Hal Roberts leads a panel of experts in a discussion on the use of databases for documenting human rights abuses.
They explore the potential benefits of widely-distributed documentation software while addressing unsolved challenges such as reliability and anonymity.
Bio
Patrick Ball
Patrick Ball, Ph.D., is the Director of the Human Rights Program at the Benetech Initiative which includes the Martus project and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG).
Since 1991, Dr. Ball has designed information management systems and conducted statistical analysis for large-scale human rights data projects used by truth commissions, non-governmental organizations, tribunals and United Nations missions in El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, South Africa, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Perú, Timor-Leste, Sierra Leone, and Chad.
Judith Dueck
Judith Dueck has made presentations on information access, technology, education & human rights in many parts of the world. An award winning researcher, author of a book on censorship, and co-author of practical books on human rights documentation, she has been involved with HURIDOCS, a human rights network, since 1988 as task force leader and current vice chair of the board.
She is a strong contributor to the establishment and development of a multilingual (77 languages) human rights search engine - full text searching and indexing of 4500 human rights organizations in 168 countries. www.hurisearch.org. She is in on the Amnesty International Board, has worked in West Bank as head of Al Haq, done consultancies with the OSCE, and trained international NGOs.
Ahmed Motala
Ahmed Motala is a human rights activist and lawyer who has worked at a range of South African and international organisations over the past 20 years. He has contributed to a few books on human rights in Africa and has made presentations at numerous conferences and workshops.
He currently lives in Geneva, Switzerland, and works for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Hal Roberts
Hal Roberts is the long time geek in/out of residence at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. He is currently doing research in the areas of internet filtering circumvention, botnet and other grey forms of surveillance, and analysis of main stream and new/citizen media.
Hal has worked on the technical side of many Berkman projects over the years, including H2O, Weblogs at Harvard Law, and Global Voices Online.
Marek Tuszynski
Marek Tuszynski is co-founder and partner of the Tactical Technology Collective. In the 1990s Marek worked as the director of the Internet Program for the Stefan Batory Foundation, based in Warsaw. He was also a board member of Klon/Jawor (a research and infrastructure NGO), founder/board member of the International Contemporary Art Network based in Amsterdam and The Second Hand Bank (an NGO that refurbishes and redistributes electronic equipment).
He has worked extensively as an international consultant for civil society and art-based projects including the Information Program of the Open Society Institute and the King Baudouin Foundation in Belgium on the "Improvement of Inter Ethnic Relations" program.