depth verification We've been also collaborating with Billing Cat, which is a collective of investigators specialized in the use of open-source investigations We've been also working with the MEDAN We're integrating their platform, which is a collaborative verification platform Also with witness in terms of improving our methodology and workflow with tactical technology Collective that are supporting us in the development of the collecting infrastructure as well as of course Syrian journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders as they are our main source of information such as the Syrian Institute for Justice So since the Tunisian Revolution we have seen a big shift in how conflicts has been being reported So from being reported by journalists NGOs who had access to the country Into depending more on user-generated content especially in areas where you can't actually access the country Journalists and NGOs are banned from reporting and in the case of Syria There are more hours of online footage than they are actually hours in the conflict itself and hidden in that footage There is hundreds of untold stories a human rights regulations and possibly war crime evidence But with this user-generated content that we have been working with we identified three kind of problems One of it is the content is being erased and can't be found Content is not verified. The content is unsearchable So working with lawyers and human rights activists They are doing this work in a hostile environment They have been attacks and targeted by many groups for doing their work They have been attacked by all kind of weapons, basically Their devices get damaged, their data gets lost, the evidence gets lost Of course when they are moving through checkpoints where they are moving through borders Also their devices are seized, damaged and of course information is being lost If they are publishing what they have on social media platform It's being deleted, it's being removed because it violates the privacy policy of those commercial social media services And also because their accounts get hacked because of what they are publishing In this case, Physicians for Human Rights has worked on an investigation and documentation related to attacks against hospitals in Syria They refer to visual evidence that was published on YouTube It's not there anymore We lost the evidence that actually refers to this type of attack And I don't know if we can get it again It's not just us that are having this problem But also other investigators such as Billioncats, Iliot from Billioncat who is the director has been doing a lot of work on chemical attacks That happened in August 2013 And basically most of the evidence that he has been looking for and analyzing has been also gone The other problem related to this is that content is basically scattered everywhere It's on different social media platforms, different websites It's really hard to understand what happened in a specific incident because it's really hard to understand the full image It's also of course scattered offline when there's no internet connectivity in external hard drives or computers When it's published online, it's not verified There are hundreds and hundreds of videos We are not talking about one or two that are coming every day With this comes a lot of fake information as well Which makes it really hard for journalists and human rights organizations to actually respond to this huge amount of data related to violations It is so difficult for it to be searchable because it doesn't have any kind of metadata when it's published Also metadata is being stripped from social media platform when visual evidence is published there Most reports that are published by human rights organizations or articles by journalists are in different formats, PDF formats So it's really inaccessible So we worked to address these three problems in a variety of ways So for the first problem that content is being deleted or that it's scattered throughout the internet We worked to develop an automated secure content backup tool So every day our content is being scraped and backed up externally on servers throughout the world Also by making the platform the database online available online We've kind of centralized the data that's being scattered throughout the internet and put it in one place Dealing with the fact that the content is not verified We've worked to develop a very detailed methodology It's an open source methodology that we're going to go into in a little bit And also in infrastructure so that we can highlight how the verification is actually working And then relating to the fact that the content is unsearchable We recognized the fact that we needed to have a very standardized metadata scheme And a filter system so that you can search through all the content that we have So for the methodology we found three components There's a collection in the archival component There's the basic verification component And more in-depth investigations So there's five steps that we've identified for collection in archival The first step before we have any of the content Is to first make a list of all of our sources for that content So we have identified 200 credible sources Made up of a variety of individuals or organizations Local field clinics, individual citizens and larger NGOs A lot of the sources that we've been working with have been Reporting on the conflict since 2011 or 2012 Although some are more recent So after we have a list of the sources for the content We need to develop a list of sources for the verification You can't verify the content with the same sources we're providing the content So we need to develop a separate list And this is mostly made up of a team of citizen journalists And human rights defenders who are located in Syria When we need additional information regarding verification Of any of the videos, we get in touch with them And they