March 12, 2025
Accountability in an Era of Impunity
Deborah Amos
Former international correspondent for ABC, PBS, and NPR and Ferris Professor of Journalism in residence at Princeton University
Accountability in an Era of Impunity
Deborah Amos
Former international correspondent for ABC, PBS, and NPR and Ferris Professor of Journalism in residence at Princeton University
Anne Seltzer, introducer, and Deborah Amos
Minutes of the 22th Meeting of the 83rd Year
President George Bustin called the meeting to order. Joan Fleming led the invocation. Guests were Susan Anderson, guest of Marlaine Lockheed; Marna Seltzer and Dasha Koltunyuk, guests of Anne and Mitch Seltzer; Anne Bryant, guest of Rainer Muser; Gordon Bryant, guest of Frances Slade; and Dr. Iris Raymer, guest of Earlene Baumunk-Cancilla.
The minutes of the previous meeting were not read because minute taker Helena Bienstock is in the hospital; the minutes will be posted on the website.
Anne Seltzer introduced Deborah Amos, Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton. Her career as an international correspondent, notably with NPR, has been reporting on the Mideast, and primarily Syria. She is an author and is the recipient of numerous journalism awards.
Professor Amos began her talk by pointing to her 30 years as a war correspondent. She covered the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Iraq under Sadam, the first Palestinian uprising, Tiananmen Square, the Arab Spring, and was in Berlin when the Wall fell. She covered the uprising in Syria and has covered Syria for decades since. These assignments gave her a “front row seat” to the age of impunity where violations of justice and human rights have been carried out in full view.
Professor Amos described our present era of impunity and how the new tools of our age, technology, connectivity, and access to information, are active within its context. They are being used to suppress dissent and distort the truth. They are also being used to provide accountability.
OSINT, or Open Source Intelligence, is a movement that could be transformative in facing the problems of providing accountability. OSINT is the accessing of information from publicly available resources such as geolocation, data mining, facial recognition, dash cam videos, and social media posts. Example: When the Syrian regime denied using poison gas against its civilians, it claimed it was the Syrian rebels who were responsible. However, civilian journalists and internet sleuths collected data that was used as evidence in a trial that convicted Bashar al-Assad as the actual perpetrator.
Professor Amos went on to present numerous other examples of OSINT activity. The International Rescue Committee, or the IRC, is collecting open-source data about military activity in conflict zones where human rights are ignored. The IRC, with the help of OSINT, reported that the Russians deported children from Ukraine without parental consent at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leading to the issuing of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court, condemning Vladimir Putin for the unlawful abduction of Ukrainian children. In Yemen, Saudi Arabia carried out attacks on civilians, as did the Russians in Georgia, Chechnya, and Syria. We continue to observe attacks on the innocent in Gaza and can only hope for an adequate measure of accountability for Hamas and Israel. Torture, rape, and deprivation of food and healthcare shatter norms of the century-old international legal order with which we were familiar.
Among those using open-source data is the Jan 6 Exposers. This group was acknowledged in the Congressional Report for sharing essential facial
recognition data to identify participants in the attack on the Capitol. Bellingcat is an online intelligence agency using OSINT. It attracts volunteers who are eager to investigate war crimes with open-source material. A member of the Baader-Meinhof Gang was arrested after 30 years of evading intelligence agencies by a Bellingcat sleuth. In another case, the responsible party for the downing of Myanmar Airlines flight 17 in Amsterdam was found and convicted using open-source data. Bellingcat has identified Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville and was able to name the assassins who poisoned Alexei Navalny.
Guidance is needed in gathering and using the data. The Berkeley Protocol, one of other such efforts, is a blueprint to turn open-sourced material into credible evidence for court trials. For these efforts to succeed there must exist the support of legal systems willing to act on evidence, nations committed to justice, and communities that value truth.
One last example brings us to on-going significant use of OSINT. OSINT is active under universal jurisdiction, which is a legal principle employed to prosecute war criminals regardless of where the crime occurred or the nationality of the perpetrator or victim. The U.S. adopted universal jurisdiction a year ago and its first case will be a trial of an alleged Syrian terrorist in California. The political climate today brings into question the strength of the court systems to administer justice, and to determine and insist on accountability in our era of impunity.
Respectfully submitted,
Madelaine Shellaby
The minutes of the previous meeting were not read because minute taker Helena Bienstock is in the hospital; the minutes will be posted on the website.
Anne Seltzer introduced Deborah Amos, Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton. Her career as an international correspondent, notably with NPR, has been reporting on the Mideast, and primarily Syria. She is an author and is the recipient of numerous journalism awards.
Professor Amos began her talk by pointing to her 30 years as a war correspondent. She covered the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Iraq under Sadam, the first Palestinian uprising, Tiananmen Square, the Arab Spring, and was in Berlin when the Wall fell. She covered the uprising in Syria and has covered Syria for decades since. These assignments gave her a “front row seat” to the age of impunity where violations of justice and human rights have been carried out in full view.
Professor Amos described our present era of impunity and how the new tools of our age, technology, connectivity, and access to information, are active within its context. They are being used to suppress dissent and distort the truth. They are also being used to provide accountability.
OSINT, or Open Source Intelligence, is a movement that could be transformative in facing the problems of providing accountability. OSINT is the accessing of information from publicly available resources such as geolocation, data mining, facial recognition, dash cam videos, and social media posts. Example: When the Syrian regime denied using poison gas against its civilians, it claimed it was the Syrian rebels who were responsible. However, civilian journalists and internet sleuths collected data that was used as evidence in a trial that convicted Bashar al-Assad as the actual perpetrator.
Professor Amos went on to present numerous other examples of OSINT activity. The International Rescue Committee, or the IRC, is collecting open-source data about military activity in conflict zones where human rights are ignored. The IRC, with the help of OSINT, reported that the Russians deported children from Ukraine without parental consent at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leading to the issuing of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court, condemning Vladimir Putin for the unlawful abduction of Ukrainian children. In Yemen, Saudi Arabia carried out attacks on civilians, as did the Russians in Georgia, Chechnya, and Syria. We continue to observe attacks on the innocent in Gaza and can only hope for an adequate measure of accountability for Hamas and Israel. Torture, rape, and deprivation of food and healthcare shatter norms of the century-old international legal order with which we were familiar.
Among those using open-source data is the Jan 6 Exposers. This group was acknowledged in the Congressional Report for sharing essential facial
recognition data to identify participants in the attack on the Capitol. Bellingcat is an online intelligence agency using OSINT. It attracts volunteers who are eager to investigate war crimes with open-source material. A member of the Baader-Meinhof Gang was arrested after 30 years of evading intelligence agencies by a Bellingcat sleuth. In another case, the responsible party for the downing of Myanmar Airlines flight 17 in Amsterdam was found and convicted using open-source data. Bellingcat has identified Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville and was able to name the assassins who poisoned Alexei Navalny.
Guidance is needed in gathering and using the data. The Berkeley Protocol, one of other such efforts, is a blueprint to turn open-sourced material into credible evidence for court trials. For these efforts to succeed there must exist the support of legal systems willing to act on evidence, nations committed to justice, and communities that value truth.
One last example brings us to on-going significant use of OSINT. OSINT is active under universal jurisdiction, which is a legal principle employed to prosecute war criminals regardless of where the crime occurred or the nationality of the perpetrator or victim. The U.S. adopted universal jurisdiction a year ago and its first case will be a trial of an alleged Syrian terrorist in California. The political climate today brings into question the strength of the court systems to administer justice, and to determine and insist on accountability in our era of impunity.
Respectfully submitted,
Madelaine Shellaby