[liberationtech] Videre: the secretive group on a mission to film human-rights abuses

[Eugen Leitl]

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Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 15:01:14 +0100
From: catchalladdress@nym.hush.com
To: liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu
Subject: [liberationtech] Videre: the secretive group on a mission to film human-rights abuses
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http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/09/features/videre

Somewhere in Africa, a white man gets up and goes to the bathroom. 
He pops up the handle on his wheeled suitcase and pulls it across 
the tiled floor and down a set of steps to the urinal. When he has 
finished he hauls the case back up the steps to the table and parks 
it beside him, within arm's reach. He never lets the object out of 
his sight.


The bag is his life, and it exercises power over many other lives 
too. If it fell into the wrong hands there would be consequences -- 
the contents could cause people to be tortured, or even murdered. 
That's why Wired cannot tell you where he is sitting, nor reveal 
his identity. Nor can we reveal the country -- except to say that 
it's outside Africa -- where he lives with his family. His wife 
exists in a state of anxiety when he is not at home and is often 
irritated when he is, such are the distractions of his work -- 
notably the constant interruptions of his nine phones. She is proud 
of his work, he says, but angry too. The pair are in counselling. 
The phones ring at all hours of the day and night. Often the person 
on the other end of the line is thousands of kilometres away, in 
fear of his or her life, with no one else to turn to. At that 
moment, the man needs to make a decision -- to offer advice or 
direction that could make the difference between life and death. He 
does not carry that burden lightly.

The man must remain anonymous and, for this story, he has asked to 
be known as Carlos. He says that he was brought up in Romania, and 
that he served in the army. He is in his thirties, slightly built, 
and has a beard to make himself look older. We meet in the spring 
of 2013 at an airport in Africa. He asks not to be referred to by 
name in front of anyone else, especially colleagues, who know him 
by different names. Carlos's colleague, Oren Yakobovich (his real 
name), arrives soon afterwards. Yakobovich, 42, is a former Israeli 
soldier who still carries himself with a military bearing. He picks 
up a hire car and drives us through the city, moving slowly in the 
early-morning traffic, and head for the suburbs, to the group's 
regional office. He repeatedly checks the rear-view mirror. "We're 
not being followed, that's for sure," he says. The secrecy is for 
good reason: Yakobovich and Carlos operate a ground-breaking human-
rights organisation that uses video footage -- obtained both openly 
and covertly using hidden cameras -- to tell the stories of people 
suffering at the hands of oppressive, violent regimes. After 
operating in almost total secrecy for the last three years, the two 
men have offered wired unprecedented access to the work of their 
organisation, Videre.

The NGO's name comes from the Latin "Videre est credere", which 
means "to see is to believe". Its mission is to reveal the workings 
of violent regimes through a network of activists who film and 
record abuses and violations of human rights. When necessary, its 
operatives film secretly, tracking the activities of tyrannical 
rulers and their cronies like an intelligence service. It operates 
in several African countries and has a substantial presence in one 
particular troubled nation where state terror and violence are 
widespread. Videre taps into a network of 120 human rights workers 
(referred to as "researchers") in that country who film -- some of 
them at enormous personal risk -- the activities of the state 
security services and their political masters, in some 
circumstances undercover. Each group operates in a cell structure. 
"It's a bit like the network of Al-Qaeda," Carlos explains, and 
then wonders at the wisdom of likening his organisation to the 
world's most notorious terrorist organisation. Another parallel is 
the Provisional IRA, which organised its operatives in small groups 
so each was unaware of what the others were up to -- no individual 
could give the others away if caught.

As head of operations, Carlos feels personally responsible for the 
researchers, as well as the other volunteers and paid staff who 
support them. He shuttles back and forth on long-haul flights 
between hot spots in Africa, his family and Videre's headquarters 
in London. He explains that he's anxious on planes. It's not fear 
of flying, but the thought that, while he's in the air, someone in 
his network will be in trouble and he won't be available to help 
them.

He describes a walk he takes at his home airport from the plane to 
passport control: a walk between one world and another. "I often 
used to cry on that walk, for the tensions, for the things I've 
heard," he says.

Last spring, one activist was caught filming by the security 
services of the oppressive regime in question. This led to another 
arrest and a Videre operative being subject to torture and violent 
interrogation. He was coerced into revealing information about the 
organisation. Carlos has since learned that the security services 
already knew about him, although they are familiar with only one of 
his aliases, and not his real name.



