Course
Open Source Investigation
In recent years, war crimes investigators and human rights defenders have come to increasingly rely on social media and other open source information to build cases for prosecution, advocate for international action in the face of human rights violations and combat mis/disinformation. This course focuses on the tools and techniques required for the safe, ethical and effective gathering of online information and evidence in a manner suitable for use in prosecutions or advocacy work.
Designed and delivered jointly by the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center and IICI, the course brings together trainers working at the cutting edge of technology, law and fact-finding. The course will incorporate the new Berkeley Protocol on Open Source Investigations, which aims to provide international standards consistent with the practice of international criminal tribunals like the ICC, national war crimes units, and UN commissions of inquiry, fact-finding missions and other investigative mechanisms. The course is taught through a series of hands-on exercises to provide a thorough grounding in requisite skills.
Topics covered in the course include:
· Substantive law, procedure and evidence
· Privacy and data protection regimes
· Ethics and ethical decision-making
· Security and risk assessment (including digital, physical and psychosocial risk)
· Developing an online investigation plan
· Documentation of online investigations and information management
· Advanced search and monitoring techniques and tools
· Determining what to collect and how to collect it
· Preservation and digital archiving
· Source evaluation and attribution analysis
· Verification methods for different types of online content
· Social network and link analysis
· Video and imagery comparison (includes geolocation)
· Tracking persons, movements and supply chains
· Data visualization, mind-mapping and report writing