6 ms·

Technology is degrading the value of photo and video evidence (and probably audio too) asymptotically toward that of famously unreliable testimony from memory.

Technology is degrading the value of photo and video evidence (and probably audio too) asymptotically toward that of famously unreliable testimony from memory. Criminality becomes less risky and/or innocence becomes less protective. Law becomes less effective. A bad result, to the extent that the law isn't an ass. On the plus side artistic tools that help materialize internal life become more effective. We can interact with our dreams and fantasies more readily, to potentially therapeutic benefit. It's hard to say whether this trend holds more danger or promise.

Chaebixi 9y ago
I wouldn't be that pessimistic just yet. It's yet possible that new advances in authentication technology might counteract some of these trends.
- unethical_ban 9y ago
  What do you mean "authentication technology"? Tamper detection? The ability to see that a tool was used? It may slow things down, but this is an arms race.
  - BoiledCabbage 9y ago
    > What do you mean "authentication technology"? Cryptographic signatures. Ie every frame in a video is signed with a 512-bit key that states authoritatively what camera was the source of the video and when it was taken. In order to change any pixels in the video you'd break this key and need to resign it. An attacker would be unable to do this unless they had physical access to the original camera. But it'll be at least 3 decades before this technology is commercialized, people see the demand for it, and the majority of all cameras in the world are replaced by it. Even if this new tech is on the market in a decade (simple tech, no demand / ecosystem yet), but 90% of existing / installed cameras don't have the feature then fake videos still get created with them. Only once ~80% of videos are authenticated, and a significant portion of the remaining 20% are fakes will people be able to dismiss non authenticated video. Up until then it's fakes non-stop. We've got some ugly decades coming up.
    - bduerst 9y ago
      What's to keep you from adding the key to a camera after falsely generating the media? Or using the key of a known camera to generate false footage?
      - andrewstuart2 9y ago
        Require that videos submitted as evidence use keypairs which were provably registered or published prior to the event. Don't have a registered key? Great, but that's no longer admissible. Still, problems would exist with letting the camera read the private key for signing, but not allowing an attacker (forger) to access the private key and thus sign their modified footage. Just a thought.
        PeterisP 9y ago
        Courts will use the best evidence available for a particular case, including all kinds of things that obviously can be less than perfectly reliable. Physical photographs have been doctored (or staged) for more than a century, and that doesn't mean that photos as such are inadmissible as evidence; so the fact that the process for taking video wasn't especially tamper-proof won't by itself be sufficient to disqualify it. If a video is available and doesn't contain a pre-published key then the courts will still want to use it as useful evidence instead of simply ignoring it - sure, the opponent might have a slightly easier time attempting to contest that evidence as possibly doctored (just as they can do now), but courts will still make a judgement for each individual case.
        smallnamespace 9y ago
        Atoms are harder to move around then bits, and the rapid development in our ability to generate convincing video means that it will be hard to predict what sort of evidence we can generate now that will be convincing in the future.
      - swsieber 9y ago
        Timestamped signatures + publishing the public key w/a timestamp (blockchain?).
  - Chaebixi 9y ago
    Both. It is an arms race, but it isn't hopeless. Think of it this way: we have fantastic technology for forging paper documents, but we still trust them. For instance, someone forged a memo to make a former president look bad close to an election, and they were tripped up because they weren't thinking about fonts [1]. Getting a forgery right is hard, and requires a lot of attention to detail. Technology will improve to add even more details that require careful attention, and maybe some cryptographic assurances. Maybe it won't be a world where anyone can spot a forgery, but there will still be experts who can. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy
