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The era of verifiability-- when photographic and video evidence could plausibly be trusted-- is over. Photos have been dubious since photoshop, but still requi

by tbabb 9y ago

The era of verifiability-- when photographic and video evidence could plausibly be trusted-- is over. Photos have been dubious since photoshop, but still required expertise and artistry to use. Fake moving pictures required considerably more extensive expertise, lots of time, and usually specialized equipment. None of that is true anymore. We are back to a pre-industrial age of discourse, where rumor and hearsay and anecdote dominate again. Buckle up.

sh33mp 9y ago
Is this true though? Sure, for a casual observer, these new methods for generating videos appear convincing, but is that the right bar to judge "ability to fake evidence"? As far as I know, there have always been more sophisticated techniques and forensics to determine if an image is doctored, and likewise for video. I've not seen any research tackling fooling those methods yet, and I would bet that naive implementations of neural networks for generating videos would leave very obvious "neural network" artifacts. Of course, this is still new technology, so it will obviously get better at fooling our other tools over time too, but as of right now, I don't think the clamoring for "all evidence can now be faked" is all that justified.
- tjoff 9y ago
  Does that matter? On Internet the judgement is quick, long before the truth has revealed itself lives has been destroyed, jobs lost and reputation irreparably damaged.
  - zapita 9y ago
    But that was already true with words alone. Lives are already ruined every day by baseless claims with zero evidence, no video required. People who already research the source of words before forming an opinion will now research the source of videos, too. Those who are fooled by written and spoken lies will also be fooled by animated ones.
    - John_KZ 9y ago
      Words have almost no impact compared to visual imagery. Even if the words come from the mouth or pen of a respected individual, you can still doubt it, and usually people do. However, whether we like it or not, everything we see, at least on a subsconscious level, we perceive as real. My assumption would be that we have no evolutionary resistance to that. I don't know if there can be at all. People have been lying from our fist day of existence, but up until very recent times, there has never existed anything in nature that can create arbitrary images that look 100% real. It doesn't matter if it's fake or not, if you see a convincing version of your president fucking a pig, you'll never forget about it, and you'll always attach that image to him. Similarly, people often can't differentiate between an actors character and the real person. Whether it's Macron on his campaign film or Gandalf on lotr, you associate that person with your simulated experience. Animated lies are on a completely different tier of immersiveness and deception than speech or writing. You can't reduce this development to "just another lie". It's very close to the most convincing lies possible, and it's definitely very dangerous.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    In addition to this, despite all our cutting edge forensics, we still fumble the ball in the courts, based on sham forensics, and send innocent people to jail.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  I question becomes, does that matter? If everything needs to go through forensic experts, that works for courts. For media, who knows. Maybe it just becomes another way to challenge anything. There's always been a certain value to letting people see things themselves, and use their non-expert judgement directly, en masse. Think of that iconic image of a Vietnamese girl escaping napalm or (more recently) the drowned refugee child on that Turkish beach. These had value past the factual information. In any case, I think the Photoshop/stills case is a little heartening. We get an occasional false image, but overall it hasn't created some sort of massive truth-crisis. Other stuff did happen to truth, but Photoshop wasn't at the centre of it.
- pasbesoin 9y ago
