Anthony De Rosa

From Occupy Wall Street in its various locations around the world, to Tahrir Square in Egypt and now to Syria, where few reporters are able to enter, livestreams from citizen journalists increasingly are becoming the only window into what’s actually happening at any given moment during some of the biggest news events.

At the outset of the revolution in Egypt, a streaming video service called Bambuser allowed live video to be streamed directly from Tahrir Square. Ramy Raoof, human rights activist and editor for Egyptian Blog for Human Rights, regularly provided live video using nothing but his Nokia E90 camera phone.

This video, documenting a protest of the death and torture of Khaled Said, netted nearly 4,000 live viewers. The archive has been watched nearly 16,000 times.

Tim Pool has been written up in many publications, including Fast Company, Spin and Time Magazine for his livestreaming of Occupy Wall Street around the country and in particular in New York City. We spoke to Tim recently on Reuters TV’s Tech Tonic about the equipment Tim uses to capture events on streams that last for days and days.

Now, livestreamers like William Gagan and Geoffrey Shively are taking their act overseas. The two citizen journalists crowdfunded a trip into Syria to attempt to livestream from within the borders many journalists have been unable to cross. Shively is an agent with Telecomix, a loosely networked group of hacktivists who provide the connective tissue for livestreamers like Shively, as they have for others around the world, in Egypt, Libya and anywhere else that a need for raw uninterrupted access arises.

There is plenty that GOP candidates could use as fodder to attack Barack Obama. An unemployment rate of 9 percent for much of his presidency seems like awfully low-hanging fruit. So why in the world are they bothering to question the president on things that have little basis in reality?

Take Mitt Romney, for example. Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition Forum last week, Romney said, ”This president appears more generous to our enemies than he is to our friends. Such is the natural tendency of someone who is unsure of America’s strength — or of America’s rightful place in the world.”

But, in fact, Obama’s foreign policy has taken a such a hard line that he has been likened to his predecessor, George W. Bush, much to the dismay of many progressives in his own party.  He has not closed Guantanamo, after promising he would; he has continued to perform renditions and moving suspects into airspace or locations so the government can perform interrogations he couldn’t attempt elsewhere; he’s used drones in lieu of putting American troops in danger.