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We use Mailchimp to help us keep track of community members who want to stay informed about what HRDAG is doing and thinking. If you self-subscribe to our list, we will never share your contact information. We will never subscribe anyone who does not explicitly agree to a subscription.
Over the course of a year, we mail quarterly letters and fundraising letters, as well as one or two updates as events demand. If, during the course of a fundraising campaign, you make a donation, we will do our best to remove you from the remainder of fundraising mailings that year. We may use your contact information to invite you to ...
Reflections: A Meaningful Partnership between HRDAG and Benetech
I joined the Benetech Human Rights Program at essentially the same time that HRDAG did, coming to Benetech from years of analyzing data for large companies in the transportation, hospitality and retail industries. But the data that HRDAG dealt with was not like the data I was familiar with, and I was fascinated to learn about how they used the data to determine "who did what to whom." Although some of the methodologies were similar to what I had experience with in the for-profit sector, the goals and beneficiaries of the analyses were very different.
At Benetech, I was initially predominantly focused on product management for Martus, a free ...
HRDAG Retreat 2016
What do you get when you bring seven statisticians, one quantitative political scientist, a writer, a computer scientist, and an administrator together for four days in a vacation rental on California’s Russian River? A lot of code, a technical paper and book chapter revised, another paper started, a great hike in the Redwoods, descriptions of food poisoning and crash landings in war zones, and a lot of talk about feelings.
Did I mention feelings? On the first evening of the annual retreat of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, executive director Megan Price asked us to go around the room and share how we were feeling on arrival. The request ...
How We Choose Projects
For more than 20 years, HRDAG has been carving out a niche in the international human rights movement. We know what we’re good at and what we’re not qualified to do. We know what quantitative questions we think are important for the community, and we know what we like to do. These preferences guide us as we consider whether to take on a project. We’re scientists, so our priorities will come as no surprise. We like to stick to science (not ideology), avoid advocacy, answer quantifiable questions, and increase our scientific understanding.
While we have no hard-and-fast rules about what projects to take on, we organize our deliberation ...
CIIDH Data – Value Labels
Version date: 2000.01.29
Current version: ATV20.1
Patrick Ball & Herbert F. Spirer
v_ind
-------------+-----------
Victim |
Ethnic |
category |
| Freq.
-------------+-----------
1 Indigenous | 2,722
2 Ladino | 1,014
3 Unknown | 13,687
|
Total | 17,423
-------------+-----------
v_sex
----------+-----------
Victim |
Sex | Freq.
----------+-----------
4 F | 2,001
5 M | 11,445
6 d | 3,977
|
Total | 17,423
----------+-----------
v_eth
-------------+-----------
Victim |
Maternal |
language ...
Using Data and Statistics to Bring Down Dictators
In this story, Guerrini discusses the impact of HRDAG’s work in Guatemala, especially the trials of General José Efraín Ríos Montt and Colonel Héctor Bol de la Cruz, as well as work in El Salvador, Syria, Kosovo, and Timor-Leste. Multiple systems estimation and the perils of using raw data to draw conclusions are also addressed.
Megan Price and Patrick Ball are quoted, especially in regard to how to use raw data.
“From our perspective,” Price says, “the solution to that is both to stay very close to the data, to be very conservative in your interpretation of it and to be very clear about where the data came from, how it was collected, what its limitations might be, and to a certain extent to be skeptical about it, to ask yourself questions like, ‘What is missing from this data?’ and ‘How might that missing information change these conclusions that I’m trying to draw?’”
How We Choose Projects
For more than 20 years, HRDAG has been carving out a niche in the international human rights movement. We know what we’re good at and what we’re not qualified to do. We know what quantitative questions we think are important for the community, and we know what we like to do. These preferences guide us as we consider whether to take on a project. We’re scientists, so our priorities will come as no surprise. We like to stick to science (not ideology), avoid advocacy, answer quantifiable questions, and increase our scientific understanding.
While we have no hard-and-fast rules about what projects to take on, we organize our deliberation ...
Guatemala 2011 – Developing Sampling Methods to Help Convict Perpetrators
During 36 years of internal armed conflict, which ended in 1996, an estimated 200,000 Guatemalans were killed or disappeared. HRDAG researchers returned to Guatemala in 2006 to analyze a sample of the estimated 46 million records discovered in the archive of the now disbanded Guatemalan National Police. HRDAG statisticians Daniel Guzmán, Romesh Silva, Patrick Ball and Tamy Guberek, together with Paul Zador and Gary Shapiro of the American Statistical Association, developed a multi-stage random sample of the archive to get a clearer picture of its contents. Sampled documents shed light on the disappearance of Guatemalan union leader Edgar Fernando ...
An Award for Anita Gohdes
On November 26, HRDAG colleague Anita Gohdes was awarded the German Dissertation Prize for the Social Sciences. The patron of the prize is the President of the German Parliament, Norbert Lammert, who presented Anita with the award.
Anita’s dissertation, “Repression 2.0: The Internet in the War Arsenal of Modern Dictators,” investigates the role played by social media networks in modern dictatorships, such as President Assad’s regime in Syria. On one hand, Anita argues, social media can help opposition groups to organize more effectively, but on the other hand, the same networks allow regimes to monitor and manipulate the population. ...