can also help us identify a specific place Or item in the videos And the third step that we have for the collection in archival Is to establish this metadata scheme And we for our database decided to use The metadata scheme developed by the UN Office for High Commissioner of Human Rights And we did this because they are in a unique position To investigate and also to prosecute So we felt that if we categorize our data by their standards Then it could be useful for future investigations These are some of the categories that they have In their metadata scheme And I'm not going to go over all of them now But you can just see them, we can come back to them later The fourth step of the collection in archival Is to record as much of the metadata that we can So we want to contextualize the material that we do have To identify the location, the date that it was recorded And uploaded, I can talk about that in a bit And also the origin of the video Which is a bit harder to identify As Heidi mentioned, a lot of the metadata is stripped When it's uploaded into social media platforms So sometimes there's very little additional information And sometimes there's more And then step five, once we have identified all of the metadata And an incident, we work to collect, store, hash And timestamp all of the videos that we have So that we can preserve the integrity of the videos And make sure that they're not modified After we have downloaded them and stored them securely So for the verification, we also have five steps The first step, once we have the video downloaded And stored in our servers Is to parse and to aggregate all the metadata that we have Using, as I mentioned, the metadata scheme From UNOHCHR But also additional metadata fields like Type of munitions used If that's able to be determined Or the weather, unique landmarks That are in individual videos Once we have all of that, we can start the verification process So the second step Is to verify the source of the video A lot of the videos that we're getting are sent directly By sources on the ground So in that case, we know who this is But when something is uploaded online We can determine the source by the user account Whether it's a media house Or whether it's an individual journalist We determine whether they're credible or not Based on their history of uploading And whether or not they're known to us or not If they're not within our database of credible sources We have a procedure for verifying them, for vetting them And I can go into that in a bit The third step for verification Is to verify the location So this is the whole geolocation component So there's basic geolocation That we can determine by reading the descriptions Of the videos that we've uploaded And also communicating with the people who have uploaded them In some cases, we also do more in-depth geolocation As Hadi is going to go over in some of the case studies And then the fourth step is verifying the filming And the upload dates So upload dates are able to be determined By the date that it has been uploaded to YouTube But there's tools developed by groups like Witness and others that help with this process Sometimes it may be difficult to verify The date that it was actually filmed People can film, they can upload it at the same day Or sometimes many months later So we have to cross-reference this with a lot of news accounts Reports by NGOs Or international human rights organizations And then the last step is to publish this into our database So we make our database publicly available In an open source format And this is what the database looks like So you can see on the left there's an identifier There's a description, the date that it was recorded Where it was and the type of violation According to the UN OHCHR standards So in the red box you can see the type of violation And this is using that metadata scheme Underneath that you can see the types of weapons identified And then location And when you click on an individual incident You can see on the left-hand side this is where the video is They don't autoplay because we don't want to expose people To content that they might find disturbing And if we found that a video is particularly graphic We always include a warning in a red banner This one doesn't have it On the right-hand side you can see the initial metadata And then below it we've geolocated So you can see where each video was actually filmed On the right-hand side you can see more additional metadata Like the weather or weapons used So when we look at the videos altogether We've developed a map where it's interactive This is just a screenshot But you can zoom in or out and you can find particular areas Where particular incidents were filmed This is all able to be filtered by the type of munition used Or the type of investigation that we're doing For instance on cluster bombs or chemical weapons And with that we've done a number of investigations So we do this for a couple of reasons One we wanted the archive to be used as an advocacy tool For people right now We wanted to keep people updated in terms of what's the current situation We also want to speak directly to policy makers People like the ICC, people like the UN OHCHR And others But also we recognize that there's a strong amount of trust That's needed between us and the people who are uploading the videos We need to trust them in order to know that the content That they're providing us with is legitimate Or if they're vouching for it That they're making the correct claims But they also need to trust us that we're using the data For the intended purposes And this is particularly true when they're sending us information directly So we have an investigations part of the website That you can see here And the first one on chemical weapons is a case study that Hadi is going to talk about now So the first case study is related to the use of chemical weapons in Syria Since 2011 until now We