Isotoma, a York based technology company are proud to announce they have successfully upgraded Corroborator, a web application which aims to gather evidence currently related to Ukrainian war crimes. The software collates evidence used in war crime disputes – it builds a narrative and sequence of events based on evidence files uploaded by journalists, researchers and civil rights activists.
The upgraded application harnesses the power of user generated content by providing a central hub to which anyone with a login can upload evidence to. A numerical score is given to each piece of data based upon reliability and confidence, and the system then produces an overall score of an incident which helps determine its validity. The web application is managed by worldwide developers and civil rights enthusiasts eQualit.ie who were commissioned for the build by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The software, called Corroborator (due to the nature of its evidence gathering) has been made deployable this week by Isotoma on GitHub, an online project hosting site. Co-founder and Director of Isotoma, Doug Winter commented:
“We are proud to be involved in a project which will make a huge difference to so many people’s lives. What makes this tool so powerful is that evidence can be uploaded in various formats. PDF, Word documents, images and video are all supported by the Corroborator upload portal, meaning that once enough evidence is gathered regarding a specific case, it creates a verifiable chronology of events. The flexibility of evidence file types also means that an individual such as a journalist or civil rights activist with a smartphone, can now make a huge difference to the wellbeing of persecuted individuals.”
This new type of evidence and data gathering is crucial when conflicting sides of a dispute question the authenticity of evidence. The application also has scope to help globally, explains Dimitri Vitaliev, Director at eQualit.ie:
“Isotoma has helped to develop a deployment system that means this open source toolkit can be easily adapted by many groups working on human rights documentation the world over.”
