>>Yasmin Dolatabadi: Google Ideas explores the role that technology can play in empowering
people, protecting themselves against threats presented by conflict, instability, and repression.
Technology strengthens and weakens both sides in a conflict, but it's our belief that it
disproportionately empowers those on the side of fighting repression.
Our connected world is not a good place to be an autocratic ruler.
In the span of two years, Syria's gone from local protests to a national uprising and
now a sustained bloody conflict, and with that has come an alarming rise in fatalities.
At the same time, we've seen a profound transformation in Syria's use of the Internet.
Prior to the conflict, YouTube saw a thousand video posts from Syria a month.
Last month, that number was up to 100,000.
From 1,000 to 100,000 video posts a month.
That's a dramatic change.
Syria's online video phenomenon is due to people wanting to document what's happening
inside the country, from demonstrations to massacres.
When the Free Syrian Army -- the main opposition Army -- formed, they also required the defectors
record and publish a video defector testimony on line and post it to YouTube.
That's when I realized that Google Ideas might be able to contribute to changing the calculus
for those fighting repression.
That is, by using Google's network visualization tools and YouTube's video repository.
Last summer, we partnered with Al Jazeera to deploy a visualization that maps and tracks
defections.
It's a defection tracker, a people map that shows defections in red, latest defections
in orange, and those yet to defect in gray.
Here are the senior members of the security and military pillar.
Meet Zubaido Al-Meeki, a senior general, a woman, an Alawite, and a defector.
As an Alawite, the same religious minority group as Assad and the ruling elite, there
is no one you would more expect to be loyal than she.
So when the Free Syrian Army seized her town of (saying name), she went straight to the
nearest checkpoint and she said, "After watching the atrocities the regime has committed, I
want to join the fight to free the Syrian people."
She risked her life to publicly defect.
The objective of the defection tracker is to amplify her voice, to amplify her audience.
Al Jazeera promoted this tool on their English and Arabic language Web sites and TV stations
so the message could reach the Syrian people, the rebels, the regime, and the international
community.
We didn't just map the military, of course.
We mapped all the pillars of support, from the families, to the diplomats, to the Parliament
members, and to the cabinet.
In creating this tool, preparing it for launch, we found all the names and bios of the members
of state, bar about a dozen.
For those, we couldn't find the information.
So we turned to our Syrian activist friends and their social networks, 150,000 followers,
and we used the Internet to crowdsource the details for every last member of state, so
we had the data set complete and we could go live tracking defections in red, in real
time, and every time linking to that defector testimony that was on YouTube.
As defections gained momentum, our tools showed the fracturing of support for the regime.
And as you can see at a glance from the red, defections have had a devastating impact on
the military.
Let's be clear, though.
Technology is not a panacea.
And as we know from watching the news, the conflict in Syria continues.
But awareness of the defections, both individually and cumulatively, damages the credibility
of Assad's regime and probably the morale of those left loyal to it.
Technology, combined with storytelling, is powerful.
That's why we believe it's the -- that's why we believe it's the responsibility of those
who understand the technology in our connected world to help those with the courage and stories
to tell.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]