Around the world, from the Arab Spring to Chinese Anti-Corruption Campaigns to African Crisis Mapping to Occupy Wall Street, people are using mobile phones & online social networks/media to become activists & communicate important information.
One of the most powerful forms of information being shared is video. As the human rights organization Witness explains, "
You can say a story is fabricated...You can say a person is lying. You can say you don't trust newspapers. But you can't say what you just saw never happened." How can technology tools be further developed to support this, particularly where such actions are being suppressed? Below is an example of how an "Amnesty Observer App" (available & applicable around the world) could help support activist behaviors already occurring in China.
Imagine you are a student waiting for the bus in Shanghai, China, excited to be going home to see your parents for the Spring Festival (most important family holiday, like Christmas for China). You see some chengguan (local street police) surround an unlicensed migrant street vendor, demand his cigarette inventory as a bribe, and then begin beating him mercilessly when he refuses & tries to flee. Eventually they haul him away to be charged.
You want to do something about this corruption & excessive aggression, but are afraid of the ramifications for you & your family (you were refused admittance to your desired academic department, due to your lack of participation in the school's Communist Youth League division; your parents were recently interrogated due to their resemblance to organizers of a hospital protest that occurred several weeks ago, and you've heard about people trying to film chengguan excessiveness that were then beaten to death themselves). You feel helpless.
Now, what if you had the Amnesty Observer App (available for all commonly used video-enabled mobiles, both smart & basic feature phones), empowering you to quickly, easily, & safely record & share video.
- When you see the start of the corruption, you press 1-button to open the app which immediately begins recording (or perhaps auto-streaming). You feel empowered knowing that just a 2nd press of any button will immediately finish the recording, anonymously upload the video with an automatic time & location stamp to a secure publicly accessible location (perhaps searchable & with visualizations by place, time, etc.), and then delete the video from the device.
- Unfortunately a supervising officer spots your phone and grabs it before you have a chance to press a 2nd button. He looks at the screen (which displays a mock Angry Birds game screen, estimated 100 million downloads in China this year, with a local unlicensed Angry Birds Theme Park already open). He presses the exit button to inspect your home screen for suspicious activity (which automatically uploads, then deletes the video), but all he sees checks out (including the mock Angry Birds Game, which actually contains the Amnesty Observer App)
- A week later, your video compiled with other local Chengguan Bribe & Beating videos has been spread all over weibo, youku, kaixin, etc. (China's version of twitter, youtube, facebook). Of course, the government quickly moved to shut this content down, but not before the Renrou Sousuo (literally Human Flesh Search Engine, i.e. internet crowd) identified an important un-uniformed public security official nearby in some of the videos. And the content continues to bubble up through different channels, renamed & remixed to avoid automated censors. What you see with your own eyes is stronger than government denials or media spin. What you see with your own eyes cannot be denied.
- A month later, the offenders are fired, and the identified official resigns after apologizing to the released street vendor. The security department promises anti-corruption & violence reforms.
The people will be watching to ensure the police deliver on their responsibility.