WEBVTT
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34c3 intro
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Herald: Okay, so again, once again: Good
morning to everyone! We are really sorry
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for the delay, but as you know this is the
Chaos Communication Congress. Chaos is
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part of the show. In any case, we are
ready to start our first speaker for the
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day. This is a talk that I'm personally
very excited about. Very interesting in my
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opinion. Our first speaker is an
architect. He's a professor of spatial and
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visual cultures, and the director of a
forensic architecture at Goldsmiths
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University in London. Please give a big
round of applause to Eyal Weizman.
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applause
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microphone off, inaudible
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Eyal Weizman: excited to be here. My first
congress, atually, and I'm sure it's gonna
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bring good luck. The fact that we had some
technical equipment problem right now. I'm
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running in London something that is better
described as a counter forensic agency, as
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a civil society counter forensic agency.
There's no better way to explain what
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counter forensics is, a certain turning
around, repurposing of the forensic gaze
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towards the state, then looking at a
series of issues where security forces or
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the police are the perpetrator. So, what
I'm going to show you today, very fast,
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are three cases. The first one in Israel,
second one in Germany, third one in Mexico.
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Each one involves violence or alleged
violence by the police and each one also
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involves a different mode of research and
technique, in doing so. First one is a
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place where I come from, Israel Palestine,
and the issue is really the force eviction
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of Bedouin communities that have been
living in the north part of the Naqab or
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Negev desert in the south of Israel, for
generations now declared by the state to
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be illegally occupying those places and are
subject to continuous raids by which the
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police... Oops, you don't see the slides.
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Slides? Slide? Guys? Okay. Sorry, one second.
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Inaudible
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laughter
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All right, so I'll tell you a
little bit more about forensic
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architecture until until they do so.
Basically what we are is a group of
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architects, filmmakers, some investigative
journalists, coders and we join together
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to create a forensic agency.
It was a kind of an experiment that we
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started around 2010, because we felt that
both,technological and political changes
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enabled and demanded a form of counter
forensics that we are now practicing.
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Initially, we were working in conflict
zones. Towards, or starting, really, in
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this millennium, in the year 2000, war
became an urban phenomena. Almost all
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conflicts that we were looking at took
place in cities, in and amongst buildings.
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So in a very straightforward way, just
like a medical doctor, a physician can
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turn into a pathologist, we architects,
we're turning the tools of our trade,
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understanding of building, a way of
interpreting its materiality, its
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physicality into an evidentiary technique.
So initially, what we were doing was a
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kind of archaeology. Archaeology of the
very recent past, or archaeology of the
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present - this is a term by Gilles
Deleuze - and looking at piles of ruin,
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of a building that was destroyed in a bomb
or in a firefight, and trying to read from
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the disposition of the rubble something
about what has taken place within
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and around it. So it started as a kind of
an archaeological practice. But then
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again, very often, when we start working in
conflict zones, and the first projects we
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had were in Palestine and then in... we
were working to uncover drone warfare in
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the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, we
realized very fast...
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Technician: Sorry, could you... inaudible
Eyal: Should I what?
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Technician: The presentation on that stick
so you can use this laptop.
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E: Oh, this gonna take 20 minutes to pass
them.
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T: Really?
E: Yeah.
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I mean, because I started to put it on a stick,
and... Listen, can you connect this
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I'm gonna do something else...
Technician: This is connected. Can you...
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E: If you can get an image from this, I'm
just gonna run things from my website.
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So, as I said, the first level of our work was
archaeological. Material archaeology,
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trying to uncover what has taken place,
where people were. But increasingly, we
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realized that we cannot really get to the
places where it was most important for us
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to research. That states, when they
violate human rights, or...
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T: If you want, you can...
E: Okay. Thank you very much.