Yakobovich argues that some of the human rights workers are less at 
risk with cameras as the authorities know that reprisals will be 
recorded. However, some activists are targeted by the authorities, 
and some have been captured while filming. Because of this, Carlos 
and others are constantly trying to make the cameras more discreet, 
but without sacrificing their effectiveness. (Those pictured in 
this story are all discontinued.) The devices need to be simple and 
easy to use by people in vulnerable circumstances who may not be 
adept at surveillance or familiar with technology.


Secret filming devices formerly used by VidereLiam Sharp
Carlos has come to show some of the lead researchers the most 
recent hidden-camera designs he's been working on. Videre's covert 
operatives largely use Chinese-made spy cameras that resemble 
memory sticks. Each has a small, rechargeable battery and records 
on to SD cards. The devices can be clipped into shirt pockets, but 
the camera lenses must be visible in order for them to be able to 
function effectively, which exposes some operatives to danger. The 
African state in question knows it is being watched. Political 
activists and militia members have delivered stark warnings. Those 
attending a rally were recently told: "It is a political meeting. 
Is that clear? It's a family affair. No one should record what's 
happening here because it's an internal matter. If we catch you 
recording us, you will be [in] trouble."

Carlos has been hacking the Chinese spy cameras -- he tears them 
apart and uses the components in his prototypes. When he and the 
researchers are happy with a design, they produce it in bulk. He 
once made a chunky, rubberised crucifix with a camera sealed 
inside. At the centre of the cross was a pinhole lens. The device 
was dismissed as bulky and conspicuous. Carlos has built new 
iterations -- prototypes have been brought to Africa for 
consideration by operatives who have travelled to meet him in a 
neighbouring country's capital. It's an 18-hour journey on a 
crowded bus with long delays at the border. Tonight, in darkness, 
Carlos and Yakobovich will cross the city -- observing counter-
surveillance routines designed to thwart anyone following them -- 
to a secret destination where they will meet the researchers.

Videre was founded in 2008 by two Israelis who, unknown to each 
other, had the same idea at a similar time. Yakobovich was raised 
in a right-wing Israeli community near Tel Aviv. As a youth he 
readily accepted the status quo of fervent Israeli nationalism. 
"The Arabs did not exist, they were there but they had no rights 
and didn't deserve a country," he says, explaining his former 
views, over coffee and hummus in a Marylebone hotel, before the 
trip to Africa. He couldn't wait to join the army. He was so 
enthusiastic about conscription that he began training before he 
started, working on his fitness so he would be a better soldier. He 
was quickly promoted to officer. "I had more power at 19 than I 
ever had in my whole life before or since," he explains. "It gives 
you great skills for life."

Serving in Gaza, he says that he was never close enough to confirm 
a kill, but he certainly shot people. "You're up on the Lebanon 
border, there are terrorists coming, you're going in, you start 
shooting…" he says. Mostly, though, he was involved in gathering 
intelligence.

There was no single terrible incident or atrocity that made him 
become disillusioned about the Israeli cause or the way the army 
treated the Arabs. But he became gradually aware that his 
involvement in day-to-day activities, such as checking men, women 
and children at checkpoints, was creating more hate, more enemies --
 and probably more terrorism too. He says his fellow soldiers 
thought of all Arabs as potential enemies, and treated them 
accordingly. He noted how ordinary young Israelis could switch from 
compassion to cruelty. "I gradually realised there was something 
very wrong," he says.

Finally, he refused to go to the West Bank on a guard detail. He 
was supposed to be protecting a secret counterterrorist mission, 
and disobeying an order made him a refusenik. He says he spent a 
month in jail. "I didn't want to do it any more," he says of the 
military. Because he was an officer the conditions in prison were 
tolerable. He infuriated the prison authorities by climbing on the 
roof to salute supporters of the refuseniks on a nearby hill. "But 
no one abused me or beat me -- there was time to think," he says.


Videre footage of citizens and security forces, filmed in an 
unnamed terror-state in Africa
Having served his time, he was released from the army and, 
increasingly aware of the social and political troubles in Israel, 
decided to become a film maker. He thought he could change the 
world, but also meet girls. "I thought it was a very cool thing to 
do... always better than saying you're a banker," he says. He never 
went to film school -- he couldn't afford it -- so he took out a 
loan, bought a camera and started filming, making a series of 
documentaries in the early 2000s that he hoped would stir Israeli 
sentiment. There was a film about the Bedouin, another about 
education for Palestinians, another about the treatment of 
psychiatric patients. He met women too, but nothing really changed 
and he became disillusioned with the insular world of film 
festivals and screenings.



