 Hydiw, everyone, and welcome to this fifth webinar on open source verification. My name is Henrietta Wilson. I'm really pleased to be working on this project with Dan Plesh and Alameday Samuel from So раз Univeristy. Thank you to them for all their support in getting these webinars together and of course to the Soas Scrap students who are instrumental in making it all happen. We have another three really exciting speakers lined up for us today. a we have Ali Arbia from ACAPS and Daniel Llew from Kings College London Project Alpha and Dan Pleche from SOAS. So I'll be handing over to them in a moment. But before I do so, as usual, I'm going to say a few introductory comments about where we're at in this webinar series. So this is the fifth webinar. We've had four webinars so far and we have another two plans. So it's really worth taking stock of what we're learning, some of the things that are emerging from this work. So just to give you a really quick overview. In the webinars we've had so far, we've had 15 speakers from different organisations doing different sorts of open source verification. Now we've got another three and this one will have another eight in the two remaining webinars. So a really diverse mixture of people and on top of all of that behind the scenes I've been having lots of research conversations with different open source practitioners around the world. So there's a lot of different stuff coming out of these conversations and I want to just start by foregrounding this sense that open source research is a real growth area. There's a lot of it happening around the world with very different approaches, with very different attitudes and roles and lots of these have kind of connections and are interrelated and have dressing overlapping themes but lots of them are quite independent and separate from each other as well. So I'm just going to share my slides again to sum up some of the themes that I've been thinking about in my conversations and work. So this isn't working. I'll have another go at that. Sorry, this is taking me a little while. I'll be there shortly. There we go. So what I've been finding out is some sort of overlapping themes that are emerging from these conversations. As I said there's all sorts of different types of monitoring and they're doing different sorts of things. So through the webinars we've seen examples of open source research that's been fundamentally aimed at correcting misinformation and I point to Richard Guthrie's case study of the yellow rain incident, a historical piece of research by Julian Perry Robinson and Matt Meslson in which through open sources they managed to dispel allegations of use of biological warfare in South Asia. So it's really important that open source researchers, non-governmental researchers, can correct false allegations. Apart from that I think open source research is really usefully uncovering a bunch of unknown information in different categories. So some of the projects we've seen have been uncovering things that people know are unknown. Jamie Whithorn gave an example of her research looking at sanctions in North Korea where she knew that some of the tracking processes were being evaded. So you start to think about how you find out about what you know, you don't know. There's also been examples of projects uncovering unknown unknowns and tracking flows of information piecing together, triangulating different sources of information to put together a compelling piece of information picture of what's going on in a place that was thought to be hidden. There's also differences in this open source work of the sorts of political impact people are trying to achieve. So the sorts of work that I'm interested in are really concerned with progressive policies, projects that are trying to make the world a better place in some sort of way. There is other sort of open source intelligence work which is maybe more commercial or doing other sorts of things but the focus of this set of webinars is really on the small non-governmental organisations and research groups that are trying to increase transparency either to empower systems or to inform decisions in different sorts of ways. So we've seen examples of those sorts of things through the webinars. We've also had discussions around can open source research, can open source verification be more than the sum of its part and we thought about different opportunities and challenges for doing this. So the opportunities may be revolved around can projects be coordinated in some sort of way, are there opportunities to share information, share technology, challenges. I think it's definitely an open question how this sort of work could be harnessed to be more than it's doing already. So I'll be interested to see if we can explore that more in this webinar. So thank you very much for that. I'll just now very quickly outline how this webinar is going to work. We're going to have three short talks. Throughout those talks please do feel free to post any questions or comments via the chat function and if you do so if you could add your name and affiliation that would be great. I mean I guess I'll have your name anyway but your affiliation would be very helpful if you're happy to share that. The presentation side of this webinar will finish at around three o'clock and then we'll move to more informal discussions so if people then are happy to share their video and their chat that'll be great. Okay so now I'm delighted to be able to hand over to Ali for his presentation. Ali works at ACAPS and I know he'll be saying a bit about his work. Thank you very much Ali. Okay thank you for the introduction. I will try to share my screen. I hope it's the first time I'm doing this on Zoom. Can you already see my screen if not? Not yet Ali. Okay otherwise I'll do it without the presentation because it's not okay. There we go. Can you see my screen now? Yes thank you. Good. Okay so sorry for that. Do you see the slider? Do you also see the like this? Does that work? Do you see the screen now? Sorry. You're fine. Okay thank you. Sorry. Okay so um yeah as Henrietta said I'm so my name is Ali Arbia. Before I start just a little bit a little grain of salt. I'm relatively new to ACAPS so I've worked for ACAPS now for half a year but I'm definitely new to the humanitarian sector so I hope I do justice to the work of my colleagues. I can by now fairly competently talk about my own work but so I hope that I will be able to answer questions if there are questions but I might have to double check with my colleagues later and come back to you to give you some of the answers. The way I wanted to structure this presentation is I'll give you a little bit of context who we are and what we do because I think that we are probably our work is a little bit different from most other people who have presented so far in this series or will present. I will quickly give you an idea of what we do and then I'll come to the main part which is how do we do it because I think this is probably the part that is most interesting. A lot of this will be about um about how we how we do the work and less about the sources specifically or what kind of sources you work with but you will see why I have structured it that way. So ACAPS we have we are a team of probably now about 40 people. We have hubs in Bangladesh, Colombia and I'm based in Geneva where the biggest group is working where a lot of the analysis is happening. We have various donors. They change it every year. This is the most up-to-date slide I could find and in terms of governing structure we have a consortium that is in charge and so we it's composed of the Norwegian Refugee Council and Save the Children. So what do we do? There are four areas where we are active. We do analysis and tailored support. This is what my team does quite a lot of. We also do capacity building so we have humanitarian training courses, a program and advocacy. For this presentation I will mainly talk about analysis because this is what is what is relevant for the topic here. So just what the type of analysis we do. We work on global comparisons. We do trend analysis. We look at risks. Multiple crises in one country, crisis going across national borders. I think to get an idea invite you to go to our website. You will see everything we do is published there. Also databases etc. So I think if you're interested I invite you to go to our