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Often also do two things: They close the
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area to any investigator, any human
right group, or anyone that works to
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collect evidence against them. And they
limit the ability of signal to come out of
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them. This is actually what happened in
2008, 2009 in Gaza. Very little signal was
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coming out of Gaza under attack by Israeli
forces and this is what happened when at
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the beginning of the American drone strike
campaign in Pakistan Afghanistan, they
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were effectively limiting it. So what
we had to do, and this is what you're
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gonna start seeing, is to undertake
archeology through looking at media and
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interpreting, really, the kind of flood of
social media images that were coming our
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way.
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I'm not used to this.
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Okay.
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applause
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Okay, so the first example I would like to
show you is work we've done with a
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Palestinian human right organization, Al
Mezan, and Amnesty in Gaza in 2014. We
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could not go. We asked for permission to
go to Gaza at that time. Our access was
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denied and all we had was about 70
thousand images, that we have collected
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during that day and what we had to do,
really, is tell a story of one day: August
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1st 2014, morning to evening, which was
the most violent, and the day where most
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Palestinian casualties were sustained.
What we didn't have was the metadata on
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those clips and images, because of course
they were harvested either from mainstream
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or social media and we effectively had to
develop a technique to look at the bomb
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clouds themselves to look at them, and
compose the architecture of the bomb cloud
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plumes in order to see and collect images
that refer to the same explosion and, back
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from there, to determine the time and place
of each one of those bombs. So those bomb
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clouds were for us the metadata, they
were kind of like physical metadata. Here
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is how we geolocate one of the images
that we found - or one of the clips that we
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found - by comparing points on a
perspective of the video with what we see on a
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satellite image, located the place where
the photographer was. And by cross-
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referencing three of those, of the same
cloud, we managed to find the precise
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place where the bomb has finally landed.
So, this is effectively a way in which you
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can reconstruct metadata, a time space
location from what we call physical
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clocks, that is to say, analog things that
exist within the image itself.
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However, we can see other things on this
photograph, too. If we look at one of
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those images, here, we have the
videographer capturing two shadow lines in
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this photograph. Just a second before
closing off the camera, and what we need
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to do is to try to establish the time. If
we can establish the time on that image,
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and we know that form of the cloud is that
time, we can triangulate on and establish
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the times of other videos, and then move
further. So, effectively by building a 3D
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model and running a Sun simulation on it,
we could arrive at a very precise,
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within five minutes margin of error, time
on that image. And now we know where this
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image, where this video was taken and what
time it is taken in. There is, however,
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another in the satellite image that we
obtained - this is a kind of a very rare
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occasion. We saw an actual bomb on the
satellite image. Again, this is something...
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the satellite image has metadata. And we
started looking, started hunting for that
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bomb in images from the ground. Again, if
we could locate that what we see in the
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top view on from a ground view, we will be
able to to start establishing times on the
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sequence. As you see, this sequence has
metadata, but the metadata is wrongly set
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at around midnight. So we compose that
kind of panorama of the bomb
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clouds off of the city around that time
and we could identify that cloud. This is
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the cloud in side view, this is it in top
view. We could find a precise location, a
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precise time, and then by confirming that
is actually the same, we can move back and
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correct the digital metadata. So this is
all techniques of actually establishing
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the very basic foundational stone of
research time-space relations, between
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events.
Here, for example, we could see in two
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different corners of the web we find those
images. We can verify it's the same camera
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by seeing the same scratch on the lens.
Correct the metadata, establish the time
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difference between them and now, here
again, the same camera man with the same
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scratch on the lens. And now we can
compose a timeline of bombs during that
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day. And after that, of course these kind
of cloud atlases are a technique that was
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used by artists and by amateur
meteorologists all the way from the 19th
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century on. What we did is creating that
kind of archive of clouds, but here what
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you see is that we were able to convert
them to information on the ground, and
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then invert the image move from cloud to
city. What you see here, the model, is
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something that we call the architectural
image complex. Architectural models are
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the only ways to make sense and to place
those multiple images in space-time, so
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that we can navigate rather than edit
them. We can navigate between one image
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and the other. What you've seen here is
that on one of the images, looking so
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carefully at the bomb cloud, we start
seeing two images in mid-fall. We found
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the craters, where they have landed. And,
we could, for lawyers calculate the kind
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of like the destruction radius there. You
would see now, again those horrific thing
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to see a bomb just split seconds before it
land on the ground and would kill 16
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palestinian, an entire family. But the
lawyers asked for the size of that bomb,
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in order to bring in a kind of a supply
chain action on it. When we see that on
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the photo frame we can locate the
photo frame within the model of the city
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and actually measure those bombs in a very
precise, with a very small under ten
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percent margin of error and then go to the
catalog and find exactly which bomb it was
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that landed, and that would enable
activists to go after the manufacturer,
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after the policy of doing that.