  As a defendant, you have to pay forensics experts -- highly -- to research and create such evidence of manipulation. If they are willing to take on your case; they have their own reputations and motives. This all taking us further into an effectively tiered justice system. Can you afford to challenge the evidence, even if you think it's doctored? If you are a cause celeb -- or a good vehicle for a non-profit -- maybe someone else will. Otherwise...
gnbfulbvgjbvv 9y ago
No, this is an opportunity for new technology that adds additional data stream(s) to audio/video to ensure authenticity. Perhaps something like a one way hash of physical properties related to time/position and the rasterized data, in a way that cannot be faked.. or maybe a move away from rasterized data. Idk. Just brainstorming. I’m confident there will be an innovation in this space since there is clearly a very urgent need. In fact, this could be a start-up opportunity. Maybe there is relevant academic research already on which a startup idea could be built.
- dzhiurgis 9y ago
  Or a DRM chip implanted in every human. “Warning: the person in picture doesn’t have Widevine chip installed”.
  - gpvos 9y ago
    Indeed, something like that would be the only way to implement this, and I hope that everyone will agree that we should not go there. To a certain extent, the ability to lie is foundational to human civilization.
- gboudrias 9y ago
  A short-lived opportunity for sure. This is the very definition of an arms race, amd I can't see "real" winning out over fake. Anything that can be checked can be preempted, so "real" is always one step behind, as far as the present is concerned.
  - taneq 9y ago
    Historically, arms races have been pretty long-lived opportunities for weapons developers.
- yorwba 9y ago
  The difficult part is the "in a way that cannot be faked". If you can record it using a device you control, you can generate a fake made to appear as if it had been recorded with that device. If you do not fully control the recording device (say because it uses a secure enclave to generate signatures), you'll need some way to generate realistic inputs for fake data, but that might be as easy as photographing a high-resolution print. If the effort to document the truthfulness of data is much higher than for unverified recordings, the majority of the evidence anyone can come up with will be of the variety that is trivially to fake for someone determined.
sdrothrock 9y ago
> The era of verifiability-- when photographic and video evidence could plausibly be trusted-- is over. If ease of producing convincing fakes of X means that the era of X as convincing proof is over, then why are signatures and written documents still taken as proof? I think it just means that things will be scrutinized more carefully from now on, and that there will need to be a stronger document trail. > We are back to a pre-industrial age of discourse, where rumor and hearsay and anecdote dominate again. And I definitely don't think it's as grim as this.
- mattnewton 9y ago
  >why are signatures and written documents still taken as proof I always thought this was tradition / theatre at this point.
  - Slansitartop 9y ago
    On most important documents, they have to be notarized, which is a second level of authentication.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- annabellish 9y ago
  Signatures _aren't_ hard proof, they're absolutely contestable. Images and videos once were hard proof, but now are becoming contestable. I wonder how long it will be before we see journalism-focussed photography equipment automatically generating a secure cryptographic signature for each shot. A particularly fancy implementation could be signed by both the manufacturer and the photographer, offering two assertions the shot is valid and undoctored. Going back to a reputation system still isn't great, but it's a lot better than a "pre-industrial state of discourse"
- aninhumer 9y ago
  For any important document, the signing is almost always witnessed by someone else. My understanding is that the act of signing is primarily the legal act of accepting the document, not a security mechanism. The signature provides a quick reassurance that a document has been accepted, but if there were a real dispute, the witness could be asked to testify.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
justonepost 9y ago