website. That's probably the best way to get more familiar with our work. So the typical outputs you will find there are we do online crisis analysis. These are very short pieces. Briefing notes. This is a lot coming out of my team. They are supposed to be timely and very focused. I will get back to that in a minute. Then we have more in-depth thematic reports. We do anticipatory reports and trying to do scenario building and risk analysis. Of course this depending on what you're working on or my colleagues are working on this also means that the approach is slightly different as well as the sources that are used for that. So to get to the meat of the presentation and that's what you're probably most interested in is so how do we do that analysis. I'd like to start with the specific challenges we're facing because I think this is the interesting part how we try to solve challenges. Some of them will be familiar to you. Others probably are quite specific to the kind of work we do. So the first challenge is timeliness. So we often work on very short time spans. For example my team, the rapid analysis team, we get regular alerts and requests for briefing notes that we have to deliver within 24 hours. A lot of traditional databases information that you can find is not updated on such a short term basis. So this is one thing we need to find solutions for. Then the specificity of some of the requests we get. Often it's about the humanitarian crisis that is very localized. So we're really talking about a specific district in a country where you might not have a lot of information to begin with. Or sometimes it's thematically very specific meaning that actually you need the input of someone with technical knowledge and technical expertise which again we do not necessarily have in house. And then that's probably familiar to most of you. So you always end up having conflicting or unclear information because it's often about rapidly developing crisis. The number today will not be the same like in two days when we talk about floods or earthquakes etc. And in addition a problem that we have is that the best information usually is available with the organizations on the ground that are there. But they of course have their own incentives and biases when they report things and their questions of and I mean that in the most neutral way possible but there are questions of funding of organizational specialization etc. So what we are trying to do is to come in and give less biased version of the situation and provide information that these humanitarian decision makers on the spot can make the right decisions and hopefully help more people that way. So in terms of sources we are using that's nothing exciting at all. We base ourselves on new sources that are openly accessible. We often go back to specialized reports because if you write about things like nutrition or wash facilities etc. often you need some organizations that have a specific expertise so like the OCHA or the World Food Organization. And then we also try to use our own network and contacts we have. We had an attempt building that network up but it's difficult to keep a formal network up and also to have the right people because if you cover the globe and the information you need is often very specific and localized even if you have a vast network of expertise and local knowledge that you hit exactly that spot that you need to hit is not obvious. So this is my last slide and this is actually the one that is the important slide. So how do we try to solve these challenges and how do we approach the work? So one thing is we aim for good enough so not for very good or perfect but good enough. The idea is that the people on the ground or people interested in reading our products that they get the information they need not as much information as possible but that we really try to target to give them what they need and as detailed or not detailed as it is needed. We also often say so we try to make sense not data it's always easy to throw a lot of data at people but I think what we try to do is really give the value added with the interpretation of the data doing the analysis the line is not always that clear when you switch from just as I said throwing data at people to providing the interpretation to the data and then the last point for the good enough is that we also try if so for example in my work if you have 24 hours to provide a briefing note the art is not necessarily to find the information but what is difficult is to say okay this is enough this is what people need this is enough to take a decision. So it's more about how to find that point when things are good enough. Then we work a lot with templates and workflows and I think again this is this is specific to the challenges we face so if you want to be as timely as possible we work with templates so we don't have to start from zero every time it also makes training of analysts a lot easier you will see why but we have a quite a big turnover in terms of analysts analysts so working with templates makes that part of the data collection and analysis much more efficient the same for workflows so we do for example the we have the crisis insight team they they give ratings of crisis you can also find that on our web page and they're also quite precise workflows so it's easy to train people it it assures a certain coherence across time and so again it makes training easier we also produce our own data sets and so far we had crisis insight but also access we have now with COVID-19 two new data sets where we and I'll get back to that experiment a little bit with the data collection so we have one on government measures that we're taking and one on the secondary impact that's all new for of COVID-19 the way we approach that these two data sets is so we have student volunteers all across the globe which allows us to diversify also a little bit the points of view and to have more local we onboard them and there's quite a turnover but with established procedures we can manage that quite well and the last point is so we do something similar for the analysis so a big part of our analysis is done by trainee analysts we have a trainee program where analysts come in for a year we give them a way of of starting in the humanitarian analysis area give them trainings provide them with guidance so they learn on the job and at the same time we get some valuable analysis out of that system but this is why we have the need of having being able to deal with a big turnover and still and provide a certain coherence and consistency in what we do so this is a brief summary how we work you might have noticed so I put a lot of emphasis on and procedures processes because I think this is probably what is most interesting for you and what is the more innovative part of the way we function yeah so I'm done with my slides if you're interested in more information please don't hesitate to go to our website or ask questions now I try to unshare my screen good thank you Ali that was a fantastic 10 minutes giving us a really clear flavour of how far-reaching ACAPS is and this umbrella term for humanitarian monitoring you're covering so many different sectors so many different locations and often in a really speedy way so you gave a really interesting insight in how you reconcile the need for very speedy responses with being accurate and how you go for a good enough client-focused solution to that which seems great to me I just wanted to follow up before handing over to the next speaker in earlier webinars there's been mention of how disinformation and misinformation on the internet can really complicate open source research and I wondered if in your work how you guard against this how it interrupts your work and I would think that that's particularly challenging when you're working across different geographies because there's such cultural specificity in how people report on things how they're regarded so I don't know if you can comment on that at all now or if you'd like to wait a moment yeah I can try to so um I'd say in so far it has not been a huge problem for us I guess it has to do because a lot of a lot of information you're working on is is is actually quite technical so it it goes back to things like nutrition shelters non-food items so it's less of an issue I think it probably we have slight problems like this when it comes then to the broader context