By Michael Ader | Communications Coordinator
Thank you for your support as SJAC continues to support documentation activists in Syria.
This quarter, SJAC provided its first training on open-source investigations. The three-day program offered Arabic speakers the opportunity to learn from one of SJAC’s open-source investigators on how to collect documentation on violations captured and posted by Syrians on platforms like Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, and Telegram. A major issue in these types of investigations is the massive amount of information that can cloud an investigation with too much “randomness.” To address this problem, the investigator provided a detailed strategy on how to refine online searches to exclude random noise and only collect information specifically about the violations being investigated.
The training included tutorials on how to use open-source tools like sunlight calculators and image verification programs to analyze images found online, authenticate where and when the image was taken, and if it had been digitally altered. Taken together, these skills allow documentation activists to collect data from a wide variety of sources and compare it to the situation on the ground. The investigator also demonstrated how to use SJAC’s free Bayanat software which was custom built to help activists preserve and analyze large amounts of open-source information.
This training is part of a larger effort by SJAC to preserve the vast amount of content uploaded to social media sites. Because much of this content is violent or graphic in nature, it is essential to collect and document it prior to removal by social media moderators. Our hope is that this training will continue to expand the community of Syrian activists who are helping perverse a record of the conflict for future accountability efforts.
Learn more about SJAC’s documentation efforts through an ongoing series of reports created by our investigative team:
Thank you again for your support of this project as we continue to expand the training resources available for Syrian activists.
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