[Ssc-dev] (Amnesty, OpenIDEO and SecureSmartCam)

[Nathan of Guardian]

On 03/19/2012 01:21 PM, Tanya.OCarroll at amnesty.org wrote:
> I am currently working on a project at AI in London focused on
technology and human rights and am reaching out in case there is overlap
with some of the work you're doing at Guardian Project.

Great to hear from you Tanya, and glad to know the lineage from WITNESS
to Amnesty!

>  the past 6-9 months, Amnesty's Director of Digital, Owen Pringle (cc'd here) 
> partnered with OpenIDEO to run an open innovation challenge to generate 
> concepts for platforms/apps that would support human rights defenders 

Yes, we are very aware of the partnership, and think that it is a great
idea.

>  the next few months, we'll be developing the concepts towards launching
>  a product in September.  

I would love to learn more about your thoughts or plan on moving from a
"make-a-thon" model to an actual product in six months, and also what
you mean by product (an app, a system, something for sale, awareness
campaign, etc). As you know, we've been working on SSC for about a year
and a half, entirely as an open-source endeavour, partly with the goal
of building actual apps, and partly as an awareness raising campaign.

> This work is a relatively new departure for 
> Amnesty and as such, we're keen to discuss with 
> experienced organisations in this space. It would be 

Great to hear!

> great to have a chat with you about our work to scope out where our
>  prototypes overlap with work already being done and if so, to see if there is any room for collaboration. It would also be great in general to get your feedback,
>  particularly on the security/risk side. 

There is bound to be overlap, but there are so many angles on this
issue, that there is plenty of room for all to engage. Mostly what we
hope for is that where there are areas that our work, ideas or code can
merge or be usefully extended, we try to make that happen, as opposed to
creating parallel efforts or code bases just because we did not have the
time to figure out how to merge. Merge (or combine) is better than Fork
(or divide), in developer parlance.

> Thurs 29th & Fri 30th March

These are the best for me. I will confer with the team on our end, and
we can firm up something more specific.

Finally, if you haven't reviewed our latest blog updates, please do:

https://guardianproject.info/2012/03/02/obscuracam-v2-now-with-video-demo-screens/

https://guardianproject.info/2012/01/20/introducing-informacam/


Best,
 Nathan