in the context of our violence but as this is not the core of our work mostly can be solved also by avoiding certain ambiguity just by being very transparent what we know what we don't know but it's it's not central usually to what we write about so this is this is quite easy and I think the second point why it's not a big problem is because we have to work in on such short notice or we try to be as speedy as possible and I mean one way of of doing it is also you just have certain sources you always come back certain databases certain sources of information and so in a certain sense it's almost like we have some sources some trusted sources almost like pre-selected and they usually build the core of of of what we what we write about great great answer so I think that's we've heard similar things from other speakers over the course of the webinars in different a different balance between those different aspects so yes transparency making making clear where you've got your evidence from and not over claiming on your conclusions and also tracking things isn't just a matter of getting a slam dunk piece of data it's about building confidence and knowledge and expertise over time and some of that is through building trusted networks that you can rely on yeah thank you very much Ali I'm now going to introduce Dan Yu from Kings College London project Alpha thank you very much Daniel you'd be great to hear from you hi everyone can everyone can everyone hear me yes thank you great I'm just going to quickly try and share my screen stand by this can everyone hear that can everyone see this yes thank you Dan amazing all right here we go so again thank you thank you very much Henry and for for inviting us to be here my name is Dan Lu and I am a researcher at Kings College London at the Center for Sciences Security Studies I'm going to following from Ali's discussion and sort of really really great insight into the sort of strategic level humanitarian analysis I'm going to bring it down to a very very tactical level example of the level of frustrations and sort of the trials and tribulations of a of of open source verification and and sort of following up on publicly publicly known information but but using open sources so a bit about what we do first so project alpha we are a knowledge transfer program within Kings College London and we specifically focus on sort of informing and scaling up practitioners in specifically the non-proliferous fields so basically that includes sanctions, strategic trade controls, proliferation finance and so on so in the sort of the investigation side of house we use a range of open source tools and techniques to sort of study or aspects of non-proliferation from its financing to its sanctions evasion networks to how these networks grow, change and all these other dynamics of course the traditional targets of sanctions investigation and non-proliferation investigations obviously involve around the DPRK but we also have specific technical safeguards on nuclear safety as part of CLSS. The maritime and China are aspects that we also look a lot into and also strategic trade control policy, proliferation finance policy, as well as throwing more interesting and innovative ideas such as using sort of mass data sets data fusion and also applying a bit of machine learning into enhancing and making analysts workflows better. So I'm going to sort of specifically talk about one case and that case is comid in Sudan. So this is a case that the UN panel of experts on North Korea have been following for a very long time and it is a case where after the UN panel of experts have gotten information from a nation state they were informed that the North Korean government and the Sudanese government were in cooperation to transfer a series of one to two precision guided munitions and also air attack satellite guided missiles from the DPRK to Sudan. They knew from information provided by them from a nation state that it involved a company called Future Electric Company that ostensibly was in China and also they had and also career mining development trading corporation which is a or comid which is a known DPRK gun running gun running cover shelf network is sort of the main instigator behind the this through the transaction. So after picking after picking apart the UN panel of experts report so we can kind of already see some some interesting leads one is sort of the the key key individuals involved that was that was said by the by the panel from the DPRK side. We also know that we also know that the that the that the UN the UN panel of experts also also have knowledge of a of a shell company that's resident in China that's specifically in the Haidan district of Beijing and we also know that Future Electric Company is is sort of the the main sort of vehicle of which this transaction is is taking place but this is where things starts getting a bit interesting because Future Electric Company sounds an incredibly generic and then when you have the wide variety of ways that you can sort of permeate permeate and combine different ways of making this name in various in various languages in the jurisdictions involved and Chinese and Korean in English in Romanized and Romanized English and Romanized Korean and Romanized Chinese or in Arabic all of these starts to you start getting an incredibly large list of of probable selectors for you to start your search with and so what we typically what we typically do at Project Alpha is we all we look at corporate registries that are that is open and publicly available but by any member of the public so these are the best example in the UK is companies house where you plonken a a name of a company and they should have the company details because it's a matter of registering your company in a jurisdiction so for example of this we we used something similar in in Nigeria where we had the where we had Genco which is another North Korean Sanctions of Asian Network so as you can see here this is a pretty relatively open and shut case we have DPRK addresses and we know exactly when they were when they were registered in the case of Sudan however what we would have relied on is not available according to the open the open data index company registry the company register in in Sudan is is very much closed to sort of members of the public and it's it is not available for us to sort of use okay then that's that that's a step backwards but we can also think about other ways of getting at this problem what about methods of transshipment we know that in order for in order for our shipment to go from case a to b there has to be there has to be vectors they have so you so you things we have to consider is the types of okay if it's maritime then okay maybe they're using different different shipping companies in China okay and then and and that's done but then maybe previous previous webinars have also told how complicated maritime shipping analysis is and sort of all the sort of it all all sort of the a is drifting and dark activities that maritime networks engage in to sort of evade evade detection so that that's something that we need to be going to consider second okay what about through air we know that air choreo is heavily sanctioned and we and we have we and there are public data data sets and web and sort of platforms that actively monitor sort of the the current position of entire fleets of commercial airlines that could be a possibility and what about through what about through land we knew we know that from from the UN panel of exodus reports that a lot of the dprk agents that they came through and sealed the deal were accredited or traveling through Egypt maybe um maybe that was kind of maybe that was sort of the round land route that was through here so that so that involves so as you can see here even just even with that and has an incredible large array of possibilities and a large array of sort of and sort of avenues of investigation that that individual analysts will have to will have to go through and track down so sometimes we get lucky sometimes we get bills of lading data that specifically point us to point us to a specific transaction sort of bills of lading data are for for those unfamiliar are sort of pieces of pieces of sort of declarations that a ship that when a consignee sort of ships something we'll have to declare to to the customs authority of who are my where am I sending it