A/HRC/29/37 and analysis, especially given the importance of reporting credibility. However, evaluating digital content produced by civilian witnesses can be a challenge, including with regard to the identification of relevant information, and verification and storage of that information. Technological developments as well as initiatives in information evaluation practices may help to address those challenges. 1. Problem of volume 78. The proliferation of digitally produced and transmitted civilian witness information means that identifying relevant information can be an overwhelming task. Using networks to crowdsource the filtering process can be an intermediary step, but it will likely be necessary to harness the analytical affordances of digital ICTs to address their own “signalto-noise ratio” problem. One way is through the automated cleansing of large datasets of potentially relevant information. For example, CrisisNET aims to collect and standardize real-time digital crisis data from thousands of sources so that researchers can search quickly and efficiently.41 Although machines cannot replace human expertise in the evaluation of human rights information — for assessing the relevance of information for evidence is an ultimately subjective task —, technology can help human rights monitors to concentrate on the most important material. More research is needed in this regard. 79. There will probably always be a need to curate digital content for monitoring and consumption by a wide audience of interested parties. Such curation will involve a combination of automation and traditional fact-finding or verification skills. One successful model is the WITNESS Human Rights Channel, which uses material that is verified in partnership with the social media news agency Storyful. 2. Problem of transience 80. Because much of the material of relevance to human rights investigations could be online for only a very limited time (owing to pressures either on the uploader or the platform not to host content of a certain type),42 it is important that investigators have the capacity to capture all the information that might be needed and to store it securely. The development of guidelines for national investigators as well as human rights monitors should be a priority.43 81. The storage of material for human rights investigations can be a security risk for activists. Applications such as Eyewitness and International Evidence Locker have been designed to allow witnesses to upload evidence to a cloud-based repository and to use or delete it as best suits their circumstances. Those applications also allow secure transmission of information to target audiences while maintaining the metadata of the information as well as the information itself. Nonetheless, collaboration between investigators and technology corporations will remain a vital consideration. 3. Problem of verification 82. Although sometimes raised as a major impediment to the embrace of digital evidence, verification is not a new issue: it concerns the conventional institutional need to establish the credibility of a source and the accuracy of its information before acting on or 41 42 43 See http://crisis.net/about/. Madeleine Bair, “Navigating the ethics of citizen video: the case of a sexual assault in Egypt”, Arab Media & Society, vol. 19, (2014), http://arabmediasociety.com/?article=844. Resources exist to guide activists concerning the archiving of their material, for example, see http://archiveguide.witness.org/. The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is currently finalizing guidelines for investigators. 15