[Music] today because of the smartphone the world captures over 1 trillion digital images and videos annually most would say this is a good thing just think of how we use them in our daily lives what you buy what you believe who you vote for who you date and even how the international community responds to crises many of these decisions are predicated off of digital images and videos there's one problem with this we don't trust digital images and videos anymore and with good reason think of the countless apps and technologies available for any of us to
download and use to edit manipulate and alter images and even videos so we have a paradox on one hand we rely on images and videos more than ever before and on the other we don't trust them I believe it is critical to restore trust and faith in images and videos because of our reliance on them in fact I would argue it is necessary to bolster modern democracy and protect international norms from things like this information I know these are big claims I'm gonna explain why I'm so passionate about this but more importantly what I think
we can do about it but first let me explain how it got here for much of the past decade I was a foreign service officer with the US Department of State my first posting was to the US Embassy in Damascus Syria I arrived months before a wave of anti-government and pro-democracy movements rippled across the Middle East in North Africa a time period once known as the Arab Spring my role at the Embassy was to track and monitor social and political developments and trends on the ground and report them back as objectively as possible to Washington
before I do it I found myself monitoring and observing peaceful protests all over the capital city in other parts of the country when the Arab Spring hit Syria in March 2011 the last protest I went to was in a southern neighborhood of the capital city known as me Dan there I stood yards away from a large crowd they gathered following Friday prayers the crowd gathered and began chanting in unison the Syrian media lies lies lies lies an interesting slogan that place truth at the center of their protest within minutes security forces descended on the crowd
and began beating and arresting them some beaten so badly they were motionless on the ground in pools of blood before I do it security forces turned towards the crowd I was standing in and attacked the crowd ran and I ran I ran through the city streets making left's and rights while gunfire rattled off to my back to this day I don't know if they were shooting to disperse the crowd or shooting at us I later learned it was believed they attacked the crowd I'm standing in because people next to me or filming the larger protests
and subsequent meeting with their smartphones that day I learned just how powerful and threatening images and videos what could be let's fast forward to my last posting with the u.s. Department of State at the United States mission to the United Nations there I advised two different ambassadors on a variety of global issues but mainly the Syrian crisis you see because Syria is a non-permissive environment and does not allow free media the world including the UN Security Council the international community's highest most important decision-making body on matters related to peace and security was reliant on user-generated
content images and videos captured by regular people on their smartphones just like those people did next to me I'm gonna be Dan years earlier I quickly learned that user-generated content on a geopolitical stage was highly ineffective the reason is critics detractors countries that wanted to deny reality in any given location had a very powerful rebuttal against user-generated content claimed it was fake claimed that images and videos coming out of a conflict zone could not be verified and therefore could not be trusted forget about corroborating information UN reports NGO reports defector testimonies satellite imagery refugee outflows
none of it matter if you could cast doubt on the images and videos coming out of a conflict zone you could cast doubt on the conflict itself and stall international action this was maddening to me and almost every diplomat that worked on Syria and other conflicts on one hand we are reliant on these images and videos that are smuggled out of these conflict zones on the other hand they are undermined at every turn so how do we defend truth in these conflict zones and non-permissive environments how do we defend those vulnerable populations this was a
problem in Syria it still is a problem and it's going to get a lot worse with the emergence of Defense deep fakes are completely fabricated videos that look very very real they're created by generative adversarial networks and they're going to proliferate on your social media feeds and on the jobs in the geopolitical arena very soon if we couldn't assess veracity in images and videos before to fix just ask yourself what will it look like with these proliferate I was obsessed with this problem and I wanted to address it but to do so I knew I
needed to leave government and join a cutting-edge technology being deployed and that's what I did in 2017 I left a State Department and I joined true pick an early stage technology company that had a simple but ambitious goal let's restore trust and faith to images and videos by combining the modern smartphone with it's all its computing capability the most sophisticated computer vision algorithms and blockchain you could instantly verify an image or video at point of creation run a variety of tests and save it in perpetuity on a public blockchain how do you do this through
a process called controlled capture kujaku controlled capture allows for the four most critical pieces of information time the location and pixelation to be tested encrypted transmitted and then saved on a public blockchain in perpetuity the end result is a verified evidentiary quality image with a digital Chain of Custody permanently saved this technology has been employed in a variety of areas from insurance to peer-to-peer commerce property management but my goal was to deploy this for social impact and that's exactly what we're doing the first way we're doing that is monitoring and evaluation is the international development
organizations humanitarian organizations have an incredible challenge they work in some of the harshest and most hard-to-reach environments on earth yet they still have to perform incredible amounts of due diligence and oversight on large sums of resources being deployed they either have to place incredible trust and local partners or spend resources to go and monitor and evaluate we thought not use controlled capture verified images to remote inspect programs all over the world and that's exactly what we're testing with the United Nations Capital Development Fund the UN CDF is one of the most ambitious and innovative agencies
in the UN system their mission is to help the 47 least developed countries in the world this image is from NOAA Uganda where UN CDF is building a sustainable agriculture and renewable energy plant for local farmers ultimately over time the use of controlled capture will help them reduce cost increase oversight and create an immutable record of their work around the world the idea of a remote inspection goes well beyond development think elections supply chains and fighting corruption efforts around the world one area that excites us most is how controlled capture can empower everyday people we
knew it was a powerful technology and although it has limitations we wanted to make sure there was no barrier to use and that's why it's a free app that has been used all over the world this is my vision ah-hum it is a 16 year old serial who has been documenting the crisis from his lens and on his smartphone for the past few years he generally takes a selfie video or even just any post them up on social media sometimes they've been covered in international media outlets but always with that caveat this could not be
authenticated this could not be verified just casting enough doubt on its reality in September Mohamed wanted to deliver a direct message to the US president Oakley for international observers to go to in Lib the northernmost province of the country and protect the civilian population the head of what he thought would be an imminent assault he decided to take a controlled capture video with true pic and he posted that social media within hours it was picked up by international media outlets all over the world and seen by over a million people on almost every continent that's
just the start I'll never forget last spring in March we we heard of allegations of yet another chemical weapons attack outside of Damascus I was frustrated but that day former colleagues of mine at the State Department reached out to me and notified me that verified images on the ground of a besieged area in this conflict zone have circulated throughout the White House and the State Department and other Western governments it was an affirming moment for me and our entire team we knew that controlled capture is a new standard and this is just the start today
a controlled capture has been used in over 100 countries around the world from Chile to China and everywhere in between we are well on our way to restoring trust and faith in digital images and videos the Syrian crisis deeply affected me but it also inspired me the Syrian people inspired me none more so than Rose Anzhi to them a good friend an internationally respected human rights lawyer and by all accounts the beating heart of Syrian civil society Rizal was abducted in December 2013 by a militant rebel group outside of Damascus and has not been heard
from again but in closing I wanted to share with you some of the last words she shared with me in one of our final conversations horizon-- was obsessed with the empowerment of people she told me that the international community has to develop tools to help turn regular people into readers this was one of her missions those words stuck with me and six years later I'm doing my best to empower people the only way I know how by giving them the tools to defend and disseminate truth thank you