to who who's going to receive it what is my address what is inside and so on and so forth sometimes that's that's commercially or publicly available and we can get we can get and we can get sort of the type of specific technique tactical level data of who sent what where unfortunately and if unfortunately in this case you this is this is not the case so we so we through this particular transaction we looked for china to sedan and with the with the keywords of future electric as a company but we get we get a lot of these hits but none of them really sort of match the time frame or sort of the the typology of of the company we're looking for so no no dice there okay so maybe we so what about we expanded a bit more further maybe we just look beyond just the two companies to look to the other parts of the network okay we're getting a bit desperate here but let's let's let's have a go so this is what we know of the current the current network of in Sudan as told by the UN panel of experts maybe we can maybe we can branch it out to the to the rest of the continent okay this is getting a bit complicated complicated we have all of these networks we have all of these individuals and also roaming around different areas doing different things and setting up their own shell companies that's that's going to be a bit difficult to track but thankfully we've got a large amount of corporate registry data that's publicly available we can we can we can maybe start tracking some of this let's let's go in a bit more deeper oh no this is again this is this is starting to get a bit messy and this is kind of and once you sort of like start mapping out the different networks and companies from every single piece of every single piece of data from their shell from every sort of shell company every linked linked company to shell companies or companies that were listed by the UN panel of expert report or companies that were sanctioned that you get something like this an incredibly nebulous network of shell shell companies intermediaries that maybe one could be the could be the needle that you're looking for maybe one could be the sort of the transaction or the key intermediary that that is doing this that is that is doing this specific transmission and this is to say nothing about the type of type of financing mechanisms that that these companies that these sort of networks are going are going with so this is an example of a of GLOCOM which is a which is another network affiliated with COMED that's and this is this is what we have put out in 2017 about one particular network's financial sort of proliferation finance mechanisms as you can see here multiple jurisdictions multiple layers of shell companies to hide the fact that a transaction is going from one jurisdiction and ultimately to the DPRK DPRK so I guess all of this sort of like large scale hunt for essentially what ended up to be a really really unfruitful sort of investigation kind of highlights a couple of things one is detecting it single transshipments are challenging as you and you've seen that but imagine if you're trying to scale that into a global transshipments sort of mechanism that's going to be even more challenging the second is you might have seen a China comes up again and again and again China's centrality in global trade makes it essential for future arms and trafficking and verification efforts the extent of which the Beijing Beijing authorities is able to co-operate with the international community and their willingness to share data to share to enhance their export controls is going to be crucial for for how we tackle sort of conventional arms shipments this is I've shown you a case only a very very tiny case but if you look at sort of Nigeria sort of Filani-Hersman conflicts you'll see that the most majority of seized ammunition come from China if you look at the componentry for the avionics behind drones in the Hufi Yemen conflict you'll see a lot of the componentry ultimately come from come come from Chinese manufacturers again centrality makes them make some pivotal for future verification efforts third is that open source verification alone has its limits you've seen how a desk-based researcher from thousands and thousands of miles with limited knowledge of local context limited knowledge of local language will butt up against a lot of challenges and and it is vital to sort of for open source investigators to to partner up and link their research techniques with local activists academics journalists to sort of enhance and sort of complete the cycle complete the information cycle if you will so that's kind of the three my three takeaway points this concludes my brief are there any questions Daniel thank you so much what an amazingly rich another really rich exploration and showcase of of what open source research looks like you know you really gave a flavor to me of a treasure hunt that your researchers kind of trying to collect mean my new bit of information and put them together to find something and maybe you'll get the treasure maybe you won't you just don't know at the end you made me think of all sorts of things I think your your point about is essential to get China on board is really interesting and is worth exploring further last week we had a presentation from fair Leshnevska about the Chinese mobilisation of the digital earth idea so trying to coordinate tracking of environmental things in to try to address climate change and she pointed out it's not straightforward this thing this is very difficult I myself was found it quite hard to connect to Chinese open source researchers which may or may not seem obvious but I'll be really interested to hear any thoughts you have about how how that could be made to happen because you'd be really interested in doing that I'm also I was also very interested by your presentation your your sort of idea that what you're doing is you're collecting whatever openly available information that there is whether it's from company's house or the maritime routes or the whatever it comes from and it struck me that there's as you pointed out there's a limit to this not everybody is following best practice in what's perceived as best practice even when there is such a thing as the best practice people don't follow it so there's a limit to what's available openly there's a patchiness to how different people are doing it but also it feels as though at some points in the case that you presented it wasn't open that it started with information from a state and we don't know who that was so I presume it was closed information so I'm interested in any thoughts you have about when how open open source is or if if there's a sort of a synergy between open and closed sources and also kind of in a secondary point I'm sorry I'm throwing a lot at you so just responding whatever you want they sense that good governance sort of relies on open source data collection so company's house in the UK is an example of that and then if you have that sort of open information then that can facilitate open source research and that supports good governance so this could be a really useful mechanism for supporting other issues I know as I said that people could pick me up on whether company's house does or does not do what it intends to do but I'll hand over back to you now Dan. Thank you yeah where do I begin okay I think I'll first address this sort of closed sources question yes this specific case does start with a UN member state sort of giving the panel a piece of information that says hey you might want to look into this that's yeah so this this is what it is what it is and for a lot of for a lot of sort of for a lot of cases of sort of a proliferation concern the the inciting incident does start with something like this another thing another thing that sort of that doesn't need that doesn't need just to have that sort of like closed loop queuing is that sort of public open source investigators like us have the ability to to sort of like sift through that vast amounts of data in shipments that allow that of key HS codes or key sort of up that have red flag behaviors of concern for us to start queuing up an investigation from there obviously a lot of those things will start will start from will start from a you will start from a massive list like like we've done I've shown you here even that so imagine if so and that was even with a closed very very