Andrea Lampros and Alexa Koenig quoted by New Scientist, Nov. 11, 2016
“The use of smartphones has basically proliferated, and so too has the amount of potential evidence. But the actual verification of that is critical,” says Andrea Lampros at the University of California, Berkeley’s Human Rights Center (HRC). “That’s what makes it valid and usable—and that requires a tremendous amount of people power. We can help sift through those vast amounts of material and make them really useful to human rights groups and, potentially, courts.”
At the HRC, corps members are also trying to gather evidence in support of ongoing human rights cases. “Lawyers are beginning to realise the value of doing research through publicly available information for legally related purposes, but when you’re talking about actually trying to bring that information into court as evidence, there are additional considerations,” says Alexa Koenig at the HRC.