Rapid response to: Civilian deaths from weapons used in the Syrian conflict
On November 4, 2015, the BMJ published our "Rapid Response" to Civilian deaths from weapons used in the Syrian conflict (BMJ 2015;351:h4736). The response was co-authored by Megan Price, Anita Gohdes, Jay Aronson (Carnegie Mellon University, Center for Human Rights Science), and Christopher McNaboe (Carter Center, Syria Conflict Mapping Project).
We have three concerns about this article. First, the article apportions responsibility for casualties to particular perpetrator organizations based on a single snapshot of territorial control that ignores the numerous (and well-documented) changes in this phenomenon over time. Second, combining Syrian ...
Ten Years and Counting in Guatemala
We have accomplished so much in the last 10 years at the Historical Archive of the National Police. And yet, despite the efforts, dedication, and commitment of each person who since 2006 has worked in the AHPN, we still can not say “mission accomplished.”
In 10 years the environment at the Archive has changed so much and become so full of life. Where the building once sheltered unknown stories, over time some of those stories have been revealed. But Guatemala has a long way to go in letting the world get to know more deeply about the secrets within the documents stored there.
Guatemalans and the rest of the world have a very important ...
When Data Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story
This blog is a part of International Justice Monitor’s technology for truth series, which focuses on the use of technology for evidence and features views from key proponents in the field.
As highlighted by other posts in this series, emerging technology is increasing the amount and type of information available, in some contexts, to criminal and other investigations. Much of what is produced by these emerging technologies (Facebook posts, tweets, YouTube videos, text messages) falls in the category we refer to as “found” data. By “found” data we mean data not generated for a specific investigation, but instead, that is generated for ...
How many police homicides in the US? A reconsideration
(This post is co-authored by Patrick Ball and Kristian Lum.)
In early March, the Bureau of Justice Statistics published a report that estimated that in the period 2003-2009 and 2011, there were approximately 7427 homicides committed by police in the US. We responded that the method the analysts used, capture-recapture with two databases, is vulnerable to underestimation if the databases exhibit positive dependence. We conduct a thorough sensitivity analysis on the original independence model as applied to the police homicides databases. We used information from several other countries where our partners created multiple databases of homicides. We ...
CIIDH Data – Variables List
Version date: 2000.01.29
Current version: ATV20.1
Patrick Ball & Herbert F. Spirer
Below are listed the 19 files that constitute the CIIDH database. We have noted those that include data that might be analytically useful in future versions of ATV. File names and brief definitions are in bold, and variable summaries are in bulleted points.
CXTOV2 (Context; links to VLCNV2)
Additional detail on geographic location of case
Narrative summary
CXTOV2ex (Context extension; links to CXTOV2)
Fine breakdown on the age category & sex of anonymous victims
CXTOV2lg (Context extension; links to CXTOV2)
Legal procedures taken on behalf of the ...
HRDAG Retreat 2015
I look at the beach and then at the table surrounded by nerds, deep in thought and conversation about Dirichlet priors, matching algorithms, and armed conflicts. This peculiar (in the best way) environment catalyzes a moment of reflection: how did I get here?
Four years ago, as a second-year statistics PhD student, I watched "Guatemala: The Secret Files" on PBS Frontline World. I listened to stories of family members who disappeared without answers or justice. Then the story shifted to the work being done by archivists and data experts at Guatemala's Historic Archive of the National Police. The scientists' pursuit of the truth energized me. I ...
BJS Report on Arrest-Related Deaths: True Number Likely Much Greater
(This post is co-authored by Patrick Ball and Kristian Lum.)
Today the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released a report on their effort to document “all deaths that occur during the process of arrest in the United States.” The analysis estimates that the Arrest-Related Deaths (ARD) program covers only 34-49% of these deaths. A parallel program by the FBI (the Supplementary Homicide Reports, SHR) is estimated to cover approximately the same proportion of deaths. Even taking into consideration both programs, 28% of all police homicides remain unreported.
In order to estimate the total number of homicides that appear on neither the ARD or ...
The Great Lessons in Research at the Archive
Doing an investigation on the contents of the Archive brought with it three major lessons. The first big lesson was the constant movement (nothing was static), The second great lesson was that everything evolved (the changes were a constant). The third major lesson was to discover how two institutions can work together while geographically far apart.
The constant movement
As there were other processes being carried out at the Archive, everything was in constant movement. In other words, one day the documents were in X location and tomorrow they may be in location Y or dispersed in multiple locations. This made it impossible to know with certai...
Data Mining for Good: Thoreau Center Lunch + Learn
At the Thoreau Center for Sustainability's “Lunch and Learn,” Patrick Ball spoke about “Data Mining for Good.” The talk included a discussion of how HRDAG uses random sampling, entity resolution, communications metadata, and statistical modeling to assist prosecutions of human rights violators. With an introduction by John DeCock, Chief Operating and Outreach Officer, Bioneers.
The Thoreau Center for Sustainability
Lunch and Learn
October 23, 2014
San Francisco, California
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