A note to the US Congress: We can help you archive evidence of warcrimes

On May 12th, you signed a letter asking social media companies including Meta, Twitter, and TikTok to “preserve and archive content shared on their platforms that could potentially be used as evidence of Russian war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other atrocities in Ukraine.”

We couldn’t agree more with your request, which is why we’ve been archiving data coming out of Russia and Ukraine since before the war began.

We believe that we must archive these important events in our world’s history, not only to identify those responsible for crimes, but to have first-hand accounts for future historians. More importantly, these pieces of information and data must be stored in a place that is permanent and immutable.

In other words, they must be resistant to censorship and be preserved forever.

That’s exactly what we’re doing with Arweave. To date, we have recorded over 65 million items of data. This not only includes information from Russia and Ukraine, but also China, specifically, Shanghai.

While traditional social media can archive data, they are unable to deliver on these demands. Not only is their archiving temporary, but social media is inherently biased and prone to censorship. We see censorship and data deletion every day. Social media platforms delete posts that are deemed inappropriate or against guidelines. This includes violent images and videos, which will serve as important evidence in the future. They ban individuals who do not adhere to their rules and regulations and restrict access to information as deemed necessary.

You touch on some of these concerns in your note: “We are concerned that social media platforms […] do not have adequate procedures in place to archive this content so that it can be made available to international organizations conducting investigations into allegations of war crimes and other atrocities.”

You’re absolutely correct, but if they work with us, they can.

With our technology and Arweave’s permanent blockchain, we can permanently archive crucial pieces of information coming out of Russia and Ukraine and make it publicly available. Organizations, including human rights organizations, will have access to this data and be able collect content they believe contains evidence of war crimes.

We are ready to help.

We already have an abundant amount of archived information that will serve as critical pieces of evidence in future investigations. It is stored publicly, indexed, and accessible to the public.

While we still continue archiving, we could achieve so much more with partnership and collaboration from social media companies, governments, and human rights organizations. Imagine the amount of historical data we could collect if we worked together.

We are able to take these next steps and preserve our history. We are able to archive the evidence you need to hold the perpetrators of human rights violations accountable.

Are you ready to work with us?

To learn more about Irys and our technology, check out Irys’s documentation. For more information, feel free to reach out on Twitter, Discord, or Telegram.