So again, here we are moving within the
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model, with thermodynamic specialists we
look at the way the cloud is changing, in
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order to really realize we're looking at
the same clouds. We're picking up now
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images and events within the city as
clouds being the anchors of the
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reconstruction and that project has in
fact gone later, as evidence was
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submitted to the ICC, to the International
Criminal Court and was used in various
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other form of activism on the ground. And,
to certain extent, might have contributed
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to a change of policy by the IDF, about
the honeybell directives, that is
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something that they've enacted during that
day. And the bomb cloud were also
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something that was very important, were also
like memory anchors. The witnesses on the
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ground remembered and could sequence their
movement according to those bomb clouds.
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So think about an element that combines
and ties together material evidence, media
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evidence and memory evidence at the same
time. So that's, I don't even, I'm
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basically just improvising. It's not at
all the lecture I wanted to show you
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before. Here is a very recent
investigation we've undertaken in
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Cameroon, and were together again with
Amnesty International we were able to
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expose a secret detention center run
by the Cameroonian military where
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Boko Haram prisoners or suspects of Boko
Haram prisoners were actually tortured. We
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had access to people in Cameroonian
prisons. It is very rare occasion, we were
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able to actually send questions back and
forth and reconstruct the architecture of
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the prison and the conditions of
incarceration.
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But what became very important through the
questions that we continuously posed and
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continuously received from those suspects
is that they've actually seen in, at the
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beginning we did not know if this was
correct or not, they were obviously seeing
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people being tortured and killed outside
of the detention center, but at some point
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they also confirmed seeing something
different: American soldiers that were
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present
on the site.
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Now, as you know the US has claimed that
it has stopped rendition, and stopped
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involvement in torture, but this is
something that we started very closely
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digging in to see whether we could find
any traces of US soldiers and other
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European militaries involved within that,
sort of, incarceration and torture of Boko
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Haram suspect. First thing that we saw,
that we noticed was, and sometimes traces
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are left in the most kind of unexpected of
places. A contract, an American contract
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to connect that base to the Internet. The
minute that we saw that, that was put on
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the public domain we started following on
Facebook and seeing some American soldiers
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actually forgot to disconnect the location
tagging and you know they're kind of like
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holiday photographs. Could be very easily
located onto the base.
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Again we've built a model of the base, in
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order to confirm, precisely, where each
one of the photograph was taken and we can
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see that they had access to the entire
base. Again, a base where people are
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executed, tortured, etc. And then tracked
the unit, and as you see the site is
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actually under construction. Something
that we could not believe seeing was
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American soldiers training the unit that
is doing those atrocities and here in this
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almost comical film they train them in
night-vision equipment by playing
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football. So they all play football in the
dark with night vision and you could see
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that the involvement is very
direct. So that the exposure of that base
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led to sort of a full American, at the
beginning denial, always denial, then
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admission, then a full investigation by
the US about these allegations.
00:20:47.899 --> 00:20:55.630
Another important case that we were
involved with recently is the Ayotzinapa
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case. I think maybe many of you know the
story of the 43 students, Mexican
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students, that were forcefully disappeared
in Mexico. We were asked by the parents,
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and by other civil society group to
in fact.. investigate that.
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It's one of the biggest controversies in
Mexico right now, still, although it's
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three years since the disappearance.