Yeah, this is an interesting issue, but CCTVs are kind of invasive anyways privacy wise so maybe that's a good thing. They're still useful for realtime monitoring though, which is good for security.
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  With powerful enough machines, could you generate fake video in near-realtime? Not today, I guess...next year?
golergka 9y ago
FYI, russian propaganda machine routinely uses videos from videogames and movies as "documents" in TV broadcasts. [1] Despite the fact that reports debunking these "proofs" appear in the next day or so, there's no backlash or retractions. Hell, even russian defense ministry used insanely crude photoshopped images in it's reports, and still - no backlash, at all. [2] My point is, if you just want to brainwash the population, these new technologies are overkill. People aren't generally smart enough to require this sophistication from a fake. [1]: https://gizmodo.com/russian-state-tv-airs-video-game-clip-as-real-war-foota-1823322067 https://gizmodo.com/russian-state-tv-airs-video-game-clip-as... [2]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-falls-for-its-own-fake-satellite-imagery https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-falls-for-its-own-fake...
- bornonline1 9y ago
  On all sides, your side will always seem more innocent and correct despite evidence. We live in a very messy and dirty world.
Steve44 9y ago
Nikon used to provide "Image Authentication Software" which would authenticate images and show if they had been altered since taken by the camera. This was useful not only in news but also court cases. This, obviously, could not be used on tweaked published images but would work if you had access to the original frame. Most photojournalists work to a code whereby they don't amend the images at all, even tidying up, but that's only viable if they and their editors are trustworthy. The Nikon process was cracked a few years ago. This allowed edited images to pass the validation.
- murph-almighty 9y ago
  I'm actually really curious about this now. Couldn't we just hash the photo and compare the file to the signature to verify authenticity?
  - Steve44 9y ago
    Yes, but at what point do you hash it? The Nikon software proved it was unaltered since the shutter press, anything after that would rely on it not being touched until the hash was generated.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
On cursory inspection, deepfakes may pass muster. But on close observation it's still relatively easy to tell they are fake.
- lawlessone 9y ago
  They'll get better. And some people will believe even the most blatant photoshops because they want to. Just look at the pizzgate incident. Some fool entered a pizza restaurant and fired is his gun because he beleived people on the internet that claimed it had a secret pedophile den in its basement.
krapp 9y ago
It's not as if people were fact checking CNN and Fox or running forensic analysis to scrupulously determine the plausibility of the stories in their newsfeed to begin with. As far as society and its trust (or lack thereof) in digital media is concerned this won't change much. Most people believe what they want to believe, and doubt what they don't, trust the in group and doubt the out group.
x2398dh1 9y ago
Plausibly be trusted in what context? In a court of law? Or in the court of public opinion? I think the general hypothesis among mass communication studies doctorates is that as soon as a technology is created and adopted by a mass audience, there are immediate examples of humans immediately using it to manipulate public opinion in some way. For example, as soon as telegrams became a thing used to manipulate public opinion (like the Zimmerman telegram), fake telegrams became a thing. As soon as online video became a thing, fake online videos became a thing (like Lonleygirl15). Isn't what you are really saying is, "humans like to create fake things, and then a lot of people fall for those fake things." Right? Why should we buckle up for that? Isn't it already a foregone conclusion?
hinkley 9y ago
There are companies that make cameras that sign the images. I believe they are only used for legal proceedings now but I’m sure we could expand their use easily enough. Any shopping would destroy the signature but that might be a good thing for dragging us back to reality.