In 2005, out of frustration and hope, Yakobovich joined the Israeli 
human-rights group B'Tselem and gave the organisation's work new 
impetus by setting up a video unit and supplying cameras to 
families living in areas where they were facing daily conflict with 
settlers. The Palestinians filmed openly, not needing to use secret 
cameras. (Yakobovich later -- wrongly -- assumed the same approach 
would be possible in Africa too.) One sequence, from 2007, became 
notorious in Israel, and was also broadcast on the BBC and CNN. At 
a Hebron home that became known as "the cage house", a Palestinian 
family found itself under verbal attack from settlers. One of them -
- a 16-year-old girl -- filmed herself being abused by an Israeli 
woman, who called the teenager a whore.


"Sharmuta Video" - Settler harassment of Palestinians in 
Hebronbtselem
"I think it was very shocking for people to see these words coming 
from a very religious woman," says Yakobovich, who remains a firm 
believer in Israel. "And what was even more shocking was two 
soldiers standing there doing nothing to protect the young girl. 
They are supposed to be a moral army."

Yakobovich's work generated hate mail and death threats, but he 
believes it made a substantial difference by helping to reduce 
violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank. "My strongest 
belief in the human-rights struggle is you don't have a big fight, 
you don't have big wins," he says. "It's the small, uphill battles, 
the small wins that bring about change over time." He started to 
wonder if the same model might make an impact further afield.

Around the same time, Uri Fruchtmann was thinking along similar 
lines. Fruchtmann, who chairs Videre's Board of Trustees, has 
followed an unlikely path to human-rights work: a successful 
entertainment executive, he has produced several films, among them 
Spice World, featuring the Spice Girls. For 12 years he was married 
to Annie Lennox, with whom he has two children. Fruchtmann, 58, is 
a reflective, easy-going character with powerful connections. ( 
Brian Eno -- a friend -- hosted a fund-raising party at his studio 
in the early days of Videre.) It was through a conversation with 
another friend, Terry Gilliam, now a Videre board member, that 
Fruchtmann had the idea of exploiting the rapid obsolescence of 
equipment in the film industry by buying up old cameras, so that 
they could be used to record human-rights abuses. In the 90s, he 
had been involved in an environmental campaign in Majorca where he 
had helped to make a short film explaining the plight of the black 
vulture. The film had raised significant funds for the cause and 
made Fruchtmann consider the potential of film as a weapon for 
human-rights work.

Like Yakobovich, Fruchtmann had made trouble during his own time 
serving in the Israeli army. He had been a conscientious objector 
in the 70s and had been beaten up by his fellow soldiers for not 
observing the rules. According to Fruchtmann, he was called before 
a military court eight times -- each occasion led to another month 
in jail.

"I always had a passion for justice, or a passion against 
injustice," he says, in a restaurant near London's Baker Street in 
May. His parents fled Nazi Germany, losing everything. After the 
army, Fruchtmann became a hippy and travelled round Europe, then 
worked as a photographer in Israel; eventually, like Yakobovich, he 
became a documentary maker -- making two music films, Stir It Up 
and The Atlantic Records Story, both released in 1994 -- before 
producing his first feature, Spice World, in 1997. He now co-owns 
Ealing Studios.

Neither Fruchtmann nor Yakobovich can remember how they met. 
Fruchtmann travelled to the West Bank in 2008 looking for partners 
for his project. "People told me I should talk to Oren," he says. 
"We found each other and went around the West Bank together."

Fruchtmann recalls the filming of the 1991 beating of Rodney King 
as a defining moment on the journey to Videre. King, an African-
American, was attacked by five police officers in Los Angeles. As 
they assaulted King with their batons, they were filmed by a local 
resident. The footage was transmitted around the world. When the 
officers were acquitted, there was widespread rioting. Fruchtmann 
wondered: if every parking violation is being recorded on film, why 
shouldn't human-rights abuses be recorded? He describes the 
approach as "little brother turning the cameras on Big Brother".

"I was forced to dance with a man I didn't know. He said he was my 
husband for the day. They asked me how it felt. I said it was nice 
as I felt I had no choice. I don't even recall the rest who raped 
me afterwards."
Several staff in Videre's regional office sit at screens reviewing 
video footage. Onscreen, ten women who live in a state we can't 
name, describe multiple rapes and terrible violence they suffered 
at the hands of 25 men. They did not know all of their attackers, 
but some still lived in the same communities. One woman speaks of 
remembering how a local politician had urged the men to assault her.



"They randomly took us and shared us among themselves... they only 
finished at dawn," she says. "I was forced to dance with a man I 
didn't know. He said he was my husband for the day. They asked me 
how it felt. I said it was nice as I felt I had no choice. I don't 
even recall the rest who raped me afterwards."

