Denise Pitcher

Human Rights Advocate ✊🏼

[Denise Pitcher @denise_pitcher]

Today’s Trinidad Express’ HER Magazine. I hope my story is of some value to women & that it increases the public’s understanding of human rights, the work & why it is so very important. Thank you Express, Kimberly Wallace & Robert Taylor for presenting my story so beautifully!

[Erika Guevara Rosas @ErikaGuevaraR]

Generative AI doesn’t run on magic. It runs on massive data pipelines built on privacy violations by design.

Our new @Amnesty report exposes how big tech’s AI systems are powered by surveillance, data extraction, and abuse of people’s rights, at scale.

We researched the models powering some of the most popular publicly available standalone generative AI tools, including GPT 3 by Open AI, Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, DeepSeek and tools by Midjourney and Stable Diffusion.

This is not innovation at any cost. It comes at a high price: our human rights.

Read the report: https://t.co/MGRonqai7o

[Mary Lawlor @MaryLawlorhrds]

NOW PUBLIC: New research examining how social media platforms contribute, intentionally or otherwise, to silencing & endangering human rights defenders.
https://t.co/24OQqS7Td5

👉 Join the discussion in @tcddublin today from 4pm (Dublin time) & live at: https://t.co/hkDRF2l78r

[Justin Rosenstein @rosenstein]

I helped build Facebook. I watched it become a machine for addicting people. Because addiction was more profitable.

Now the same logic is driving AI. I wrote about what we do about it. 🧵

[Denise Pitcher @denise_pitcher]

Stop using ChatGPT. Switch to Claude

[Denise Pitcher @denise_pitcher]

@STHGibbs That’s a reasonable assumption given the intensifying efforts in the region

[Eva Chipiuk, BSc, LLB, LLM @echipiuk]

After the Nuremberg Trials, one of the most unsettling conclusions did not come from the courtroom, but from the psychiatrist tasked with evaluating the defendants.

Dr. Douglas Kelley, the U.S. Army psychiatrist assigned to assess many of the senior Nazi officials, expected to find monsters people fundamentally different from the rest of humanity. He did not.

What disturbed him most was how ordinary they were.

They were not raving madmen. They were not obvious sociopaths. They were intelligent, educated, and often convinced they were simply doing their duty, following orders, or serving a higher cause. Kelley warned that this was the real danger: evil does not always look abnormal. It often presents itself as competence, obedience, and institutional loyalty.

His central warning was deeply uncomfortable there are people with morally vacant or destructive tendencies everywhere. In every society. In every era. What determines the outcome is whether systems elevate those people, shield them from accountability, and normalize their behavior, and whether ordinary citizens are willing to question authority when it matters most.

Modern bureaucracies and institutions are powerful precisely because they diffuse responsibility. Decisions are broken into policies, protocols, committees, and “best practices.” Harm is rarely framed as harm; it is reframed as necessity, risk management, or compliance. Individuals are encouraged not to think morally, but procedurally.

This is how ordinary people become capable of extraordinary wrongdoing by outsourcing conscience to institutions and convincing themselves that accountability lies somewhere else.

The lesson of Nuremberg is not that “those people were different.” It is that they were not.

That is why vigilance matters. That is why blind trust in authority is dangerous. And that is why a healthy society must protect dissent, accountability, and moral courage especially when it is inconvenient.

History does not repeat itself because people forget facts. It repeats itself when people convince themselves, “It could never happen here.”

[Denise Pitcher @denise_pitcher]

@SpencerHakimian Hello from Trinidad. You need to stop with the hysteria. All is calm in the Caribbean

[Human Rights Watch @hrw]

Human Rights Day reminds us we all have a role to play. Protect what matters. Your actions make a difference.

Thank you @PostcodeLottery players for supporting our work defending human rights. 💙

[Natasha Bertrand @NatashaBertrand]

Lawmakers are apparently being shown the full video of the Sept 2 boat strikes in their meetings with Adm Bradley and Gen Caine.

HIMES: “what I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service…you have two individuals and clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, were killed by the United States.”

[Denise Pitcher @denise_pitcher]

@imdat_oner One state cannot close the airspace of another state. See Chicago Convention

A state has complete and exclusive control over its airspace

[Denise Pitcher @denise_pitcher]

@SpencerHakimian This account has morphed into constant hysteria and propaganda

[Denise Pitcher @denise_pitcher]

@KejanHaynes

[Denise Pitcher @denise_pitcher]

@ErikSperling @SenateGOP @connorobrienNH @NatashaBertrand @alexbward @laraseligman @KatieBoLillis @ZcohenCNN @reporterjoe @dave_brown24 @CurtMills @DecampDave And us Trinis right next to Venezuela

[Denise Pitcher @denise_pitcher]

✌️ ☮️

[The Associated Press @AP]

The UN human rights chief says US military strikes against vessels allegedly carrying illegal drugs from South America are “unacceptable” and must stop. The condemnation marks the first of its kind from a United Nations organization. https://t.co/FcJ6BWPivN

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Whether Trump’s provocations against Venezuela are empty threats or a prelude to an invasion, they are illegal. Nor does this saber-rattling create a bootstrap justification for Trump’s unlawful murder of suspected drug traffickers coming from Venezuela. https://t.co/35SfbekALs

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Trump has ordered the murder of drug-running suspects:
1. No trial, so no test of his "evidence."
2. Drug trafficking doesn't carry the death penalty in the U.S.
3. International law bars the death penalty for any crime short of murder. https://t.co/35SfbekALs

[Denise Pitcher @denise_pitcher]

A critical element of any policy to combat the illegal drug trade must focus efforts on the demand end of the trade. As long as there is demand drug traffickers will continue to find innovative ways to meet this demand because it is a very very lucrative business.

[Denise Pitcher @denise_pitcher]

I shared a human rights perspective on the ongoing US efforts against drug trafficking in the Caribbean Sea. Anyone accused of a crime is entitled to due process in accordance with our Constitution, Int’l & human rights law & the penalty for drug trafficking is not death.

[Denise Pitcher @denise_pitcher]

This approach operates within the law, will yield more information through investigation on criminal networks and protects lives. However targeting drug traffickers is only one arm of what must be a multi-pronged strategy to be effective.