Recent innovations in science and technology have provided human rights advocates, journalists, and scientists with new tools to expose war crimes and other serious violations of human rights and to disseminate this information in real time throughout the world. The clinic supported an initiative of the Human Rights Center (HRC) at UC Berkeley to convene a series of meetings that drew together investigators and prosecutors from the International Criminal Court (ICC), specialists in cyber investigations, experts in information technologies, human rights investigators and researchers, foundation representatives, representatives of NGOs, and academics to discuss the emerging challenges and opportunities posed by new media for prosecuting war crimes and crimes against humanity at the ICC.
In October 2013, clinic students worked with students from the Samuelson Clinic for Law, Technology & Public Policy to present research papers in Salzburg, Austria at the HRC workshop on Improving War Crimes Investigations. The papers addressed the use of cyber evidence in international criminal tribunals, the federal statute that regulates U.S. cooperation with the ICC, and technological and legal considerations for collecting evidence in cyber investigations. Read more about a summary of the meeting notes..
In March 2014, clinic students conducted legal research and participated in a workshop in San Francisco, War Crimes Workshop on Defending Human Rights Against Gross Abuses of State Power and Crimes Against Humanity, hosted by the HRC and Yahoo!, in partnership with Business for Social Responsibility and Videre est Credere. The goal of the workshop was to generate ideas and strategies to address the needs of ICC prosecutors regarding access and analysis of electronic data from U.S.-based internet service providers to support the investigations of perpetrators of atrocity crimes.