DEFRAG Open Source Intelligence

DEFRAG returns for another series investigating the myriad ways that technology continues to change culture and society. For the first event we’re bringing together open source investigators from organisations such as Airwars and Amnesty International to explore how social media, satellite image analysis and machine learning are being used to track violence in conflicts. The civilian dead from the US-led intervention in Iraq and Syria have been called the “uncounted”. What does it mean to count the uncounted – to defend the dead? Amnesty and Airwars have been working with the digital “rubble” of the war to assemble the untold story of massive civilian loss of life in the 2017 battle to retake Raqqa from the so-called Islamic State. New technologies offer the potential to shed light on the truth. But we’ll also be asking tough questions about who funds open source intelligence, why journalists and investigators are turning to these new methods, and how this emerging field is influencing visual and technological culture. Curated by Jake Charles Rees in association with Somerset House Studios