targeted queue so imagine having having to do that with a massive data set to start sifting through so that's but but it is possible and more sort of automated workflows can help with that the second point about sort of the limits of open source and sort of the effects behind it I definitely agree there are there are there are sort of different communities of practice sort of coalescing around this growing sort of field and we don't necessarily know who everyone is it's kind of like a bit of a dark forest theory of like different actors kind of in the dark forest not knowing what everyone does and because of that there's no real kind of gravitation towards any norms but I think I think that is slowly to happen I think I think different community different sort of like-minded practitioners are coming together and start talking and talking about what they do how they do how they do it like what we're doing here and starting to talk about the questions of okay right how is your GDPR compliance going what what ethical mandates do you go through do you have a right of reply process things like that are all parts of sort of questions and conversations we need to have as a community oops thank you you know really really great answers I'm very exciting that thought that standards are emerging from this field yes and on that note thank you very much for your comments I'm going to hand over to Dan Plesch because I think you might be following quite closely on thinking about communities in tracking systems yeah thank you okay thanks very much Henrietta and again two fascinating contributions to add to the ones you've had in the previous webinars I would like to really provide a bit of a personal and institutional backstory as to why the project and where we think it might go and what we think the the need is in the late 1980s I had a commission from the MacArthur Foundation to cover and report on the conventional forces in Europe and open skies negotiations in Vienna in the late 1980s and at that time which was still very much the Soviet Union as a going concern there was a certain amount of NGO and academic discussion and development of possible future arms control mechanisms but certainly I think if anyone had said that we would have achieved CFE in open skies and indeed the Vienna records on confident security building measures and indeed the creation of the OSCE within a very few years I think no one would have really thought that was that was credible and yet there was interaction between political realities some visionary political leadership and the development of an expert community that helped in enable that now as we know sadly tragically these architectures have been successively dynamited into rubble in in recent years and I don't think I have to remind this audience about about that there's very little left at the same time we see a renewed weapons competition in the the nuclear the hypersonic the conventional etc at the level of the P5 and their allies and an intensity of what we used to call low intensity conflict a high intensity if you happen to live there of course and that presents an objective problem of uh do we think this is going to continue indefinitely without it all ending in a really major conversation between the some members of the P5 well I think generally speaking that isn't a safe assumption if we all we would like to have assumed perhaps that at some point there'll be responsible people who would come to the fore and indeed some of my friends have a project on the responsible behaviour of nuclear weapons states which given the leadership of some states of the minute looks to be a slightly ironic undertaking to put it mildly so it's in that environment that the the scrap project particularly with the involvement of students has gathered momentum in recent years and a key part of that is well what would be the 21st century equivalent of the sorts of confident security building measures verification mechanisms that were really pioneered in the the 1980s and it was interesting Henry Attawn and I had a succession of interviews with members of the iraq inspection regimes unscombe unmovic in recent years which were very illustrative but I think one of the lessons that came from that tour to us was that many of the problems that they encountered were would in the age of google earth and with the sorts of approaches being demonstrated by participants in this webinar series really much reduced that the ability to conceal was and indeed the concealment wasn't successful the inspector's actually did a good job back in iraq the silver lining of that unhappy episode that the potential there is to I wouldn't say easy but there is a great deal of potential now there's a huge cognitive dissonance because while let us say the world educated community accepts as a viable proposition the development of science to apply to tackling the climate crisis there is no understanding within that broad spectrum of civilization that controls on weapons are feasible or in any sense technically viable which I think is a real cognitive dissonance given the expertise that we've heard in the recent weeks and indeed the practice of some of some 30 years ago so rather than facing bemoaning the dynamiting of open skies and so forth what we're about is saying well whether it's at the level of ongoing tragedies in Syria or other parts of the world or the emerging the continuing a competition by video I just saw a video of Russians had released of a supposed hypersonic missile test this kind of virility symbol competition between the powers gaining ground again it's I think very badly needed to start introducing into the discussion the idea that controls transparency is viable who might the the recipients of this be now of course the late dear professor Joseph Rockblatt so Joseph Rockblatt you know I think in coin but sought to disseminate the idea of citizens verification and what we see in the the different components that have been brought into this seminar series is that this open source non-governmental verification actually is developing and existing and hopefully we can in the the months and the year ahead start to help develop this as a network now Hans Blix who we talked to spoke of the the idea of creating a service which I think is an interesting idea in a sense to develop a service for example for the use of parliamentary libraries looking to track not just low intensity conflict but the behaviour of the p5 and their allies one can see this mirroring to some degree the resources that major national intelligence operations are providing to their governments behind the scenes but also feeding into possibly future treaty regimes some of the actors we spoke to role for care so I think favours the idea of a service for the security council well given many people's jawned disview of the behaviour of the security council that isn't perhaps the top priority but one can see there's a spectrum of potential user groups there is a a very broad constituency that let us say has a general understanding that environmental monitoring is essential and practical as a means of dealing with the climate crisis and it's into this cognitive dissonance and this policy vacuum that I think that we can start to introduce these ideas because without them I think we face as it were a recurrence of up in some ways a worse recurrence of what we saw in the high cold war but without the expert community looking at strategic solutions geostrategic solutions and that I think is what we hopefully we can start to start to facilitate in the work that we're engaged in and I would just feel encouraged because certainly when I and some of the colleagues were first engaged in these issues in the late 1980s we couldn't possibly imagine what was achieved the fact that we know we have managed to establish an effective if incomplete ban on explosive nuclear testing and that despite all of their problems there is significant positive impact from the various smaller weapons conventions the programme of action on small arms the cluster munitions and land mines bands all without exaggerating you'd have had significant positive impact and these I think give us some hope and some tools that we can build on and this exercise hopefully is a a step towards creating such systems and with a bit of luck we might just be in time thanks Henrietta thank you Dan so I'm mindful of the time