Using open source intelligence to map perpetrators of atrocity crimes

Provisional Ambassador Beth Van Schaack, PhD, US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Ambassador Beth Van Schaack is the US State Department’s sixth Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice (GCJ). She served as Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large in GCJ from 2012 to 2013. Prior to returning to public service in 2022, Ambassador Van Schaack was the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School, where she taught international criminal law, human rights, human trafficking, and a policy lab on Legal & Policy Tools for Preventing Atrocities. In addition, she directed Stanford’s International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic. She has published numerous articles and papers on international human rights and justice issues. From 2014 to 2022, she served as Executive Editor for Just Security, an online forum for the analysis of national security, foreign policy, and rights. Ambassador Van Schaack is a graduate of Stanford (BA), Yale (JD) and Leiden (PhD) Universities. She began her academic career at Santa Clara University School of Law, where, in addition to teaching and writing on international human rights issues, she served as the Academic Adviser to the United States interagency delegation to the International Criminal Court Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda. She has also been a practicing lawyer at Morrison & Foerster, LLP; the Center for Justice & Accountability, a human rights law firm; and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

Alexa Koenig, PhD, JD, is the Executive Director of the Human Rights Center (winner of the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions) and a lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she teaches classes on human rights and international criminal law with a particular focus on the impact of emerging technologies on human rights practice. She co-founded the Human Rights Center Investigations Lab, which trains students and professionals to use social media and other digital content to strengthen human rights advocacy and accountability. Alexa is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, past co-chair of the Technology Advisory Board of the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, co-chair of the International Bar Association's Human Rights Law Committee, a member of the University of California’s Presidential Working Group on Artificial Intelligence (for which she co-chairs the Human Resources subcommittee), and an inaugural member of the Technology Advisory Board for the Innovation Lab at Human Rights First. Alexa has been honored with several awards for her work, including the United Nations Association-SF’s Global Human Rights Award, Mark Bingham Award for Excellence, 2020 Woman Inspiring Change by Harvard Law School, the Eleanor Swift Award for Public Service, the Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Teaching Excellence Award, and diverse grants, including support from the National Science Foundation and numerous private foundations. She was a member of the Coordinating Committee for the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations, and has conducted trainings on online open source investigations for the Institute for International Criminal Investigations, UC Berkeley's Advanced Media Institute, attorneys for the International Criminal Court, and others. Her research and commentary have appeared in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, US News and World Report, and elsewhere. ALEXA KOENIG’S RECENT BOOKS INCLUDE Graphic: Trauma and Meaning in our Online Lives (with Andrea Lampros, forthcoming Cambridge University Press, 2023); Digital Witness: Using Open Source Methods for Human Rights Investigations, Advocacy and Accountability (with Sam Dubberley and Daragh Murray, Oxford University Press, 2020); and Hiding in Plain Sight: The Pursuit of War Criminals from Nuremberg to the War on Terror (with Eric Stover and Victor Peskin, UC Press 2016)

Raquel Vazquez Llorente, Head of Law & Policy, Technology Threats & Opportunities - WITNESS Raquel is a lawyer specialized in helping communities use video and technology to document international crimes. At WITNESS she focuses on the threats and opportunities brought by social media platforms and emerging technologies, in particular the challenges of mass archiving social media information that could be used for justice for human rights abuses, and how technologies like artificial intelligence intersect with mis/disinformation and raising authoritarianism. She is often consulted by international accountability mechanisms and groups documenting core international crimes on matters related to the use of digital evidence in legal proceedings, in particular photo and video. Before joining WITNESS, Raquel was the Permanent Representative to the International Criminal Court for FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights). Prior to that, Raquel helped build eyeWitness, an organization set up by the International Bar Association that developed award-winning technology to verify and authenticate photos and videos. In her role, she led strategic partnerships with technologists, litigation networks and activists that contributed to the documentation and investigation of international crimes in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Raquel is admitted to the Madrid Bar (Spain). She is a member of the Technology Advisory Board of the International Criminal Court, the Advisory Board of eyeWitness and TRUE Project (Trust in User-generated Evidence Project). She's also a rostered expert at Justice Rapid Response, an organization that deploys specialists to complex international investigations. She’s held visiting research positions on technology and digital evidence at Oxford University and at the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law (2019-20). Her work has been featured in Forbes, TEDx and other Spanish and international media, and she has been recognised as one of the Choiseul 100 leaders of tomorrow. Raquel is part of the inaugural class of European Leaders of the Obama Foundation. Raquel holds an MSc in International Strategy and Diplomacy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and an Advanced Degree in Law and Business Administration from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. She tweets in English and Spanish @vazquezllorente