VoIP technologies such as Skype have reduced the cost of communication but they offer the additional benefit of being able to aggregate call data and voicemail into a central repository through specialized application programming interfaces(APIs). As such, this project will be a third-party application that routes messages sent to a local Skype number to a database, accessible to human rights organizations worldwide.

 By initially relying upon voice, this project can sidestep issues of technical capacity and/or literacy, allowing faster deployment and easier adoption. Callers would be able to use a familiar interface indistinguishable from most voicemail systems. Because Skype offers the ability to set up a local telephone number in Mexico, anyone with a cell phone would be able to call without incurring significant cost.

The goal would be to connect activists under threat with human rights organizations able to provide support through intervention or investigation. Voicemail sent to this database will automatically be tagged with date, time and receiving number(where available, and users should be given option to remain anonymous). Accessible by representatives of human rights groups, voicemail could be augmented with keywords, notes, location data and follow up information. Any of this additional information has the potential to be useful in an investigation or building a case to bring to authorities.

 A typical usage might proceed as follows:

• Activist has received threats in the past for her activities.
• Activist notices an unfamiliar vehicle parked across the street from her workplace. Inside are three men wearing uniforms who are watching her. One even smiles.
• She calls the local number for this system and leaves a message describing the men, the vehicle, the scene and requests that somebody calls her back.
• This message arrives in the database; subscribed users are alerted.
• A member of an international NGO working in the area listens to the message, tags it with license plate number, street name and other information within the message. She places a call back to the activist, advising her to proceed to their local office.
• A member of a different NGO is browsing the database and notices a match on the license plate, which had been reported a year before in a nearby town where an activist had disappeared. He suspects that the same people are involved and links them together.
• Six months later, a petition is filed with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In the petition, attorneys use these voicemails as evidence suggesting a widespread pattern of harassment, claiming also that government vehicles were involved in a number of cases.

Lack of action or complicity by local, regional or federal authorities makes cases of harassment and disappearance such as these a human rights issue, rather than simply a criminal or civil complaint. As a signatory to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights and the Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons - among other instruments - Mexico has legally binding treaty obligations to prevent the types of violations described above. Failure to prevent these types of violations constitute a breach of an individual's right to freely associate, communicate and live free from arbitrary detention or arrest. Further, as a breach of international law they present a liability for the Mexican state.

By providing the tools necesary to collect and disseminate evidence among interested parties, this tool will allow local activists, international human rights groups and state officials to harmonize their interests by intervening and investigating claims.

 This project is not meant to single out Mexico - which has made considerable strides in its protection of human rights in recent years - but to provide a test case and proof of concept which could later be replicated in other areas and for different populations. Because this project relies on lightweight and widely available mobile technologies such as voice it has the ability to scale easily to cover a variety of situations worldwide. Choosing to limit the project's initial scope will allow for rapid testing and quicker feedback by all users.

 Additional Notes For Future Versions:

• Harassment of activists often begins with phone calls or text message; future versions may allow such calls to be automatically routed to the database as a "honeypot" feature.
• While the scope of this project deals only with voice information, there is no reason why the system could not be adapted to handle images, video, text or GPS data.
• Given adequate locational data, alerts could be rebroadcast to individuals in the immediate area, who could "flashmob" the area and collect more information.
• As noted below, privacy issues will need to be addressed at every step of the program. Safety of callers is paramount and it is critical that this tool in no way jeopardizes that safety.

In addition:

Spent summer of 2008 in Mexico researching civil society and its relationship with the Mexican state. During this time I met with representatives from a number of labor and community organizations who described the challenges they face from authorities and other parties opposed.

Similarly, my work with an international relief organization with connections in Mexico provides a potential avenue for support and on-the-ground knowledge.

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