it's three minutes to three and we I always I intended that from three with segue to a more informal sort of conversation so anybody that wants to start thinking about making an in-person comment or question please do be thinking about raising your hand or alerting me in some way down this was great you know so you reminded us of the possibilities of global governance that things have been achieved globally that people didn't think were possible and they helped to build relationships stabilize geopolitical tensions at difficult times but you also reminded us of some of the problems in that area that you know not least that many of these treaties are deteriorating or being seen to deteriorate uh on different levels um and so you introduced this idea that we've heard before in the webinars about whether there's a chance that the technological opportunities afforded by this open this this new approach to open source research as well as the old styles of open source research whether those sorts of transparency measures can help to support the development of global governance structures and I was just wondering if you have any ideas about whether and how uh the open source research done by non-governmental organisations can be harnessed within international organisations or groups of states negotiating on uh different issues um and uh really uh I asked that because I'm very mindful that the open source projects that we've heard to date are doing great stuff and they're getting heard by the people that they want to get heard so it's how to take it if you've got any thoughts about how to take it to another level and a different set of audiences Well that is a challenging question I think if we're able to develop a network I think we can look at ways of uh seeking dialogue with um different international bodies whether it's uh the inter-parliamentary union um OSC or NATO parliamentary assemblies or finding our way into the margins of ASEAN, NATO, other similar bodies and indeed the the influential think tank community but I think at some point we have to find a way to have a dialogue perhaps with the media with um people concerned about the and aware on the environmental side uh in a sense to say well actually this is a much this is a much more practical proposition even than controlling the climate because the technology is involved uh what to say if it comes to counting battleships uh to be crudely uh or tanks it's a relatively simpler operation than greenhouse gas emissions and controls but it is something which I don't know how to do if I guess if I did it we'd already have done it and I think the idea is the idea but if we are able to develop a network community with interest in this that itself I think can show a broader community what is possible and what has been achieved great thank you and uh uh uh that gives an interesting sort of it might also be that the tracking weapons or tracking security related issues could actually help with the climate change things it's not maybe either or um I've had um a uh raised hand for Richard Jolly um would you like to speak now Richard please thank you yes can you hear me yes I want to make one point about the power of research and people outside the UN when we did the UN history we identified that there was not one UN there were three the UN of governments the UN of the staff members and the third UN of outsiders pushing the UN doing research all of that and we when we looked at the UN's work over 70 years we found that much was stimulated by the third UN so keep it up I've enjoyed this session thank you that's a really thanks for the encouragement exactly yes um uh Dan or Allie would you like to come in on any of these thoughts about uh whether and how the technologies or the transparency can be used uh into promote global governance um I'm uh I find it difficult for me to think from an ACAPS perspective because I previously I worked for six years on small arms and light weapons so um so everything that is and specifically on the international instruments to control instruments so I'm I find it really hard to take an ACAPS perspective that's okay we don't mind if it's not ACAPS just but I I think there are certain um certain parallels in the sense that um what what ACAPS does is basically trying to fill a certain kind of information gap or or um data gap I guess the the big difference is that because it's in the humanitarian field it's uh less sensitive and less contested um it's probably also less delicate to find to find the way in and and being heard and that organization see see the value of it because they actually want want that information so if I compare that to do my experience with small arms and light weapons um the what what was said about the three UNs I think that um also fits well with my my experience there often the problem is the government UN basically to get the foot into the door and and but even there with um persistence I think over time often um they see the value of of of research independent research and how it can be based on um on findings of such research to to move the organization forward it's just very slow or um yeah I I guess from Alpha's uh KCL's perspective um did I think I think sort of uh open source uh communities communities that practice definitely have a space to sort of inform uh to be part of this sort of the surge of societal verification um it's it was what's uh originally sort of the uh sort of the input is behind um how a project alpha grew uh as sort of uh to sort of bring a level of um bring a little analytical and technical expertise into the into the open source field that uh that was burgeoning um to sort of uh to sort of feed that back into either the um international bodies or or competent authorities um where there's sort of proliferation for um incidents of concern um so growing growing that community is um is probably the best uh thing we can do right now and part of doing that is sort of a bit of sort of recognizing sort of what we're all about um understanding a building a rallying around a key sort of uh ideas of community standards a rallying rallying around key ideas of communities of practice and profession professionalization and ethical standards i think that will be the most um sort of the biggest uh enabler for for sort of accelerating this um this endeavor great thank you uh so uh it feels as though things are kind of starting to come together that we've heard people talk before about uh thinking about community best practice thinking about ethical questions um and uh i'm aware that maybe more has been done on the ethics uh and the uh codes of practice in the humanitarian sector but i really don't know very much about that uh dan you're nodding ali do you know anything about the about that that field of open source research i think berkley published some standards which that i will be looking at yeah dan you're nodding very much so please can you come in and say more about that yeah um yeah so uh the harvard university um i think around 2013 started the signal code um which is trying to uh draw upon current uh current sort of human rights and legal instruments that are that are that are in current international law um and sort of like pick pick that towards how does what does that mean for humanitarian um sort of data work what what what rights does the individual have um when they're when you're doing a when you're doing a like a rapid uh needs assessment uh like sort of what are the rights how how should you handle how should you handle that data um so uh so that's kind of like the humanitarian side um and sort of around about 2017 18 19 until now sort of university berkley have sort of um uh tried to sort of co ls uh and draw some of um draw some of uh sort of that idea into what they're doing in the berkley protocol which is kind of uh sort of a best practice of how would a member of the public conduct a open source investigation ethically um sort of looking into sort of planning your investigations looking into targets um who what their what their rights are what your what your what your responsibilities are both for the individuals involved in what you're collecting about but also sort of like what your ultimate mandate is towards so those are all things that you have um it's sort of as i think like uh in the sort of the wild wild west of the open source world back in 2015 16 ish um we never had to sort