2024 Press room

Here is a collection of press coverage of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group.

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The Ways AI Decides How Low-Income People Work, Live, Learn, and Survive

Kevin De Liban - Techtonic Justice - November 2024

HRDAG is mentioned in the “child welfare (sometimes called “family policing”)” section: At least 72,000 low-income children are exposed to AI-related decision-making through government child welfare agencies’ use of AI to determine if they are likely to be neglected. As a result, these children experience heightened risk of being separated from their parents and placed in foster care.

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Can We Harness AI To Fulfill The Promise Of Universal Human Rights?

Cornelia C. Walther - Forbes - 10 December, 2024

The Human Rights Data Analysis Group employs AI to analyze data from conflict zones, identifying patterns of human rights abuses that might be overlooked. This assists international organizations in holding perpetrators accountable.

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Families flock to Syria’s prisons looking for released inmates

Chloe Hadjimatheou - Tortoise - 10 December, 2024

According to the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, at least 17,723 people were killed in government custody from the start of the uprising in March 2011 to December 2015 – an average of 300 deaths each month. There are no figures for subsequent years but there is no reason to believe the killings stopped.

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Syria’s celebrations muted by evidence of torture in Assad’s notorious prisons

Richard Engel, Gabe Joselow and Alexander Smith - NBC News - 10 December, 2024

The Human Rights Data Analysis Group, an independent scientific human rights organization based in San Francisco, has counted at least 17,723 people killed in Syrian custody from 2011 to 2015 — around 300 every week — almost certainly a vast undercount, it says.

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Meet the data analyst putting the perpetrators of genocide in prison

Tristan Free - Biotechniques - 10 December 2024

Biotechniques published an interview with Patrick Ball, inspired by his John Maddox Prize award.

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Want to know a police officer’s job history? There’s a new tool

Madison Holcomb - NPR Illinois - 16 October 2024

NPR Illinois has covered the new National Police Index, created by HRDAG’s Tarak Shah, Ayyub Ibrahim of Innocence Project, and Sam Stecklow of Invisible Institute.

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Gaza: Why is it so hard to establish the death toll?

Smriti Mallapaty - Nature - 24 September 2024

HRDAG director of research Patrick Ball is quoted in this Nature article about how body counts are a crude measure of the war’s impact and more reliable estimates will take time to compile.

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Police transparency expands with new national database — except Michigan

Steve Neavling - Detroit Metro Times - 18 September, 2024

Tarak Shah is quoted with regard to the National Police Index: “Police often avoid accountability by moving to another agency rather than face discipline. This tool, allowing anyone to look up and track the histories of such officers, provides an invaluable service for the human rights community in our fight against impunity.”

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Even if there’s a ceasefire, thousands of deaths projected in Gaza over next 6 months

Jonathan Lambert - NPR - 1 March, 2024

In this NPR story, HRDAG’s Patrick Ball comments on first-of-its-kind projections.

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War and Illness Could Kill 85,000 Gazans in 6 Months

Stephanie Nolen - New York Times - 21 February, 2024

HRDAG director of research Patrick Ball is quoted in this New York Times article about a paper that models death tolls in Gaza.

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