Students involved in very grassroot, left-
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wing politics enter the Intercity that was
very much involved in narcos trade and
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were destroyed by the police, the military
and organized crime. What we've done here
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is not really collect new evidence, but
look at thousands and thousands of
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existing reports and wanting in fact to
data mine them. They were, you know,
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hundreds and thousands of documents and
the only way to to make sense of them was
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actually to look at relations between
different events in space-time, the
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relations between all phone calls,
photographs, movements of cars and gunshot
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started creating a very different picture,
than the Mexican government has actually
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was willing to admit and that is that
there was some local gang or local sort of
00:22:42.380 --> 00:22:48.380
organized crime group that was in charge
of these actions. So, we created a
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platform in which we placed every named
actor in space-time, a timeline in all the
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communications so that we could start
seeing relation between evidence. Often
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it's not a bit of evidence in itself, it's
not the casing or a gunshot that matters,
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but actually patterns, coordinations and
patterns of escalations and other things
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that actually expose what was going on and
we could show really a direct involvement
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between three different police forces and
the military and organized crime at the
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same time, the location of all CCTV cameras
that were there and removed, and somehow
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the relationship between phone calls and
attacks became most clear indication of
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command and control. That these events were
actually coordinated by the police.
00:24:00.429 --> 00:24:08.179
Here we are analyzing CCTV cameras and
what they would have seen. Of course the
00:24:08.179 --> 00:24:14.000
state, immediately after the event erased
every CCTV camera that existed, that was
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available in the city and they said or
they didn't show anything. We could show
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exactly what they would have shown at that
moment.
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Another element to this is, we
00:24:32.220 --> 00:24:38.190
go... so this is the platform, you can
actually go and explore it yourself rather
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than as sort of like a work with images.
As I said, this is a work with data. In
00:24:44.180 --> 00:24:52.480
one of the most important drawing and in
fact became one of the very influential
00:24:52.480 --> 00:24:58.961
drawing during that, in our investigation,
was a kind of a working drawing that we
00:24:58.961 --> 00:25:08.600
kept for ourselves, because we had to keep
track of where every agent was. What was
00:25:08.600 --> 00:25:14.049
the relationship between them, and also
the multiple narratives that were told. So
00:25:14.049 --> 00:25:19.610
we kind of kept a very very long drawing
at the office, plotting the movement of
00:25:19.610 --> 00:25:25.610
different actors, until at some point we
realize that what we were drawing, that
00:25:25.610 --> 00:25:30.540
working drawing became in fact an image of
disappearance.
00:25:30.540 --> 00:25:34.639
Because disappearance is not about,
enforced disappearance of people, is not
00:25:34.639 --> 00:25:41.360
only about grabbing people, killing them
and hiding the bodies. Disappearance is
00:25:41.360 --> 00:25:47.730
also an attack on evidence. It is the
continuous withdrawal and destruction of
00:25:47.730 --> 00:25:55.219
evidence. It is the introduction of false
narratives and subterfuge. So
00:25:55.219 --> 00:26:03.759
disappearance is in fact a narrative form
in itself and so here that drawing we
00:26:03.759 --> 00:26:10.220
could actually kind of like show how the
state narrative, here in black, I'm not
00:26:10.220 --> 00:26:15.039
going to go exactly into what everything
means because we lost a lot of time in
00:26:15.039 --> 00:26:22.529
this presentation, but these are the
movement of the students according to the
00:26:22.529 --> 00:26:27.500
state narrative. A state narrative that is
still officially holding, although it's
00:26:27.500 --> 00:26:35.399
being currently revised in response to
many things, but including also our
00:26:35.399 --> 00:26:47.049
investigation. And now you would see that
the victim, the survivor's narrative
00:26:47.049 --> 00:26:54.070
completely different. Starts... they enter the
city at a completely different time. They
00:26:54.070 --> 00:27:06.009
move through it and the divergence
between the black and the red narrative in
00:27:06.009 --> 00:27:12.429
fact is the space of denial and
disappearance. Disappearance as an ongoing
00:27:12.429 --> 00:27:17.440
crime, disappearance as a crime on
narrative etc. I'm gonna skip forward,
00:27:17.440 --> 00:27:25.919
just that you could see how the drawing is
built up with another here on top the
00:27:25.919 --> 00:27:36.919
purple images are, the purple lines,
those of the narcos and, so, each one
00:27:36.919 --> 00:27:45.159
tells a different story, and the multiple
stories are in fact that kind of space of
00:27:45.159 --> 00:27:49.470
disappearance. Here you would see these
are movements of police, throughout the
00:27:49.470 --> 00:27:56.450
city and you would see how that police
force is precisely next to the students
00:27:56.450 --> 00:28:05.350
all throughout the attack and moving along
with them. In fact, what we have finally
00:28:05.350 --> 00:28:16.389
done - and this is now green, is the
military, etc - is built that we knew about
00:28:16.389 --> 00:28:31.100
the, you know, who is it ...