have geolocated and verified collected hundreds of visual evidence related to this What we can quickly see from this is first Chemical weapons has been a tool from the beginning of the conflict Since 2012 Most of the organizations maybe or human rights community think that it started in 2013 Because there is a very big incident there But it actually started before We can also see that it's still continuing in 2015 and 2016 Even after the OPCW the organization of production of chemical weapons Announced that they destroyed chemical weapons in Syria in 2015 Another graph that shows the peak in 2013 Most of the video has been published there Because there was a big incident The countryside of Damascus of the use of Sarene gas against civilians We can see that it's still continuing Not even November but also until few days ago This is one of the recent incidents that happened in eastern Aleppo Which was the use of clarine cylinder against civilians In also civilian areas This is the video that has been published By the Senate Institute for Justice Which are lawyers that are based in Aleppo And we can see that they are taking footage of the impact site After the gas cylinder has been dropped From this type of images We try to identify structure of the buildings To be able to understand where this actually happens This is the gas cylinder that was used They sent us a very close image to it If we go even closer We can see that there is the sticker from BBCC Which is a Jordanian company that produces chemicals We also were able to identify the structure of the buildings As you can see also the impact sites As has been seen in the videos The tree that has been seen also in the video And through that we go to Google Earth To be able to understand where this actually happened In the title there is a description of where it happened And we looked around that area This is exactly where the cameraman is standing And then by getting a better satellite imagery We can see the same buildings on the right The impact site and that tree So we know exactly that this is the location in eastern Aleppo That has been attacked This is not the only attack that used this kind of gas cylinder But also there have been earlier ones From Kaffir Zeta in Hama October 2016 There has been a recent one a few weeks ago In Al-Fardos district in Aleppo December 8th 2016 There has been another one a few days ago That happened in Masak in Hanano in Aleppo December 18th 2016 Which all shows a pattern of the use of gas cylinders Against civilians And we can identify that this is one of the tactics That has been used by the senior government In the control of Aleppo All these claimed reports We are matching with the OPCW Also a report that has been published in 2015 Proving that the senior government was responsible For the use of chemicals against civilians So the second case study Is related to cluster munitions used in Syria It has been used by the senior government And also by the Russian government Starting in their operation September 2015 They denied that they have any kind of weapons Like this in Syria But there was a report that has been published By Russia today Sorry a video And this video has been published From Hmaim Air Base Which is the main air base of the Russia aircraft And we can identify two types of cluster munitions One is incendiary, RBK-500Z2.5SM The other one is more as cluster Identified cluster munitions, RBK-500A0 2.5RTM There were also other footage From Hmaim Air Base that were taken by journalists That were there visiting And by accident they also Photos this cluster munition that is there So since then we started to Collect and verify the visual evidence From media activists that have been Claims that there was a cluster munition Has been used and with Human Rights Watch In July 2016 We were able to collaborate on a report About cluster munitions used in Syria And through the database They have identified specific types Of cluster munitions as we can see In this slide and also on this slide So the third case study Is related to geolocating airstrikes Russian airstrikes, coalition airstrikes We started with the Russian airstrikes Since the beginning of the operation In September 2015 We have been collecting hundreds And hundreds of also visual evidence Related to that We tried to geolocate as much as possible To understand what happened and where Where was the most attacked happened And in which areas And we did some in-depth also investigations Of specific videos This is one of them It was published by the Jisra Shuhur Media Center Which is a group that is based in Idlib And they were claiming that there was A mosque being bombed It's called Al-Mabnal Khattab And they were also claiming that It was bombed by a Russian aircraft So after that The Russian Ministry of Defence Has announced that They're not responsible for this type of attack And this is all fake And they have published a satellite imagery Of the actual mosque Saying that this is the actual mosque That was reported and it's still intact And this is a recent satellite imagery So what we did is we asked One of the journalists, our sources That we work with from Idlib To take a photo of this mosque That has been showing on the satellite image And he did and it actually was still intact But the name was Al-Farouq Not Al-Farouq So we allocated this one Through Google Earth just to understand Where it is exactly And then what we try to do is we try to do To look for other mosques From close to this area And we have found this satellite imagery That was posted on Facebook page Of the Jisra Shuhur Media Center Of a mosque that is close to that mosque But it's still intact Because it was months before the attack But through this satellite imagery We were able to geolocate The drone image with the videos That has been published about the attack This is one of the videos from one of the sources Hashem Abdullah that we work