by tbabb 9y ago

sh33mp 9y ago

Is this true though? Sure, for a casual observer, these new methods for generating videos appear convincing, but is that the right bar to judge "ability to fake evidence"? As far as I know, there have always been more sophisticated techniques and forensics to determine if an image is doctored, and likewise for video. I've not seen any research tackling fooling those methods yet, and I would bet that naive implementations of neural networks for generating videos would leave very obvious "neural network" artifacts. Of course, this is still new technology, so it will obviously get better at fooling our other tools over time too, but as of right now, I don't think the clamoring for "all evidence can now be faked" is all that justified.

tjoff 9y ago
Does that matter? On Internet the judgement is quick, long before the truth has revealed itself lives has been destroyed, jobs lost and reputation irreparably damaged.
- zapita 9y ago
  But that was already true with words alone. Lives are already ruined every day by baseless claims with zero evidence, no video required. People who already research the source of words before forming an opinion will now research the source of videos, too. Those who are fooled by written and spoken lies will also be fooled by animated ones.
  - John_KZ 9y ago
    Words have almost no impact compared to visual imagery. Even if the words come from the mouth or pen of a respected individual, you can still doubt it, and usually people do. However, whether we like it or not, everything we see, at least on a subsconscious level, we perceive as real. My assumption would be that we have no evolutionary resistance to that. I don't know if there can be at all. People have been lying from our fist day of existence, but up until very recent times, there has never existed anything in nature that can create arbitrary images that look 100% real. It doesn't matter if it's fake or not, if you see a convincing version of your president fucking a pig, you'll never forget about it, and you'll always attach that image to him. Similarly, people often can't differentiate between an actors character and the real person. Whether it's Macron on his campaign film or Gandalf on lotr, you associate that person with your simulated experience. Animated lies are on a completely different tier of immersiveness and deception than speech or writing. You can't reduce this development to "just another lie". It's very close to the most convincing lies possible, and it's definitely very dangerous.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  In addition to this, despite all our cutting edge forensics, we still fumble the ball in the courts, based on sham forensics, and send innocent people to jail.
dalbasal 9y ago
I question becomes, does that matter? If everything needs to go through forensic experts, that works for courts. For media, who knows. Maybe it just becomes another way to challenge anything. There's always been a certain value to letting people see things themselves, and use their non-expert judgement directly, en masse. Think of that iconic image of a Vietnamese girl escaping napalm or (more recently) the drowned refugee child on that Turkish beach. These had value past the factual information. In any case, I think the Photoshop/stills case is a little heartening. We get an occasional false image, but overall it hasn't created some sort of massive truth-crisis. Other stuff did happen to truth, but Photoshop wasn't at the centre of it.
pasbesoin 9y ago
As a defendant, you have to pay forensics experts -- highly -- to research and create such evidence of manipulation. If they are willing to take on your case; they have their own reputations and motives. This all taking us further into an effectively tiered justice system. Can you afford to challenge the evidence, even if you think it's doctored? If you are a cause celeb -- or a good vehicle for a non-profit -- maybe someone else will. Otherwise...

gnbfulbvgjbvv 9y ago

No, this is an opportunity for new technology that adds additional data stream(s) to audio/video to ensure authenticity. Perhaps something like a one way hash of physical properties related to time/position and the rasterized data, in a way that cannot be faked.. or maybe a move away from rasterized data. Idk. Just brainstorming. I’m confident there will be an innovation in this space since there is clearly a very urgent need. In fact, this could be a start-up opportunity. Maybe there is relevant academic research already on which a startup idea could be built.

dzhiurgis 9y ago
Or a DRM chip implanted in every human. “Warning: the person in picture doesn’t have Widevine chip installed”.
- gpvos 9y ago
  Indeed, something like that would be the only way to implement this, and I hope that everyone will agree that we should not go there. To a certain extent, the ability to lie is foundational to human civilization.
gboudrias 9y ago
A short-lived opportunity for sure. This is the very definition of an arms race, amd I can't see "real" winning out over fake. Anything that can be checked can be preempted, so "real" is always one step behind, as far as the present is concerned.
- taneq 9y ago
  Historically, arms races have been pretty long-lived opportunities for weapons developers.
yorwba 9y ago
The difficult part is the "in a way that cannot be faked". If you can record it using a device you control, you can generate a fake made to appear as if it had been recorded with that device. If you do not fully control the recording device (say because it uses a secure enclave to generate signatures), you'll need some way to generate realistic inputs for fake data, but that might be as easy as photographing a high-resolution print. If the effort to document the truthfulness of data is much higher than for unverified recordings, the majority of the evidence anyone can come up with will be of the variety that is trivially to fake for someone determined.

sdrothrock 9y ago

> The era of verifiability-- when photographic and video evidence could plausibly be trusted-- is over. If ease of producing convincing fakes of X means that the era of X as convincing proof is over, then why are signatures and written documents still taken as proof? I think it just means that things will be scrutinized more carefully from now on, and that there will need to be a stronger document trail. > We are back to a pre-industrial age of discourse, where rumor and hearsay and anecdote dominate again. And I definitely don't think it's as grim as this.