00:28:37.810 --> 00:28:40.060
So this is the complete drawing that we've
00:28:40.060 --> 00:28:48.259
actually printed as an enormous mural. In
Mexico, murals are kind of sites of
00:28:48.259 --> 00:28:54.659
political pedagogy, you can think about
Diego Rivera's great murals in Mexico, in
00:28:54.659 --> 00:28:58.999
the US, where their narratives about the
history of the state and about the
00:28:58.999 --> 00:29:03.950
struggle of the working class. In a
certain sense, we thought that this is a
00:29:03.950 --> 00:29:12.899
kind of a mural of the 21st century, feel
like a kind of a data mural, that is
00:29:12.899 --> 00:29:18.370
complicated to read but its complication
is in fact the image of disappearance.
00:29:18.370 --> 00:29:23.320
These, the entangled line and
interruptions within it, is what makes
00:29:23.320 --> 00:29:31.584
that space.. hold on...
00:29:34.970 --> 00:29:40.670
exhibition... I want
to show you the image of that mural in the
00:29:40.670 --> 00:29:49.549
space, and it has become, ever since, a
kind of a site of political assembly and
00:29:49.549 --> 00:30:00.269
political activism, of protest, for the
families and others, and it kind of shows
00:30:00.269 --> 00:30:08.590
for us the use of cultural and art spaces
in the context of our work. Index is another
00:30:08.590 --> 00:30:14.039
problem in counter forensic. Very often
our evidence cannot enter the very
00:30:14.039 --> 00:30:22.429
official spaces of state justice, they
cannot. It's very rare that one can
00:30:22.429 --> 00:30:29.659
actually take the state, challenge the
state legally in its own institutions.
00:30:29.659 --> 00:30:37.080
What we need to establish are alternative
forums, and for us these could be public
00:30:37.080 --> 00:30:42.610
spaces, exhibitions, etc. I think some of
you might know about the work that we've
00:30:42.610 --> 00:30:52.299
done on the NSU, on the Temme, or the
Verfassungsschutz agent, that was suspected
00:30:52.299 --> 00:30:56.499
to be present in an internet cafe in
Kassel during the time of a racist
00:30:56.499 --> 00:31:05.230
killing, and us showing that he was there.
He could not have missed this event, that
00:31:05.230 --> 00:31:09.150
was presented in Documenta, and Documenta
offered for us another very interesting
00:31:09.150 --> 00:31:16.809
forum. The fact it was shown there
has in fact mobilized the process,
00:31:16.809 --> 00:31:24.710
including in a German federal
investigation, and also in a Hessen
00:31:24.710 --> 00:31:32.090
parliamentary investigation, where
different delegations from
00:31:32.090 --> 00:31:38.320
this parliamentary investigation came to
Documenta to see it. And finally, that work
00:31:38.320 --> 00:31:46.470
was presented to Temme. He was forced to
look at it and to comment upon it.
