4 ms·

What are some ways to verify video integrity? 1) Multiple camera angles. A simultaneous left / front / right view of a person speaking would be much harder to

What are some ways to verify video integrity? 1) Multiple camera angles. A simultaneous left / front / right view of a person speaking would be much harder to fake. 2) Higher-resolution video and high-quality audio are harder to fake, although this might not be a problem for entities with sufficient resources and motivation. 3) Attribution to a real person. While this raises problems for people who want to remain anonymous due to very reasonable fears of retaliation, it also makes it harder to push fakes out to social media. Note many fake 'breaking news' videos are just stiched together old footage, no AI deepfake required. This has been noticeable across multiple platforms wrt Ukraine, for example: https://www.bbc.com/news/60867414 https://www.bbc.com/news/60867414

sillysaurusx 4y ago
Unfortunately, while those are good ideas, they’re also cat and mouse games. It’s a bit like saying that client side anti-cheat software makes it harder to cheat in videogames. It does, but you’re looking for an unbeatable test, which doesn’t exist. Nothing exemplified this problem more than the recent Twitter takeover. On tiktok, fake news was running rampant, and I saw it happen in real time. At one point someone said that a Twitter employee banned Elon on his way out, while showing a screenshot of the “eIon musk” fake account: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRx6G9mG/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRx6G9mG/ There were also actual deepfakes of Elon’s voice that fooled me. I wish I saved it, since it’s highly relevant to this thread. But it only became clear it was a fake when it started saying ridiculous things. They even had a video of Elon talking, and they didn’t have to bother syncing his lips with the audio. Viral clips just need a veneer of authenticity to short circuit our monkey brains. It wasn’t till I fell for that deepfake that I started realizing how much of a problem we might be facing. The next few presidential candidates might need to put out statements saying “X wasn’t true,” while the majority of people already believe X because they saw it happen live on tiktok.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Yeah, that's all true. This might lead to a revival of professional journalism and actual reporting, however - i.e. if a known reporter with a good track record writes, 'today this presidential candidate said X, and I heard it myself', then that might become a more reliable information source than any audio or video clip.
  - tomalpha 4y ago
    Ah, but what happens when a deepfake video of that professional journalist starts going round saying 'today this presidential candidate said X, and I heard it myself' that matches the previous deepfake? I guess the counter (which I think you're pointing out) to that is to publish text to a known-trusted website rather than a video, but I wonder how many folks who get their "news" from TikTok would read it.
    - ricardonunez 4y ago
      That’s when real verified accounts gain value but since now anybody can be verified, it is going to become a problem.
      - necovek 4y ago
        Uhm, I am not sure I get the relationship: if anyone can get verified, that's only a win. By "verified", I assume Twitter has verified that their identity on Twitter matches their real life identity, and I don't see a problem with anyone having an ability to claim that. What's wrong with Jane Random being verified that she _is_ Jane Random? If people are basing their trust not on someone's identity and history, but on their celebrity (blue mark so far), that's where the problem is.
        Hextinium 4y ago
        The problem arises where an account gets verified as one thing and then changes to become another, this happens all the time with trolls who can make/buy/extort verified accounts. They then spoof being the real person, and verification then means absolutely nothing cause they are functionally identical to a bypasser. By having verification be really hard to get, trolls have a lot harder time getting accounts and the problem is smaller in scope.
        3np 4y ago
        Allowing identity changes without requiring reverification to keep the "verified" status sounds like a problem with an obvious solution: Require revalidation, or remove the mark. Having initial validation accessible is not the issue here.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Ah, then I was got by that fake twitter ban joke and didn't realize it till now. In my defense, it's a cute little meaningless stunt that I'd like to imagine myself doing in similar circumstances, though upon a bit of thought it seems unlikely since it could cost you a severance that might be pretty valuable - there a plenty of strings attached to those to keep the severees in line.
- pjc50 4y ago
  There's been a phenomenon of verified accounts basically doing ""suicide by cop"": changing their display name and profile pic to match Elon Musk and then doing a bunch of joke tweets as him, which are great fun until they are caught and banned.
- glandium 4y ago
  I've seen Youtube shorts featuring deepfakes of Elon promoting some cryptocurrency scam a few weeks ago.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
The founder of Bellingcat discusses this in his recent book. He mentions things like "where/when did this happen", where were the people/things in the video at that time, which source did this arise from. Basically there's a whole web of context to any event, which is why the breaking news is the best place for this, but the long term viability is much harder. He also mentions some NYT tech for timestamping their videos as they record them and to detect manipulation.