mattnewton 9y ago
>why are signatures and written documents still taken as proof I always thought this was tradition / theatre at this point.
- Slansitartop 9y ago
  On most important documents, they have to be notarized, which is a second level of authentication.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
annabellish 9y ago
Signatures _aren't_ hard proof, they're absolutely contestable. Images and videos once were hard proof, but now are becoming contestable. I wonder how long it will be before we see journalism-focussed photography equipment automatically generating a secure cryptographic signature for each shot. A particularly fancy implementation could be signed by both the manufacturer and the photographer, offering two assertions the shot is valid and undoctored. Going back to a reputation system still isn't great, but it's a lot better than a "pre-industrial state of discourse"
aninhumer 9y ago
For any important document, the signing is almost always witnessed by someone else. My understanding is that the act of signing is primarily the legal act of accepting the document, not a security mechanism. The signature provides a quick reassurance that a document has been accepted, but if there were a real dispute, the witness could be asked to testify.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

justonepost 9y ago

Yeah, this is an interesting issue, but CCTVs are kind of invasive anyways privacy wise so maybe that's a good thing. They're still useful for realtime monitoring though, which is good for security.

Piskvorrr 9y ago
With powerful enough machines, could you generate fake video in near-realtime? Not today, I guess...next year?

golergka 9y ago

FYI, russian propaganda machine routinely uses videos from videogames and movies as "documents" in TV broadcasts. [1] Despite the fact that reports debunking these "proofs" appear in the next day or so, there's no backlash or retractions. Hell, even russian defense ministry used insanely crude photoshopped images in it's reports, and still - no backlash, at all. [2] My point is, if you just want to brainwash the population, these new technologies are overkill. People aren't generally smart enough to require this sophistication from a fake. [1]: https://gizmodo.com/russian-state-tv-airs-video-game-clip-as-real-war-foota-1823322067 https://gizmodo.com/russian-state-tv-airs-video-game-clip-as... [2]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-falls-for-its-own-fake-satellite-imagery https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-falls-for-its-own-fake...

bornonline1 9y ago
On all sides, your side will always seem more innocent and correct despite evidence. We live in a very messy and dirty world.

Steve44 9y ago

Nikon used to provide "Image Authentication Software" which would authenticate images and show if they had been altered since taken by the camera. This was useful not only in news but also court cases. This, obviously, could not be used on tweaked published images but would work if you had access to the original frame. Most photojournalists work to a code whereby they don't amend the images at all, even tidying up, but that's only viable if they and their editors are trustworthy. The Nikon process was cracked a few years ago. This allowed edited images to pass the validation.

murph-almighty 9y ago
I'm actually really curious about this now. Couldn't we just hash the photo and compare the file to the signature to verify authenticity?
- Steve44 9y ago
  Yes, but at what point do you hash it? The Nikon software proved it was unaltered since the shutter press, anything after that would rely on it not being touched until the hash was generated.

toomanybeersies 9y ago

On cursory inspection, deepfakes may pass muster. But on close observation it's still relatively easy to tell they are fake.

lawlessone 9y ago
They'll get better. And some people will believe even the most blatant photoshops because they want to. Just look at the pizzgate incident. Some fool entered a pizza restaurant and fired is his gun because he beleived people on the internet that claimed it had a secret pedophile den in its basement.

krapp 9y ago

It's not as if people were fact checking CNN and Fox or running forensic analysis to scrupulously determine the plausibility of the stories in their newsfeed to begin with. As far as society and its trust (or lack thereof) in digital media is concerned this won't change much. Most people believe what they want to believe, and doubt what they don't, trust the in group and doubt the out group.

x2398dh1 9y ago

Plausibly be trusted in what context? In a court of law? Or in the court of public opinion? I think the general hypothesis among mass communication studies doctorates is that as soon as a technology is created and adopted by a mass audience, there are immediate examples of humans immediately using it to manipulate public opinion in some way. For example, as soon as telegrams became a thing used to manipulate public opinion (like the Zimmerman telegram), fake telegrams became a thing. As soon as online video became a thing, fake online videos became a thing (like Lonleygirl15). Isn't what you are really saying is, "humans like to create fake things, and then a lot of people fall for those fake things." Right? Why should we buckle up for that? Isn't it already a foregone conclusion?

hinkley 9y ago

There are companies that make cameras that sign the images. I believe they are only used for legal proceedings now but I’m sure we could expand their use easily enough. Any shopping would destroy the signature but that might be a good thing for dragging us back to reality.