00:31:46.470 --> 00:31:52.169
I think, I should probably leave some time
to question. I'm sorry about the chaotic
00:31:52.169 --> 00:31:58.210
presentation, but I guess this is the
nature of this event, so I'm happy to have
00:31:58.210 --> 00:32:02.379
had at least a chance to present to you
some work. Thanks for listening.
00:32:02.379 --> 00:32:13.909
Applause
00:32:13.909 --> 00:32:17.320
Herald: So, thank you all for a very
interesting talk, despite of the
00:32:17.320 --> 00:32:21.629
difficulties. If you have any questions,
then there are four microphones, here in
00:32:21.629 --> 00:32:26.980
the center aisle and two on the side. And
you can line up and ask your questions,
00:32:26.980 --> 00:32:32.160
and first question microphone number one.
Microphone 1: How much has any official
00:32:32.160 --> 00:32:37.500
state tried to shut down your
investigations, or...
00:32:39.030 --> 00:32:47.919
Eyal: Well, this is... shutdown is a
complicated term. First of all,
00:32:47.919 --> 00:32:53.159
we face interruptions initially in not
being allowed access to sites. And this is
00:32:53.159 --> 00:32:59.809
very much the question in the West Bank
and Gaza. Our investigators, when they
00:32:59.809 --> 00:33:05.980
land in Tel Aviv Airport, sometimes are
interrogated, sometimes they're turned around.
00:33:05.980 --> 00:33:12.690
Nothing of that is comparable to what the
Israeli state would have done if these
00:33:12.690 --> 00:33:19.690
were Palestinians trying to do the same
thing, so to a certain extent me being an
00:33:19.690 --> 00:33:28.289
Israeli Jew, I'm privileged by the state.
And the attempt is to use those privileges
00:33:28.289 --> 00:33:38.200
to undo those privileges to a certain
extent. We continuously had interruptions
00:33:38.200 --> 00:33:44.159
from the FBI, for example, when we did the
white phosphorus research, that included
00:33:44.159 --> 00:33:51.629
work on their attacking Fallujah, Iraq, with
white phosphorus. We had some of our
00:33:51.629 --> 00:33:58.759
collaborators in the US's home being
raided. We have, you know,
00:33:58.759 --> 00:34:06.679
been trolled and threatened.
But, it's kind of a continuous sort of
00:34:06.679 --> 00:34:14.820
dance of us being to, kind of protect our
staff, protect our data, and attempt to
00:34:14.820 --> 00:34:21.300
penetrate it. Attempts to smear us on a
public domain, and feel very little
00:34:21.300 --> 00:34:23.730
victories sometimes.
00:34:26.000 --> 00:34:27.870
Herald: Microphone 4.
00:34:27.870 --> 00:34:32.857
4: Thank you very much for your talk. Two
part question here, the first one is about
00:34:32.857 --> 00:34:37.126
the framework. Have you developed it
special for this case, do you have it
00:34:37.126 --> 00:34:43.454
available, if you build new ones for each
research, and the second part is: How
00:34:43.454 --> 00:34:49.007
do you sustain yourself financially.
Eyal: Actually, it's the same question,
00:34:49.007 --> 00:34:53.550
because our aim is to develop new
evidentiary techniques, so we kind of
00:34:53.550 --> 00:34:58.780
never do the same investigation twice or
we never use the same methodologies twice.
00:34:58.780 --> 00:35:05.700
What we do, after we develop any software,
is that we put it on the public domain, we
00:35:05.700 --> 00:35:13.120
put it as an open source code. And we, or
if it is kind of techniques of more
00:35:13.120 --> 00:35:18.440
architectural or editing image based
techniques, we have academies, we teach
00:35:18.440 --> 00:35:23.530
activists how to do it, so we try, whenever
we work with partners on the ground, to
00:35:23.530 --> 00:35:30.810
leave capacity behind us. And that is also
the reason... or what enables this to us is
00:35:30.810 --> 00:35:36.850
that we are sustained on research grants,
rather than only on commissions.