    - ioquatix 9y ago
      People still use ink signatures for things. :/
    - fishcolorbrick 9y ago
      Here's another one: https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/12/microsoft-calibri-pakistan-fontgate/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/12/microsoft-calibri-pakist...
    - icc97 9y ago
      Fascinating story, although it wasn't just the font, it was trying to pass off default output from 2004 Word as a 1973 typewriter. It seems all they did was run it through a copier a few times. So it was font, paragraph style, and superscript. If you're gonna frame a presidential candidate you should try harder.
  - rlpb 9y ago
    How about this: Every recording device sends a stream of hashes to be cryptographically timestamped in realtime as they record. Now the time window to create fake evidence becomes incredibly small. You have to arrange the fake to be created at the same time or earlier than you will claim that the event happened. You have to know what you need to fake in advance, too, which isn't the case for all fraud. Evidence will be corroborated from multiple places. If I'm in a public place, I can bet the scene is being recorded from multiple places, and I will not be able to predict who will be in that place in advance. Fake evidence can be caught out by finding discrepancies. If the majority of recording device owners whose evidence corroborates can be trusted, then the identification of the fake one can be made with reasonable certainty.
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago
  [Edit] - Moved to sibling comment
  - ABetterTomorrow 9y ago
    In the meantime, perhaps privacy-conscious individuals can wear smart burkas with vocal modulation when in public.
- quotemstr 9y ago
  > new advances in authentication technology I'm not so optimistic. Other people here are focusing on breaking the authentication, and that's something to worry about. I'm worried about the effect that even _known_ false content will have on people. Seeing a perfectly realistic video of $POLITICIAN doing something repulsive will affect your emotional perception of $POLITICIAN even if your rational mind reads and understands some kind of "unauthenticated" label attached to the video.
  - Chaebixi 9y ago
    I think the solution to that is a social one: generate so many authentic-looking but obviously false videos that no one will believe them without authentication. I think these immunization-fakes could reach even the most information-poor voter: just make them funny memes, etc. Plus, if there are enough of them, I'd think the emotional balance between rivals could even out.
IntronExon 9y ago
Hopefully courts can stay abreast of the trend, although I doubt it. The court of public opinion though?! I wonder if someone will commit murder with an angry mob, incited by something upsetting about the target, “caught on film.”
Zhenya 9y ago
There was a good radio lab episode about this: http://www.radiolab.org/story/breaking-news/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/breaking-news/
ardit33 9y ago
On the photo/picture department this is nothing new and it has existed for ages. http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/blog_image/soviet-censorship-naval-commissar-vanishes.jpg http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/imagecache...
asciimo 9y ago
Will evidence only be acceptable from devices that cryptographically sign their content close to the CCD (or whatever technology turns analog to digital)?
- robocat 9y ago
  Video recordings are modified (white balance, stabilisation, etc) then compressed so any signature at the raw CCD stream is useless (except for internal camera security).
JCharante 9y ago
> and probably audio too I've grown to completely distrust audio recording ever since I found out about VoCo from Adobe[0]. I wonder how long until there's an open source alternative. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3l4XLZ59iw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3l4XLZ59iw
6nf 9y ago
In the future envisioned back in the 90s manga Ghost in the Shell there's several discussions about this. For example, a random person posting video evidence of a crime is useless since it's impossible to determine if the video is real or a complete fabrication. Only video from widely trusted sources like major news outlets has any weight behind it.

