...a watchful eye, a listening ear and a book in which all your deeds are written. (Avot 2:1, loose translation)
Amnesty International seeks to make literal this mishna when it launched eyesondarfur.org today. The conflict in Darfur is, unfortunately, very complicated with many facets (alot of ins, alot of outs). By posting satellite imagery of troubled hotspots in Darfur, Amnesty hopes to dissuade the Sudanese government's role in genocide by allowing people around the globe to see images of the conflict from above.
While I think there is what to be desired in this technology (I would like to see better resolution and more real time imagery. At this stage the images are still too vague to reconstruct a serious portrait of the real-time conflict) this appears to be a wonderful idea in concept. Offering global transparency to international conflicts allows a method for real oversight (quite literally). Obviously such technologies can be distorted to infringe on privacy, but for now this appears to be a creative solution to an otherwise ongoing mess.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
13 years ago
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