RightAngle: Truepic

Amber: Can you tell me a bit about your background with the US Department of State?

Mounir: I joined in about 2009 and largely was working on Middle Eastern issues, specifically within Syria. I was posted to the US embassy in Damascus in 2010 at which time there was a wave of pro democracy movements and protests against governments throughout the Middle East. My role was known as a political officer and I covered issues related to human rights, religious freedom, civil society and things of that nature. At the time those were the main themes of protests against the Syrian government. As a result, I was closely following events there.

Amber: And how did you go from working at the US Department of State to Truepic?

Mounir: It was my experience at the Department of State, not only in those years but throughout my entire career, that highlighted to me how digital media was impacting social and political environments around the world. I saw how central things like Facebook, Skype, and Gmail were to civil society movements back in 2011.

I also saw how those same social networks were polarizing society at a rapid rate. Because of the ambiguity of the social media environment and rise in disinformation, the average consumer of information could not tell what was real and what was fake.

If you fast forward, during my last position at the US government, I was representing the United States at the UN Security Council. Often times there were horrific images of conflicts zones and humanitarian issues from around the world presented to the council. I saw how digital imagery, specifically user generated content, could directly impact how governments and the international community thought about and reacted to a crisis. But too often different countries, media, or critics would undermine the images being presented because of the inability to authenticate the digital imagery.

Too often, governments or international bodies would have to stall in their reaction to crisis because they could not authenticate imagery. At times it was genuine, but many times it was also a convenient excuse not to address hard problems. That is what led me to Truepic.

Amber: Was Truepic already working on the social impact side when you joined or did you see the technology and understand the potential it had in that space?

Mounir: Our founders definitely had the right thought, but they came from very different environments than myself. Our founder has a finance background and our CEO is a technologist at heart. But what they both recognized was that trust was evaporating on the internet.

This became clear in two ways; the growing public distress over fake news and people not being able to trust what they see online and the increased rates of fraud; across a variety of industries reliant on digital imagery. They saw these two problems and created a technology that mitigates and addresses the fraud to protect consumers and companies.

I saw the technology as how it could be used to empower civil society around the world and eliminate the trust gap social, political, and humanitarian environment.

When we came together it was the perfect Yin and Yang. I don’t think they were particularly focused on my area of expertise and I certainly wasn’t focused on their area of expertise. Both use cases though are in desperate need of Truepic.

Amber: It’s really neat how you were able to see the potential and come together. Regarding the topic of use cases, what are some for social impact that you are most excited about for Truepic?

Mounir: On the social impact there are a few buckets that I would put the use cases into:

• Documentation: This is the biggest one… It could be documenting something as serious as war crimes, human rights violations or atrocities in conflict zones. Or it could be something as routine as a local community that is sick of the bad infrastructure within their town, or province and documenting the harmful infrastructure to advocate for social change. It has a wide range of documentation purposes.
• Monitoring and Evaluation: Imagine a government, an organization, a city, a town, or an NGO that provides funds or resources to build, develop or deliver assistance to a community in need. By using Truepic they can monitor, evaluate and verify that assistance has been delivered or infrastructure completed. This is very similar to the insurance use case but on the social impact side. It replaces the need of a trusted individual to go kick the tires in a factory or make sure a school was built with verified images which will save the donor or organization funds to do more good work.
• Auditing: This is kind of a hybrid of the first two. Let’s say you’re some big corporation and you have a factory that produces products in a developing country. You can audit that factory at anytime to making sure 1. it is up to code, and no health violations are being broken and 2: keep track of staff and make sure the manager and the people are there on time; that children aren’t being used; and the working conditions are good.
  You can request an audit of any sort of image or video from any location at any time which provides full transparency. This could greatly improve factory working conditions.
• Citizen Journalism: Anybody can download Truepic and disseminate 100% true and real images and videos from anywhere in the world at anytime. That is a powerful tool to counter misinformation, propaganda and fake news around the world which is growing at a rapid rate.

Amber: Those are some pretty amazing use cases for social impact. Do you have any specific examples of one of these in practice that you are excited about?

Mounir: One that I think is pretty cool is that we are working with the Antiquities Coalition to help protect and digitize cultural heritage from around the world. The Coalition and its partners identify cultrual heritage and artifacts around the world that are under threat, by looting/theft or natural disasters, and document them using Truepic. This is done as it creates an immutable reference that establishes the date, time and location of the actual object. This creates provenance. For example, if there is a priceless statue in Vancouver and all of a sudden it is looted and two years later it pops up in Berlin being sold for 10 million dollars. Those authenticated images have established provenance that it existed in Vancouver beforehand which would protect it.

Where we also support is in relation to natural disasters. As we geolocate every image, if ever there is a flood or something, our geolocation will provide excavators in the future a radius of where they can search for artifacts moving forward. I think that is a very cool and unique project that we are working on with those partners.

Amber: That is a really unique project. With all of these social impact use cases, what do you think are some of the challenges you face for implementation?

Mounir: A challenge is connectivity. Truepic needs a connection to work. In most parts of the world it is fine but in remote regions it can be challenging if there is a weak communications infrastructure. The reason why we need a signal is that we write all of our images to the blockchain. We take the verified metadata and the unique pixilation of every image and video and put a reference of that on the blockchain as an immutable record. Without a signal we cannot access the blockchain.

Amber: With being in so many countries that have or are experiencing war, have you seen any government shutdowns and if so did that affect your platform?

Mounir: Yes, if the connectivity was removed they would not be able to use it. That said, in areas that are the worst places, government shutdown are not the top concern… the question becomes ‘is there any communication infrastructure left from all the bombing and violence?’ That is a bigger inhibitor than a targeted government shutdown to our platform.

Amber: Mounir, it has been an absolute pleasure chatting with you. Before we conclude our call, are there any last thoughts that you would like to share?

Mounir: The only other thing I would say, other than thank you so much for taking the time to hear me ramble, is that I do believe that with the technological advancements that are happening, in the very near future, say 3–5 years, that image authentication is going to have to be a standard for everyone in the world. We too often rely on smartphone images which can be easily manipulated. There will have to be an option for authenticated imagery for every user on earth. That is what we are trying to do; provide that tool so anyone, at any time can take an authenticated image.