As activists aiming to use video as a tool for social change, the security of both video activists and of video ‘subjects’ is of paramount importance. Video activism (otherwise known as video4change) covers topics that can be subversive, rebellious, and anti-status quo. As such, everyone involved in such videos is at risk — from the video maker to the ones who are being interviewed. More than that, at each point of the video production process to the distribution of such videos, there are physical and virtual security risks that video activists must consider.

Secure My Video is an attempt to provide a guide to address such security issues. The original guide grew out from a one-day sprint in Jakarta in 2011. At the end of 2012, the guide was updated to expand on the topics covered. The original guide by Andrew Garton was updated and expanded by Cheekay Cinco.

The updated guide still covers three main security issues in video production, storage, and publishing.  The update expanded on these topics to cover a wider range of issues and solutions.

One of the ‘new’ parts to the guide is ‘Things to Ask Yourself’ for each topic. This is designed to help video makers think about security issues as they go about the process of producing and publishing their videos.

As video security issues evolve and grow, we hope that the guide will continue to be updated to reflect new issues and scenarios.