00:35:36.850 --> 00:35:42.470
Although, you know, I mean, if a
prosecutor, human right group, or any other
00:35:42.470 --> 00:35:47.910
civil society group would like to
commission us, we would... they would pay
00:35:47.910 --> 00:35:52.570
for part of the investigation, but the
large part of it is actually research
00:35:52.570 --> 00:36:00.930
grants that translated into open source
stuff, and the investigations are being
00:36:00.930 --> 00:36:04.390
put in the public domain. It's kind of, when
you look at our videos, they're a little
00:36:04.390 --> 00:36:08.441
bit like cooking programs, because they
both tell you what we find, and they tell
00:36:08.441 --> 00:36:13.190
you exactly how to do it. It's kind of,
take you step-by-step, this is what you do
00:36:13.190 --> 00:36:18.290
here, then that, then this, etc.
00:36:18.290 --> 00:36:19.920
Herald: Microphone 4
00:36:19.920 --> 00:36:23.790
4: Thank you so much for your work on
this. My question is like, how would any
00:36:23.790 --> 00:36:29.760
of us be able to get involved in this,
support you in one way or another.
00:36:29.760 --> 00:36:38.590
Eyal: We, in fact, we are now about 15
architects, coders, and filmmakers and we
00:36:38.590 --> 00:36:45.260
are recruiting because we're growing. I
will stay here for the day, so anyone that
00:36:45.260 --> 00:36:50.530
wants to come and work with us in London
or remotely, I'll be delighted to speak to
00:36:50.530 --> 00:36:56.210
you.
Herald: Microphone 4
00:36:58.960 --> 00:37:05.070
4: I have a question about which tools,
which techniques and tools do you use to
00:37:05.070 --> 00:37:11.600
perform the 3D reconstruction, and if you
have partnered with any kind of company
00:37:11.600 --> 00:37:17.820
that already has inaudible and already
does inaudible 3D inaudible as a
00:37:17.820 --> 00:37:21.960
baseline.
Eyal: We started doing now
00:37:21.960 --> 00:37:29.580
photogrammetry, as 3D reconstruction
from existing open source images. So
00:37:29.580 --> 00:37:35.580
imagine, you know, a place in Syria, let's
say, that has been photographed or video-ed
00:37:35.580 --> 00:37:41.230
by many users. We are able
to reconstruct it. In fact this is one of
00:37:41.230 --> 00:37:45.961
the techniques we use in order to identify
the gas attack on Khan Sheikhun in
00:37:45.961 --> 00:37:52.120
Syria by the regime forces. Reconstructing
precisely, to the millimeter, the shape of
00:37:52.120 --> 00:37:59.480
the crater. And we were able to reconstruct
from it the level of explosives etc, and
00:37:59.480 --> 00:38:06.230
that they were fitting only that
particular rocket. We don't really work
00:38:06.230 --> 00:38:12.810
together with companies, we try to take
existing softwares and kind of
00:38:12.810 --> 00:38:20.250
adjust them to our aim. But
initially, what I want to leave you with, is
00:38:20.250 --> 00:38:23.400
the question of why architecture is really
00:38:23.400 --> 00:38:30.080
important here. In a situation when you
don't have only like two images of the
00:38:30.080 --> 00:38:36.900
scene, let's say police brutality or an
attack on a city etc, but you have 70,000
00:38:36.900 --> 00:38:42.500
and you need to cross-reference them and
you need to place them within a space, the
00:38:42.500 --> 00:38:49.000
only way to do it is in architectural
models. Architecture is like the optical
00:38:49.000 --> 00:38:54.760
device that allows us to sync up and
locate, you know, those cameras that are
00:38:54.760 --> 00:39:02.400
in space and moving in space. So, it is
really the necessity of work
00:39:02.400 --> 00:39:11.370
of architects, filmmakers, and coders is
fundamental, because space replaces the
00:39:11.370 --> 00:39:16.980
kind of modernist montage as a relation to
images. Montage is the edits in film, that
00:39:16.980 --> 00:39:22.230
is kind of, you know, the basic of cinema,
of political cinema, the dialectic montage,
00:39:22.230 --> 00:39:25.100
if you like. You splice film and put it
together.
