Human Rights Program Rescues Computer Data [crypto, distributed storage]

[Major Variola (ret)]

                        Human Rights Program Rescues Computer Data

                        On April 7, thieves broke into the offices of
Guatemala's human rights
                        ombudsman, in a town about 150 miles from
Guatemala City; several
                        hours later, the home of a human rights advocate
in the capital was also
                        burglarized.

                        The crimes, which were reported by the
Associated Press (AP) the next
                        day, did not surprise Gustavo Meono, director of
a group founded by
                        Nobel Peace Laureate Rigoberta Menchu. He told
the AP (New York
                        Times, 8 April 2003) that thieves often target
the offices and homes of
                        human rights activists. They "come for
information and take files and
                        computer hard drives."

                        What the thieves may not yet know,
                        however, is that AAAS's human rights
                        staff has devised a way of protecting the
                        data that have become so precious to
                        both sides in the effort to demonstrate
                        who did what to whom during the
                        country's civil war from 1960 to 1996.
                        Some of the information collected in the
                        stolen computers represented
                        science-based evidence for prosecuting
                        people accused of killings and torture,
                        rapes and kidnappings, according to Alvaro
Caballeros, an archivist at
                        the Association for the Advancement of the
Social Sciences in
                        Guatemala (AVANCSO).

                        "The need for AAAS's help was related to
security," Caballeros said.
                        "Our archives are very important to our work
collecting information and
                        interviews regarding what happened during the
war."

                        AAAS's data-protection project was carried out
with funding from The
                        John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
which recently
                        provided $700,000 to allow the Association's
human rights program to
                        continue providing technical assistance and
quantitative analyses for
                        large-scale human rights data projects in
Africa, Asia, South America,
                        and Eastern Europe.

                        AAAS computer engineer Miguel Cruz flew to
Guatemala in
                        November, carrying a "giant black duffel bag,
full of tools and computer
                        networking equipmentcables, routers, hubs..."
His job was to set up a
                        system that would allow Guatemala's human rights
groups to encrypt the
                        information they generated and to have it
automatically copied onto
                        network servers managed from safe locations in
other countries.

                        "We determined that the only really safe place
to keep the data was out
                        of the country," Cruz said.

                        Word of his work spread among the human rights
organizations, and
                        volunteers began showing up to help Cruz install
the basic infrastructure
                        that was missing in most of the buildings.

                        "I initially trained about half a dozen people
in the basics of network
                        wiring, and they all pitched in, putting their
jobs on hold to work late into
                        the evening wielding crimpers, digital cable
testers, screwdrivers, and
                        hammers," Cruz recounted. "In an incidental way,
of course, the project
                        has provided some good old-fashioned direct
development assistance,
                        by providing hands-on learning about
cutting-edge technology. It wasn't
                        the goal, but it's a nice side-effect,
especially considering that all the
                        assistance actually made the project faster and
cheaper."

http://www.aaas.org/news/newsandnotes/inside96.shtml