of think about but now it's sort of something that absolute i think you in order to sort of establish yourself as a as a as a force for um as a as a credible force for um societal verification i think you definitely have to have have to have these in um in order yeah thank you uh that's that's really helpful and i'll follow up uh by looking lots of that after the session um i'm interested though to kind of take it a step further and maybe also richie dolly you might like to come back on this um so in your presentation dan you pointed out that china has to be part of this and i'll extend that the rest of the world needs to be part of this and uh in the majority of my conversations and the majority of the speakers we've had at these webinars have been absolutely brilliant there's no disrespect to them they've tended to be from western uh countries um and so is there a problem with berkley taking initiative and calling it the berkley protocol if we if we are wanting to roll it out to other people um and also i think richie dolly you gave a really helpful idea about the third un and i wonder if we're going to really harness societal verification if if if an extra layer of protections are needed um for people um so in the pugwash work uh from richie's pugwash group sorry uh in the 1990s there was some talk about developing systems to protect whistleblowers internationally and i don't know if if anybody feels that that's important if if as this community grows bigger and bigger uh radio silence on that one uh dan do you have anything to say about those sorts of ideas i think they're they're very ambitious like a much else that we know but that we've been discussing uh i think there is of course we can see in the financial world and the corporate world a huge problem of whistleblowers in general and you've only got to look at the crack down in um china in hong kong or the fate of um um American whistleblowers um in the war on terror information gathering so you're finding that the political will is very difficult there is though i think the the fact that a large amount of uh data really is publicly accessible and if i had to kind of put it into a um a cartoon uh version it would be to to pick up the military balance from the international institute for strategic studies uh drop it into a machine reader where each of the weapons types could be paired up with its imagery uh and then apply that to uh satellite imagery as i say this is a cartoon caricature of a process but there's a very large amount of um data that's available and the potential to upscale the different nodes i wouldn't say fragments the different very imaginative and energetic and useful nodes that we've been working with over the last few weeks shows the potential for a uh a global system which doesn't have to rely upon uh whistleblowers in particular particularly and while we are concerned with um to use a i'm afraid to slightly hack me an expression of mine with the as it were the the teenage drinkers of uh proliferation in um career or iran that the you know the real problem does remain the the five confirmed alcoholics um you know sitting in the bar bemoaning the teenage the teenagers and you know we we have to keep a focus on them and and their habits and that is i think relatively more practical if you're looking at tracking major major weapons platforms particularly in times of crisis and i think part of the president is goes back to the original arms control confidence security building measures between nasa and the war shop act in the mid 1980s when there really was an understanding that things might get completely out of hand and introducing systems for uh military exercise notification which still actually very quietly do do remain intact within the OSE region and have had quite useful um application in crisis in ukraine and elsewhere and understandably don't want to attract major attention but i think that these processes are things that uh i think can be enhanced and once in a sense where it's a happy phrase again excuse me i keep tracking them out but the phrase the whole world is watching i think does can does constrain the ability of decision makers and policy to act as if the whole world isn't watching if we're looking at whether it's the south china sea or activities on the russia ukraine border where both sides are flying bombers up and down on a regular basis now so i think that there is an awful lot of potential without getting into the whistleblower world and excuse me if i given a a typically a long and rambling answer no it's very interesting answer and i you know for what it's worth i think we've been feeling our way towards this uh through through different conversations as well this sense that if you start institutionalising and forcing collaborations to happen maybe you lose some of the rich creativity and flexibility that open source uh verification can give you so uh dan ali and dan you've all kind of given a sense of maybe your organically growing community is is really the best way uh forward um i'm just going to say we've had another question uh sent to me um reminding us that the motive of the UN is to promote unity and strength of the international community and to promote peace and equality and and asking about the role of the UN security capsule and i'm going to kick this one off actually because it refers back to the conversations dan mentioned earlier uh a couple of years ago we interviewed some senior figures uh in uh the uh verified disarmament of iraq so unscom and umervic and one of the ideas that came from that that hasn't really been taken up uh was to make the UN security council um it gives them access to verification expertise um it didn't need it wouldn't need to be because this would be uh would be would need to be fleshed out and i wonder if the panellists have anything to say about the role of the UN and uh if if you think mechanisms for getting open source verification directly to the security council might help or the sort of more happen stunts um world that we're living in uh as as Ali said it takes time to build these sorts of connections uh which is undoubtedly true and i also think it takes time to build good treaty regimes they don't just appear overnight um so i don't know if anybody wants to reflect on whether the security council uh uh should be factored into these sorts of considerations i think it i think it could and i love about my my colleagues in a second i think it could but i think actually a service that um the non-permanent members and the secretary general and the g.a could draw upon would be something which is worthily speaking quite practical to create um and and to build uh and indeed it might be something that the network if we're going to establish it might be engaged in in the same way it would be available to parliaments and then out of that one might see the practical application uh and possibly the the p5 getting interested as well ultimately but the secretary general can't go out and do it himself um the non-permanent members don't really have the resources you know unless they're a state like germany which is so tied in um to the p5 it wouldn't want as it were to bring it's put its intel on the table but but developing you know a non-governmental uh or semi-governmental resource that is publicly available then in a sense there isn't a problem for the secretary general using that right thank you um i think ali you were going to come in uh no oh sorry dan you were going to come in sorry yeah um i think um the the un panel of experts system for a long time has been has kind of extensively tried to be the sort of this this sort of stopgap measure of um of whenever there's a there's a particular either disarmament or um or sanctions regime or um you have a sort of uh the the UN Security Council sort of um comprop sort of constitutes a panel of experts to um to sort of give give yearly updates on comprehensively on a problem set um so um for example in South Sudan um in in Mali in and also in the DPRK um so that and that that system where the panel is constituted by um by um sort of the the composition of the panel is often sort of the rate limiting step and how and how this operate how this operationalize is in my opinion um it the the the selection process for for these panel esteemed experts who are supposed to be a class investigators or incredibly knowledgeable um uh either