- amelius 4y ago
  Can you say more about this tech? I'm curious now :)
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    https://www.newsprovenanceproject.com/ https://www.newsprovenanceproject.com/ Mentioned on page 206, "The Perils and Opportunities of Artificial Intelligence" of the book. https://c2pa.org/ https://c2pa.org/ seems to be the latest iteration of it. > What is the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA)? > The C2PA is a Joint Development Foundation project to collectively build an end-to-end open technical standard to provide publishers, creators, and consumers with opt-in, flexible ways to understand the authenticity and provenance of different types of media. C2PA opposes efforts to make content provenance measures mandatory.
samatman 4y ago
Video integrity is an idea we have to let go of. Audio is robustly fakeable at this point, video is coming up to the threshold fast. What we can have is attestation and reputation, then provenance. It starts with a container format that allows signatures of both the entire video with audio, audio only, and video only, along with reasonable segments (three seconds?) of each of these. Excerpts of any of these can be transcluded into another such container. The editor can transform it in any way, the resulting display doesn't have to match the particulars of the excerpt (captioning, noise filtering, color correction) but the excerpt is itself included, or at least the signature. It would be useful for some people to have cameras which do this at the moment of recording, along with GPS, cell location data, and so on, to get really bulletproof documentary footage. I don't want that built into my phone, necessarily. As a container format and ffmpeg style tool, this would support anonymous attestation which can be demonstrated by the keyholder at any future time. As a built-in subpoena-able feature of my phone or mirrorless camera? Hmm, probably don't want that. If it snitches proactively, not a chance in hell.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Even just a verifiable time stamp would be a big win.
  - lvkv 4y ago
    One way to get a verifiable time stamp would be to show knowledge of an unpredictable but well-known thing in the past (providing a lower bound), then to create the same thing yourself (providing an upper bound). I wrote about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33558566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33558566. Your comment in particular made me feel like it was worth posting!
- initplus 4y ago
  Building attestation into hardware sounds like a good idea in theory, but doesn't actually work. All it tells you is "this is what the camera saw", it doesn't actually tell you that what the camera saw was real. You can just point your camera at a high resolution screen playing a doctored video, and so sign whatever doctored content you like. Or take a video of a real faked scene with actors.
jchanimal 4y ago
Starling Lab focuses on data integrity for video evidence. It’s worth checking out their recent efforts here: https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2022/06/33571-starling-lab-and-hala-systems-file-cryptographic-submission-evidence-war-crimes https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2022/06/33571-starling-lab-and-hala...
mrshadowgoose 4y ago
It would require hardware changes, but we already have all the required cryptographic primitives to mostly mitigate these concerns. Trusted timestamping can attest that a given piece of media was not created after a given instance in time. Trusted hardware running trusted code, combined with remote attestation, can offer a high-degree of assurance that a given video clip is not a product of CGI/ML. Digital signatures by the entity responsible for a video clip's capture/creation mitigates the creation of media not sanctioned by that entity. Subjects in a particular piece of media could additionally apply their digital signatures to further increase trust in its authenticity. (This is effectively a cryptographically enforced version of your third point.) This isn't a silver bullet, and suffers all the pitfalls normally encountered in the implementation of cryptographic schemes.
- nullc 4y ago
  I can just project a video into a camera's lens...
  - pjc50 4y ago
    Fun fact: the original Apollo TV broadcast from the surface of the moon was "slow scan", with a different resolution and framerate to broadcast TV. The conversion process was to display it on a suitable slow-scan TV (long retention phosphor) and .. point a terrestrial camera at the TV.
  - mrshadowgoose 4y ago
    Sure, and if you eventually get caught, nobody would trust anything that you've digitally signed.
    - nullc 4y ago
      You can say that just as well about a world without the camera hocus pocus part.
      - mrshadowgoose 4y ago
pfoof 4y ago
>Multiple camera angles. A simultaneous left / front / right view of a person speaking With enough training data and modified network this can also be done.
atleta 4y ago
Cryptography. Honestly, all sources (news outlets, self publishing celebrities, etc.) should start cryptographically signing their content one way or another. Including video and audio. (I haven't looked up whether there are existing, easy to use/practical schemes for this, but I guess there are and no need to reinvent the wheel. Even if the actual tools are missing.)
lvkv 4y ago
Your comment inspired me to post a blog post on this very topic. You can find it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33558566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33558566