00:39:25.100 --> 00:39:31.030
That makes no sense for us, because we
need to move within space, pick up one
00:39:31.030 --> 00:39:35.530
film, not to cut it, we never cut the
films that we have, we just leave them
00:39:35.530 --> 00:39:41.380
within the model in the full duration, but
the investigator can move and navigate in
00:39:41.380 --> 00:39:46.900
space and time between them, and as I
showed you in a Mexico case, you know,
00:39:46.900 --> 00:39:53.910
these are like tens and tens of thousands
of data points that create kind of
00:39:53.910 --> 00:39:59.860
intersections, between data image and
architecture, where the story starts
00:39:59.860 --> 00:40:11.850
to unfold at all. So yeah.
Herald: More questions. Microphone 3.
00:40:11.850 --> 00:40:17.580
3: When you publish the videos and the time
and place from which they were taken,
00:40:17.580 --> 00:40:22.690
how do you ensure that you're not putting in
danger the people who took the video.
00:40:22.690 --> 00:40:29.310
Eyal: Yeah, this is a really good
question. We..., the work to sync up those
00:40:29.310 --> 00:40:36.410
70,000 images from Gaza, where... took us
a year. Think about it, a year... we're
00:40:36.410 --> 00:40:42.220
working a year on one day. That's about the
right kind of ratio in forensic time that
00:40:42.220 --> 00:40:47.830
we are operating within it. What
protects people during war, during when
00:40:47.830 --> 00:40:55.810
they will do it, we'll never place their
location, but months after the conflict it
00:40:55.810 --> 00:41:04.190
was deemed by our partners in Palestine
and by our partners in Amnesty, that this
00:41:04.190 --> 00:41:11.760
is safe to do without going back to each
source and in fact asking them. We would
00:41:11.760 --> 00:41:16.740
never do it in real time, though.
Herald: Microphone 4
00:41:16.740 --> 00:41:27.400
4: Yes, the work you do strikes me as very
similar to what bellingcat do, so can you
00:41:27.400 --> 00:41:29.520
comment on how forensic architecture
compares to bellingcat?
00:41:29.520 --> 00:41:33.240
Eyal: No, we work a lot with bellingcat
and Elliot, I mean some some of our
00:41:33.240 --> 00:41:42.960
projects are together, I guess that
our... the difference is not, we engage
00:41:42.960 --> 00:41:52.550
more in sort of big environment and kind
of like data analysis, from many sort of
00:41:52.550 --> 00:41:58.560
data points, where architecture, or
architectural models, are kind of the arena
00:41:58.560 --> 00:42:04.590
that holds and cross-reference all those
images together. The overlap in our work,
00:42:04.590 --> 00:42:10.140
really, is a kind of image identification:
What do we see, where the image is located
00:42:10.140 --> 00:42:22.760
etc, and on these issues we work with them
together. We tend to work more against
00:42:22.760 --> 00:42:32.740
states', western states', militaries, holding
them to account, we feel, is that these
00:42:32.740 --> 00:42:39.390
techniques are actually much more useful
directed at the British, American, Israeli
00:42:39.390 --> 00:42:48.030
militaries and that we are able also to
draw responses that are effective in these
00:42:48.030 --> 00:42:55.230
fields and I guess bellingcat has
slightly different sort of field in which
00:42:55.230 --> 00:42:58.695
they work.
Herald: Okay, I think with that, that
00:42:58.695 --> 00:43:01.825
would be our last question. So again, a
big round of applause to Eyal for a great
00:43:01.825 --> 00:43:03.203
talk.
Eyal: Thank you.
00:43:03.203 --> 00:43:05.714
Herald: Thank you very much.
00:43:05.714 --> 00:43:13.330
Applause
00:43:13.330 --> 00:43:18.245
34c3 outro
00:43:18.245 --> 00:43:35.000
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