I. SURVEY

Survey

The insufficient capacity of the government to deal with certain social issues at the end of the last century fostered the creation of a number of non-profit, non-state and spontaneous organizations. These organisations were initially designed to address a range of social issues and investigate events in depth through non-governmental status. From homelessness and poverty to human trafficking and military violence, the contributions of voluntary organisations are part of a broader spirit of 'community' and market-based solutions to urgent public problems. In addition, they have members from a variety of fields, from war correspondents to DNA bio-forensics to builders, and this teamwork can be more effective in enhancing the areas involved in investigating cases, as well as bringing the expertise of members from different fields to bear on in-depth investigations. As a result, in-depth research on social issues often results in challenging government authority and resisting or modifying national policies and programs.

The cases taken up by these organisations can be classified in two ways: 1) they are employed by the state government or work with government agencies; 2) they operate alone or in opposition to the state, investigating cases that have been completed by some governments and exposing littleknown government secrets. As some governments became increasingly vague about solving social problems, spontaneous organisations would become the key to investigating problems in the latter part of the modern Neoliberal period.

Figure2 displays a few of the better known organisations that are active in Europe and the USA. These organisations often use open-source intelligence (OSINT) in their investigations, which are based on government reports, budgets, interviews, telephone directories, press conferences, websites and speeches. This type of public data is generally published on the internet, online publications, blogs, discussion groups, citizen media and different national news and social media platforms (including Ins, YouTube). Although these sources are open to the public, it does not mean that each individual has the ability to discover the value of public data. Hence, interdisciplinary collaboration in the research process will increase efficiency. In these spontaneous organizations investigating cases, the valuable clues found generally need to be linked to time and space, as objects with clear timelines and spatial coordinates can be effectively recognized as evidence. A spatial investigation can be defined as the combination of resources collected through OSINT with digital maps, spatial data analysis, and data visualization fields to visualize data that would otherwise exist as text7. Thus, compared to non-spatial data, spatial data has several advantages, given the known locations and attributes, and the data can be easily mapped and analyzed as well as represented. On the other hand, due to the increasing analytical and visual representation capabilities of spatial technology, effectively presents, demonstrates, and explains complex information in the courtroom. Spatial technology can lead to more effective investigations that link people, places, objects, and time, and Listi found the field of forensic spatial analysis to be increasingly popular8. As a result, more organizations are analyzing cases through this technology, including Newyorktimes, which, in collaboration with architects, reconstructed the Syrian government's chemical attack on civilians through the work "One Building, One Bomb"9. Despite some debate and controversy over the technology, space technology has gradually come to dominate the investigation of violence and the provision of evidence in the forensic system, and the aesthetics of forensic architecture have been recognized in the courtroom.

Figure 2 Worldwide Forensic Organization. Artwork:Junlong .

7 Gregory A Elmes, George Roedl, and Jamison Conley. Forensic GIS: The Role of Geospatial Technologies for Investigating Crime and Providing Evidence. Vol. 11. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, (2014): 2. http://www.nldongre.com/Data/Files/73_91.pdf 8 Listi, Ginesse A, Mary H Manhein, and Michael Leitner. “Use of the Global Positioning System in the Field Recovery of Scattered Human Remains.” Journal of forensic sciences 52, no. 1 (2007): 11–15. 9 Colin Moynihan. “Forensic Architecture Founder Says United States Prevented His Visit.” The New York Times (The New York Times, February 20, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/arts/ design/forensic-architecture-founder-says-us-denied-him-visa.html.

The first part of this article will discuss how this type of non-forensic professional organization investigates cases. The majority of them are journalist teams; thus, they investigate cases more likely through hypotheses based on social issues and build case frameworks and information searches. Some multidisciplinary organizations, such as Killing Architects and Amnesty International, are Architecture or Forensic Science + investigative journalism. They are more focused on digital technology and investigative journalism through geolocation, DIY aerial photography, photogrammetry, open-source, and DNA to find deep secrets behind the cases. Forensic Architecture is a pioneer in spatial investigation and a multidisciplinary research group; they are more based on architectural and archaeological techniques to reconstruct and simulate violence in conflict zones and challenge the state's authority in international courts to defend human rights. Although these three organizations have the same purpose in protecting human rights, they still have differences in case research and justification. Therefore, this section will analyze the methods and techniques used in the survey by three organizations, Bellingcat, Killing Architects, and Forensic Architecture, and discuss their differences.