One woman was pregnant when the men came looking for her husband. 
He escaped. "I pleaded for mercy -- they said they didn't care, 
it's politics," she says. "After the lashes, I started bleeding, 
then passed out." She says she was repeatedly raped while 
unconscious. "Later I heard them say it was a boy. I had a 
miscarriage. [A villager] took away my baby. I didn't even know 
where they dumped it." The woman discovered she was HIV positive. 
Ashamed to tell her husband what had happened, she infected him. 
She went to the police to report the rape but "they clapped their 
hands and laughed". The women are speaking because they want the 
perpetrators brought to justice. Videre has used trusted local 
contacts to identify the victims and build confidence among them 
that it is safe to talk. One day, Videre hopes, there will be 
criminal trials. The woman who miscarried says: "It's for us to 
live with the culprits, they are still tormenting us."


Data-mining software creates patterns and networks of rights 
violations by combing the web and Videre footage
Videre has set up the office in the city of the neutral African 
country as a place to collect, process and distribute the footage 
its researchers obtain from the terror state. It's smuggled into 
the country by Videre operatives riding buses. One of the three 
full-time office staff, Eddie (not his real name), meets the 
couriers at the bus terminal, often not knowing who they are or how 
to find them.

"There are always problems collecting the film," says Eddie, a 
bullish, articulate young white man. He sometimes has smooth 
handovers, where a hard drive is handed over concealed inside a 
newspaper or collected from a dead letter drop but, more often than 
not, the courier gets lost, or their phone is dead after the long 
bus journey. The Videre staffer will roam the bus station, 
sometimes on the phone to Carlos in another continent, trying to 
identify the courier.

The Videre office workers know the couriers and researchers only by 
code names: Carlos alone knows their real identities and 
choreographs the entire operation by phone, email and Skype when he 
is away. Every communication is encrypted. Carlos uses HushMail and 
Tor. TrueCrypt encrypts and disguises files and can also protect 
hard drives. If a hard drive is encrypted and is connected to a 
computer that doesn't use TrueCrypt, one click will erase the 
material forever. Footage is recorded on SD cards and copied on to 
hard drives in the country of origin, where it is disguised as an 
MP3 or .mov file and encrypted.

The office contains powerful servers that are stored in a walk-in 
safe. The footage is retrieved from the hard drives before being 
archived and catalogued using CatDV software. There may be many 
hours of tedious, useless footage to screen before there is 
anything worth showing to the world. But if Videre is lucky, some 
footage will be of usable quality. All too often the image is good 
but the sound quality poor, or it's the other way around.

"We have footage of a body in the morgue, beaten, shot -- you can 
see bullets still in his body"
Mike
The archivist, Sonia (not her real name), is a young woman whose 
family comes from the terror state. Her father has been imprisoned 
and her uncle was killed by political rivals. For her the material 
has special relevance. "I don't just watch the footage, I become 
the footage," she says. "We never know who filmed it, I always 
imagine it could be my own father or cousin." She is unable to tell 
family or friends the nature of her work. It's like gold mining, 
she explains: you might sift through 40 hours to find a single 
nugget. She and her colleagues give feedback to Carlos, who passes 
it on to the researchers in the hope they will supply better 
footage.

Sonia's colleague Mike (not his real name) edits the footage for 
distribution. He too is from the terror state and says that 
watching the film can be both depressing and absorbing. Much of the 
footage comes from remote areas where abuses and violations are 
commonplace. The perpetrators believe they can act with impunity as 
they are far from international journalists.

Some researchers are becoming increasingly bold, filming in 
prisons, morgues and open-air rallies where intimidation and the 
threat of violence prevail. "We have footage of a body in the 
morgue, beaten, shot -- you can see bullets still in his body," 
Mike says. "He was a working on a farm where the owners are 
mistreating the employees -- and this visual brought the story 
together."



Mike recently returned to his home country, intending to do some 
filming at a political rally. "But I lost courage and missed the 
action because I was so scared. In the end I had to hide behind a 
truck and start filming."

He can't think of anything as brave as the researchers risking 
their lives. "It makes me sad, man, that something has broken down 
in African society," he says. "We are known for hospitality, for 
community. We rotate during the famine -- today the whole village 
comes to my field, tomorrow to yours. Now people are killing and 
harming each other because of politics."

One of Videre's film packages highlights the politicisation of 
food, in which supporters of the main party are given sacks of seed 
as staple foodstuffs, and opponents are denied food altogether.

"The ethos is not to shock but to effect change and we try to avoid 
the usual African stereotypes, the diet of violence"
Eddie
There is significant emphasis placed on verification of the 
footage. The context is analysed, as is the metadata, which is 
relayed to a team on the ground which then undertakes further 
checks. Translation is done by more than one person to ensure that 
all the nuances of the language used in the clips are understood. 
If there is any doubt as to the veracity of the material, it won't 
be released.