with him in Idlib This is another one from other sources The Jisra Shuhur Media Center And from there we were able to Use Google Earth again To geolocate the actual mosque That was attacked And then we saw that The distance is about one kilometer Between the claimed mosque that was Attacked and the actual mosque And we can see this clear In this footage from Google Earth right now So it's about one kilometer away And we got a clear satellite imagery Where after the attack Where we can see that the mosque Was also attacked We have also noticed that The logo of the satellite imagery Published by the Russian Ministry of Defense Is covering the actual mosque that was attacked And we don't know if it happened by accident Or if it's on purpose But we know that there was a fake information Or wrong information that was published By the Ministry of Defense So those are a couple of projects that we're working on in 2016 But for 2017 we have a bunch of plans One we want to add a lot of new sources Of the database that we're using So these are both platform-based Right now we're using mostly videos from YouTube But we also want to incorporate Twitter and Telegram Into our database And also from organizations and individuals Like the Violations Documentation Center Who's doing a lot of really amazing work But we don't have their information in our system yet And also groups like the UN And various, various organizations That are working on human rights issues That are currently publishing in PDF format Of course we also want to be incorporating Offline data sources More into the database that we're using We're looking forward to continuing The open source investigations that we're doing With Bellingcat and with Amnesty International's Digital Verification Core And we're looking to develop a toolkit For open source investigations Open source here meaning Information that's publicly available But the toolkit itself is also going to be open source As in it will be on Git and available for comments So if you have any feedback, please let us know And then lastly we're looking to develop A platform for collaborative verification of large datasets So right now there isn't one There's projects like check from Meaden That are working on verification on individual videos Which is super, super helpful But for large dataset, the status doesn't currently exist So thanks so much for all your time If you have questions, I know we still have a couple minutes left Otherwise we're available afterwards And if you have any interest in helping or supporting us You can check us out, here's our website We're on Twitter and you can email us That's our pgp key Thanks so much Thank you very much We have a few minutes for questions So please, microphone one So I want to ask how could you verify The number of casualties for every crime And whether if your archive Include less major crimes Than the chemical weapons that's been used since 2011 Right, so We didn't verify the number of casualties As a result of the chemical attacks There are other organizations who are doing so Like the Violation Documentation Center And what we are trying to do is to incorporate What they have dataset with the visual evidence So we can understand exactly what happened And whether your archive Include other crimes that started since 2011 Or whether it just includes crimes since 2014 So we have videos about crimes from 2011 Until now we were not able to process All this information because we're talking about Thousands of footage But the plan is to go through it for next year Thank you Next question, microphone number three Hi, I just wanted to say that you're doing a great job It's very important that somebody does this And please keep this up It's actually two questions First question is do you have a narrative Which brings the facts together in a way And I'm not talking about a factual narrative But what the different parties involved in this war Are saying and what they're claiming about these events So we know what happened But what are they saying about it Do you have that on your platform The question is how can we help I mean we have a lot of people here in this room Probably want to help so how can we do that So for the first question We don't have the narrative from all the groups That are on the ground What we focus on is just contextualizing The visual evidence and make sure that it has more metadata So it's more understandable and more has a value To be used for advocacy purposes Accountability purposes and so on In terms of the help To reach to the hackers community And to everyone who is able to help Technically and non-technically on this In terms of research, building methodology Technical infrastructure And more And just to add on to that A lot of the methods that we're using are pretty They're not that difficult And all of our methodologies are outlined In every report that we're writing But we're going to be making this toolkit So if you have any suggestions Please help us there Give us some comments There's also a huge backlog of lots of videos If you have time it would be great to help us with some of those Thanks Thank you, I think we have one more time Time to squeeze in one more question But please be precise Maybe the IRC channel Well, we have questions from IRC One question is if you work It's based on the international human rights definition Made in Syria I'm sorry, can you repeat the question? One user wants to know If your work is based on the international Human rights definition by the UN Or if your work relies On a special human rights definition Defined in Syria So we're using the UNHCR categories Which means we are working According to the international humanitarian law So some of that is related to also the Syrian code panel And some of it is not there But the standard is UNHCR And international humanitarian law I'm afraid that's all the time we have Thank you very much, guys Thank you