civil servants or um or from people from the people from the NGO or investigative world um about a particular problem set um those those always percolate up um but it's also a process of the of this panel trying to navigate the sort of the internal um sort of dynamics of what um professor Jolli said about sort of the the first and second UNs um so there's like a tiny bit of the third UN kind of trying to navigate between the between the first and um between the first and second yeah so um we live in a messy world don't we uh thank you that you know I think that's that's a very interesting extra point about the panel of experts that there already exist mechanisms for harvesting uh bits of information um but they're also but they're just as constrained as any any other root members on public right right um so I'm now going to reach ask each of you we've got we've got 10 minutes if we want to go to time um but I'm I'm interested um to think about your views on wether it's desirable or practical to think about scaling up the open source work that you do so we've talked about yes it would be nice to have some sort of network to maybe share stuff but can you see possibilities of of extending what you do more of the same and if so what would help with that so clearly money would always help um but why I'm asking that is a sense that uh are are the interconnections are the overlaps between different groups actually potential synergies and could time be saved if uh if some sort of cooperation could be built into things um obviously this is a massive question and you might think that you you don't really you can't answer on the spot um uh uh but there's also a sense I think you know I I don't know I don't do open source research but I think collaborations can be really tricky I think there are often turf wars between different groups if we're honest and there might not be a magic wand to streamline different works so I'm interested to get your thoughts on uh how you would like to see your own work scaled up if that's possible or if what we've got at the moment is just really great as it is uh and this sense that an organic emerging community might be the best we've got yeah uh shall I ask Ali would you would you have anything to say about that yeah I um when when your your first email reached us um with your request if you're interested in participating in a in a webinar so I must admit first beat there was some head head scratching going on because we we didn't really see how how we fit in and then we had our our discussion and and I think what I am what I realized then and this is also why I emphasize that in my presentation was that what we can contribute to this discussion is a lot about how we try to solve things through um procedures processes that this this is more the innovative aspect and I think in that sense um because I I still feel like we are coming from a very different angle than probably most other organizations that there is a very small small risk of um that be stepped on anyone else's toes or or vice versa but there is a big potential to for us to learn because as I said you're um also currently experimenting with a data collection for building data sets um in terms of content they might probably not be that helpful for for what you are doing but I think there could be a very valuable exchange just in terms of of methods because we all have tried things and know what worked and what didn't work and I think that would be for from our side certainly very interesting and and I think could lead to a very useful exchange but then again as I said we we are very unlikely to step on anyone anyone's toes well done Ali um and I mean I'm always interested by this this centre maybe ACAPS is is not central to weapons tracking because I just think humanitarian issues are really front and centre of of tracking uh harmful technologies uh and so the information you I could fully imagine the information you collect could really uh enlighten wider tracking systems um yeah I completely agree just thinking from a personal perspective um I uh I had a bit I had a bit of non sort of um non NGO background but a lot of my sort of current open source techniques and sort of like an experience comes from sort of doing crisis mapping from the sort of disaster response and sort of humanitarian disaster response space um there's a there's a lot of sort of synergies current currently being developed in terms of like using rapid response tools um and sort of data and so a lot of different sort of synergies between sentiment analysis to uh to sort of rapid needs assessment a lot of synergies between sort of um analysing sort of uh trade uh trade flows into into looking into looking into on conflict economies and and and so I think those are incredibly sort of important synergies that we have uh that sort of that needs to sort of be connected um and I for one I'm completely welcome sort of um did a an avenue where communities of practice who don't normally sort of uh come together on a in a common watering hole should come and meet and and sort of like check each other out see what see what see what how how how each other each other is doing things and um and learn from each other great thank you Dan you know it's very very encouraging this session I'm finding um this this sense that there are there's there's room for everyone there's room and there's opportunities to learn from everyone Ali that was a really practical sense that you gave of uh procedures processes methods can you can learn from each other and maybe get better maybe save each other some time also I was really struck by your presentation where you said that your work is done by trainees short term trainees and then presumably they go out into the world and they have a richer understanding of data collection uh and what to do with it uh Dan you I would imagine that Project Alpha also trains lots of people I have to say in my research conversations often uh people lead back to a connection with Project Alpha there's a there's a there's quite a few hubs I think in this in this ecosystem yeah so so is that something as well that you think that that is important kind of training another generation in a very open ended way absolutely yeah great so I've got four minutes to go um and uh Dan I'm going to invite you to reflect on uh the the sort of uh networking ideas that Ali and Dan came up with uh sorry there's Dan's does everybody know how I'm talking to you Dan please comment yeah I just feel very encouraged uh at a time when there's very little in the external environment so feeling encouraging about um the fact that we are having analogous conversations with people such as yourself and veterans like Richard Jolly and Tariq Routh um you know in a sense aren't saying no no no young people don't be so silly or we tried this 50 years ago and it didn't work uh or any of these other things we're not getting into that sort of reaction at all uh and I think this is uh has a lot of potential and I feel very heartened that what Roob really was a um I wouldn't say a passing thought but uh Olamide and Martin Butcher, Henrietta and some of the students just talking these things over and we'd be working quite a lot with the Vatican who got interested in an idea of a freeze um and well you know from freeze into tracking and verification looking as a way to do to get back up for that idea um and so on then you know Henrietta with her usual aplomb started pulling you all together and it's I think it's it's more than we could have hoped at this stage which is quite exciting really right uh thank you Dan I was listening as I was quickly typing um uh so uh I agree you know this has been an absolutely fascinating session we've we've gone into all sorts of different areas in more detail than we've had a chance to in previous sessions and kind of brought together a sense of the practicalities, the technological possibilities and some of the political needs and maybe what next for the sector um I've posted in the chat details of our next webinar which was in a couple of weeks um we've got another great set of practitioners um this time from Imperial College London uh and Ruthie and the New York Times Visual Investigations Unit um so please do join us for that if you can um and have a great rest of your afternoon thank you very much everybody yeah bye uh thanks Dan thanks Ali and Henrietta tremendous thanks