Palo Alto, California, November 6, 2013 — Benetech, Human Rights Watch and WITNESS celebrate today ten years of Benetech’s tool for secure human rights information management. Martus (Greek for “witness”) is an open source, free software application that allows users anywhere in the world to securely gather and organize information about human rights violations.
News website TechCrunch cited Benetech as a model for Silicon Valley to broaden its reach and engage in addressing social problems.
The ubiquity and penetration rate of mobile phones increasingly makes them the documentation tool of choice for those who research, witness and record human rights abuses. At Benetech, we see this as an opportunity to bring some of the strong encryption we offer in the desktop closer to the field. Last week, we released Mobile Martus 1.0—Benetech’s free, open source secure Android-based mobile documentation application, built on our Martus technology.
How can journalists better protect their information, themselves and the sources, victims and witnesses who trust them with their stories? How can mobile technologies help journalists working in conflict areas to quickly alert national and international support organizations when they or colleagues are injured, arrested, kidnapped or killed? These are some of the questions our Human Rights team is considering these days, as we’re moving forward with building the next generation of Martus technology. These were also some of the questions addressed by a team of technologists and journalists at the July 2013 TechCamp workshop in New York City, which I attended as a representative of Benetech.
In the context of the growing availability of information on state surveillance, our commitment to provide the human rights movement with secure tools and capacity building for the documentation of human rights abuses has only increased. We are also convinced that partnerships for the advancement of social justice are key to produce long-lasting change. Today we are proud to join a global coalition in calling upon the international community to assess surveillance laws and activities in light of international human rights obligations.