Chaebixi 9y ago

I wouldn't be that pessimistic just yet. It's yet possible that new advances in authentication technology might counteract some of these trends.

unethical_ban 9y ago
What do you mean "authentication technology"? Tamper detection? The ability to see that a tool was used? It may slow things down, but this is an arms race.
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago
  > What do you mean "authentication technology"? Cryptographic signatures. Ie every frame in a video is signed with a 512-bit key that states authoritatively what camera was the source of the video and when it was taken. In order to change any pixels in the video you'd break this key and need to resign it. An attacker would be unable to do this unless they had physical access to the original camera. But it'll be at least 3 decades before this technology is commercialized, people see the demand for it, and the majority of all cameras in the world are replaced by it. Even if this new tech is on the market in a decade (simple tech, no demand / ecosystem yet), but 90% of existing / installed cameras don't have the feature then fake videos still get created with them. Only once ~80% of videos are authenticated, and a significant portion of the remaining 20% are fakes will people be able to dismiss non authenticated video. Up until then it's fakes non-stop. We've got some ugly decades coming up.
  - bduerst 9y ago
    What's to keep you from adding the key to a camera after falsely generating the media? Or using the key of a known camera to generate false footage?
    - andrewstuart2 9y ago
      Require that videos submitted as evidence use keypairs which were provably registered or published prior to the event. Don't have a registered key? Great, but that's no longer admissible. Still, problems would exist with letting the camera read the private key for signing, but not allowing an attacker (forger) to access the private key and thus sign their modified footage. Just a thought.
      - PeterisP 9y ago
        Courts will use the best evidence available for a particular case, including all kinds of things that obviously can be less than perfectly reliable. Physical photographs have been doctored (or staged) for more than a century, and that doesn't mean that photos as such are inadmissible as evidence; so the fact that the process for taking video wasn't especially tamper-proof won't by itself be sufficient to disqualify it. If a video is available and doesn't contain a pre-published key then the courts will still want to use it as useful evidence instead of simply ignoring it - sure, the opponent might have a slightly easier time attempting to contest that evidence as possibly doctored (just as they can do now), but courts will still make a judgement for each individual case.
        smallnamespace 9y ago
        Atoms are harder to move around then bits, and the rapid development in our ability to generate convincing video means that it will be hard to predict what sort of evidence we can generate now that will be convincing in the future.
    - swsieber 9y ago
      Timestamped signatures + publishing the public key w/a timestamp (blockchain?).
- Chaebixi 9y ago
  Both. It is an arms race, but it isn't hopeless. Think of it this way: we have fantastic technology for forging paper documents, but we still trust them. For instance, someone forged a memo to make a former president look bad close to an election, and they were tripped up because they weren't thinking about fonts [1]. Getting a forgery right is hard, and requires a lot of attention to detail. Technology will improve to add even more details that require careful attention, and maybe some cryptographic assurances. Maybe it won't be a world where anyone can spot a forgery, but there will still be experts who can. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy
  - ioquatix 9y ago
    People still use ink signatures for things. :/
  - fishcolorbrick 9y ago
    Here's another one: https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/12/microsoft-calibri-pakistan-fontgate/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/12/microsoft-calibri-pakist...
  - icc97 9y ago
    Fascinating story, although it wasn't just the font, it was trying to pass off default output from 2004 Word as a 1973 typewriter. It seems all they did was run it through a copier a few times. So it was font, paragraph style, and superscript. If you're gonna frame a presidential candidate you should try harder.
- rlpb 9y ago
  How about this: Every recording device sends a stream of hashes to be cryptographically timestamped in realtime as they record. Now the time window to create fake evidence becomes incredibly small. You have to arrange the fake to be created at the same time or earlier than you will claim that the event happened. You have to know what you need to fake in advance, too, which isn't the case for all fraud. Evidence will be corroborated from multiple places. If I'm in a public place, I can bet the scene is being recorded from multiple places, and I will not be able to predict who will be in that place in advance. Fake evidence can be caught out by finding discrepancies. If the majority of recording device owners whose evidence corroborates can be trusted, then the identification of the fake one can be made with reasonable certainty.
BoiledCabbage 9y ago
[Edit] - Moved to sibling comment
- ABetterTomorrow 9y ago
  In the meantime, perhaps privacy-conscious individuals can wear smart burkas with vocal modulation when in public.
quotemstr 9y ago
> new advances in authentication technology I'm not so optimistic. Other people here are focusing on breaking the authentication, and that's something to worry about. I'm worried about the effect that even _known_ false content will have on people. Seeing a perfectly realistic video of $POLITICIAN doing something repulsive will affect your emotional perception of $POLITICIAN even if your rational mind reads and understands some kind of "unauthenticated" label attached to the video.
- Chaebixi 9y ago
  I think the solution to that is a social one: generate so many authentic-looking but obviously false videos that no one will believe them without authentication. I think these immunization-fakes could reach even the most information-poor voter: just make them funny memes, etc. Plus, if there are enough of them, I'd think the emotional balance between rivals could even out.

IntronExon 9y ago

Hopefully courts can stay abreast of the trend, although I doubt it. The court of public opinion though?! I wonder if someone will commit murder with an angry mob, incited by something upsetting about the target, “caught on film.”

Zhenya 9y ago

There was a good radio lab episode about this: http://www.radiolab.org/story/breaking-news/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/breaking-news/

ardit33 9y ago

On the photo/picture department this is nothing new and it has existed for ages. http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/blog_image/soviet-censorship-naval-commissar-vanishes.jpg http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/imagecache...

asciimo 9y ago

Will evidence only be acceptable from devices that cryptographically sign their content close to the CCD (or whatever technology turns analog to digital)?

robocat 9y ago
Video recordings are modified (white balance, stabilisation, etc) then compressed so any signature at the raw CCD stream is useless (except for internal camera security).

JCharante 9y ago

> and probably audio too I've grown to completely distrust audio recording ever since I found out about VoCo from Adobe[0]. I wonder how long until there's an open source alternative. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3l4XLZ59iw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3l4XLZ59iw

6nf 9y ago

In the future envisioned back in the 90s manga Ghost in the Shell there's several discussions about this. For example, a random person posting video evidence of a crime is useless since it's impossible to determine if the video is real or a complete fabrication. Only video from widely trusted sources like major news outlets has any weight behind it.