Josh has some ideas for Witness, in response to Joi Ito’s joining their board:
Here’s my observation and suggestion, Joi: Witness is a really, really great program with a really brilliant idea behind it. So why haven’t most web surfers seen these materials, especially in an era when video of civil rights violations circulates almost as quickly as live-action recreations of the Simpsons credits?
(I’m going off of the assumption that the public is just as much the target audience of Witness as, say, war crimes tribunals or other governmental/NGO programs. After all, the court of public opinion can be far more effective than any UN investigative body…as events in Iraq have unfortunately shown over the past couple of years.)
It might be useful to ease Witness’s media into the wider flow of data. For example, mirror incoming photographs to a Flickr account. Mirror video to YouTube and/or Google Video. Set up a bittorrent server.
I’d never heard of Witness before, which is sort of embarrassing. I’ll have to look more deeply into this organization… sounds like they’re really using technology in a beneficial way. And if they take Josh’s advice, they could take it even furthur.