Amnesty International’s Christoph Koettl discusses the unique opportunities and pitfalls presented by the decentralized, real-time exposure of human rights violations on YouTube. On PBS’ MediaShift blog, Koettl cites Benetech’s Mobile Martus app among the top human rights tools that collect relevant data and securely store that information.
From supporting human rights groups to advancing math accessibility, our staff is busy this month! Our VP of Engineering Gerardo Capiel spoke on a panel discussing accessibility standards at the EDUPUB2 Workshop on Digital Publishing for Education. Our Human Rights team will be heading at the end of the month to the Lesbians Who Tech Summit in San Francisco.
February has seen a flurry of activity by our team, as our staff has been busy presenting at and attending professional conferences and public events. In Part 1, read about our participation at the 2014 State of the Valley Conference and about our presentation on 3D printing at WebWise 2014.
Leading foreign policy magazine Foreign Affairs posted a story about the Syrian civil war citing Benetech’s United Nations report of conflict-related killings in Syria. The story’s author, David Kaye, notes that while well-respected human rights groups have shown the regime of Bashar al-Assad “to be responsible for attacks directed against civilians, torture of prisoners, summary executions, and the use of chemical weapons, among other crimes,” it is Benetech’s “detailed report last January for the UN that identified nearly 60,000 individual killings, a number that now likely exceeds 100,000.”
Inside Silicon Valley, a weekly public affairs program on radio station 1590 KLIV in San Jose, CA, featured our CEO, Jim Fruchterman, in a conversation about his journey as a social entrepreneur and Benetech.