Once it has been edited, Videre's footage is released "free to 
air", to local and regional media and has also been broadcast in 
the US, the UK and elsewhere via the BBC, CNN and other 
organisations. The group's approach is to use targeted distribution 
in mainstream media and also post material on specific YouTube 
channels such as The Human Rights Channel. The content is sometimes 
posted anonymously, and supporters are encouraged to tweet links 
and post them through the social-media news distributor Storyful. 
The organisation has also started using Google and Facebook ads and 
to produce content to directly target specific issues. A recent 
project, recorded openly, was a short film that aims to end the 
practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). One woman describes 
how she used to wield a razor on young girls. She is now an anti-
FGM campaigner. Videre's local partners have been taking the film 
around villages where Yakobovich says it has been having a 
significant impact in combating the practice.

Eddie started work at the regional office last year. On his first 
day he watched footage of a man whose testicles had been smashed 
with a hammer. Videre would not release the footage. "We call that 
kind of extreme violence pornography," says Eddie. "We don't want 
it in the media. The ethos is not to shock but to effect change and 
we try to avoid the usual African stereotypes, the diet of 
violence."

Eddie jokes that, when he applied for the job, Yakobovich 
repeatedly lied about the true nature of the work. The vague 
explanations that he was offered made it seem suspicious. "My 
parents thought they were after my kidneys," he says. Now Eddie 
"lies profusely", arranging hotels for couriers and others, always 
booking in false names and paying cash.


In the charity's office in an neutral African country, Videre 
staffers sift operatives' covertly filmed footageLiam Sharp
The same evening, Yakobovich and Carlos are back in the 4x4, tired 
following their long day and flights. They negotiate their way 
across the city to meet the researchers who have recently arrived 
from the neighbouring country. Two have come on the 18-hour bus 
ride and a third, known as The Chairman, has flown as he is the 
head of the network. Carlos has bought them each a chicken piri 
piri takeaway dinner with bottles of water and Coke. We meet at a 
neutral hotel -- not where they're staying, not where Wired is 
staying. A room has been hired which turns out to be somewhat 
larger than needed, as if for a banquet, so we gather at one end of 
the long table and Yakobovich puts some music on to prevent the 
conversation being overheard or eavesdropped: Hunky Dory by David 
Bowie. Carlos shows the three men his new cameras. They appear 
underwhelmed by his efforts. One model is a rubber-moulded base on 
to which a flag or other image can be added. But it is not the kind 
of thing that could be worn in the terror state. It would stand out.

Two of the men are in their thirties and one is in his twenties. 
All three have wives and children and face grave risks in 
collecting and managing the material and their networks: they have 
been spooked by the recent arrest. The Chairman tells how, when a 
researcher was caught filming at a rally, he was beaten and issued 
with death threats if he failed to disclose his contacts.

"When the manager of the man's network came on his monthly visit to 
collect the footage, he too was arrested," he says. "It was 
terrible, they held him for days without food, they beat him badly 
and then took him to a dam where they threw him in and left him, so 
he expected to drown. They pulled him out and said, OK, now talk, 
and he did give some information."

Videre used lawyers and local fixers to obtain his release. "He was 
very shaken and in pain -- he felt bad about giving the 
information. But we said it was OK, it was better to give some 
information. He had a wife and children, and I reassured them as 
best I could when he went missing. They are brave people -- but the 
risks are there."

The Chairman knows that, like Carlos, the security forces are aware 
of his identity if not his actual name. He faces arrest too, but 
says he is not afraid.

"I haven't been caught yet and I pray it may never happen, I take 
every precaution, but if it comes I am ready for them," he says. 
"The camera is perfect for us. I believe it is the only way to 
achieve democratic change in the country. We do it with passion and 
understanding of the risks. I am ready," he says.

The younger man has just had a child. He gave it a name in tribute 
to Carlos. In spite of his youth, Carlos is like a father figure to 
many of the researchers. He says many have named babies in his 
honour. That's just one of the reasons he cares so much about his 
work and about the people.

As Videre embarks on a fund-raising campaign in the hope of 
expanding its work, the personal cost to Carlos remains high, not 
least to his marriage, and could go higher if he is ever arrested. 
Finally, he and Yakobovich leave the meeting with the researchers 
and head back to their hotel knowing that there is still much work 
to be done.

Is it worth it?

"Yes," Carlos says. "But I couldn't live like this forever."


David James Smith is a writer for The Sunday Times Magazine and was 
Feature Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards 2012


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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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