As political turmoil continues in the Middle East and elsewhere, it can be difficult for human rights workers to document how many people are having their basic rights violated during the conflict. But, a new software tool being developed in California's Silicon Valley can make the documentation process much easier and may help to hold those who violate human rights accountable. Because human rights data is extremely sensitive - it contains information such as people's names, where they live, etc. - good, secure documentation software has been hard to build. That's why entrepreneur Jim Fruchterman and his team built a software that is easily used in the field by human rights workers and uploads all of its information to a "cloud," or secure computing platform, with just the press of a button. It also functions in many different languages. Human rights workers can't catch the people committing abuses, but they can meticulously document those abuses for use if and when human rights violators stand trial. In Guatemala, the new software is playing a crucial role in helping local authorities make sense of an enormous secret archive of police documents found in an abandoned warehouse. And, with the International Criminal Court beginning investigations into human rights abuses in Libya, the new software could prove critical in bringing violators to justice. Quotes "I thought, well, how could you protect a bunch of essentially peasants in a rural village? And the first thought is, what kind of high tech could you have? So, I started thinking about, what do human rights groups do? Well, all they do is process information. But no one writes software for them." - Jim Fruchterman, president, Benetech "The beauty of this software is that all you have to do to encrypt it is to push save." - Patrick Ball, Chief Scientist, Benetech "There's torture. There's abuse of prisoners. There's disappearance. There's movement of populations, sexual violence. And this ability, with these new technologies, to gather information, to map it all in, and to understand it and be able to produce that and take that evidence to international criminal courts, is extremely valuable." - Eric Stover, Human Rights Center Warm Up Questions 1. What are human rights? 2. What kinds of tasks does software help people accomplish more effectively and efficiently? How does it help you in your everyday life? 3. What do human rights workers do? Discussion Questions 1. According to the video, why is encryption so important for human rights data? Can you think of other fields where it might be important? 2. Why is gathering data so important for human rights workers? How does it help? 3. If you were going to design software for use with a specific occupation, which occupation would you choose and what features would your software have to meet its specific needs? Additional Resources Video transcript China-Google Battle Over Internet Freedom Download this Video