Nic Halverson writes: After Iran’s 2009 presidential elections, in what came to be known as the Green Movement, protesters flooded the streets and demanded that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be removed from office after he was accused of rigging votes to get reelected.

During that time, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps asked people to help identify dissenters in videos and photos, many of which were obtained from YouTube and social media sites. Since then, corrupt regimes, military and law enforcement agencies from across the Middle East, Europe and North America have routinely trolled YouTube and social media sites to try and identify protesters.

According to the 2011 Cameras Everywhere Report by human rights organization Witness, “No video-sharing site or hardware manufacturer currently offers users the option to blur faces or protect identity.”

Well, not anymore. YouTube has an announcement to make:

“As citizens continue to play a critical role in supplying news and human rights footage from around the world, YouTube is committed to creating even better tools to help them…Today we’re launching face blurring — a new tool that allows you to obscure faces within videos with the click of a button.” [Continue reading…]