sillysaurusx 4y ago

Unfortunately, while those are good ideas, they’re also cat and mouse games. It’s a bit like saying that client side anti-cheat software makes it harder to cheat in videogames. It does, but you’re looking for an unbeatable test, which doesn’t exist. Nothing exemplified this problem more than the recent Twitter takeover. On tiktok, fake news was running rampant, and I saw it happen in real time. At one point someone said that a Twitter employee banned Elon on his way out, while showing a screenshot of the “eIon musk” fake account: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRx6G9mG/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRx6G9mG/ There were also actual deepfakes of Elon’s voice that fooled me. I wish I saved it, since it’s highly relevant to this thread. But it only became clear it was a fake when it started saying ridiculous things. They even had a video of Elon talking, and they didn’t have to bother syncing his lips with the audio. Viral clips just need a veneer of authenticity to short circuit our monkey brains. It wasn’t till I fell for that deepfake that I started realizing how much of a problem we might be facing. The next few presidential candidates might need to put out statements saying “X wasn’t true,” while the majority of people already believe X because they saw it happen live on tiktok.

photochemsyn 4y ago
Yeah, that's all true. This might lead to a revival of professional journalism and actual reporting, however - i.e. if a known reporter with a good track record writes, 'today this presidential candidate said X, and I heard it myself', then that might become a more reliable information source than any audio or video clip.
- tomalpha 4y ago
  Ah, but what happens when a deepfake video of that professional journalist starts going round saying 'today this presidential candidate said X, and I heard it myself' that matches the previous deepfake? I guess the counter (which I think you're pointing out) to that is to publish text to a known-trusted website rather than a video, but I wonder how many folks who get their "news" from TikTok would read it.
  - ricardonunez 4y ago
    That’s when real verified accounts gain value but since now anybody can be verified, it is going to become a problem.
    - necovek 4y ago
      Uhm, I am not sure I get the relationship: if anyone can get verified, that's only a win. By "verified", I assume Twitter has verified that their identity on Twitter matches their real life identity, and I don't see a problem with anyone having an ability to claim that. What's wrong with Jane Random being verified that she _is_ Jane Random? If people are basing their trust not on someone's identity and history, but on their celebrity (blue mark so far), that's where the problem is.
      - Hextinium 4y ago
        The problem arises where an account gets verified as one thing and then changes to become another, this happens all the time with trolls who can make/buy/extort verified accounts. They then spoof being the real person, and verification then means absolutely nothing cause they are functionally identical to a bypasser. By having verification be really hard to get, trolls have a lot harder time getting accounts and the problem is smaller in scope.
        3np 4y ago
        Allowing identity changes without requiring reverification to keep the "verified" status sounds like a problem with an obvious solution: Require revalidation, or remove the mark. Having initial validation accessible is not the issue here.
hotpotamus 4y ago
Ah, then I was got by that fake twitter ban joke and didn't realize it till now. In my defense, it's a cute little meaningless stunt that I'd like to imagine myself doing in similar circumstances, though upon a bit of thought it seems unlikely since it could cost you a severance that might be pretty valuable - there a plenty of strings attached to those to keep the severees in line.
pjc50 4y ago
There's been a phenomenon of verified accounts basically doing ""suicide by cop"": changing their display name and profile pic to match Elon Musk and then doing a bunch of joke tweets as him, which are great fun until they are caught and banned.
glandium 4y ago
I've seen Youtube shorts featuring deepfakes of Elon promoting some cryptocurrency scam a few weeks ago.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

The founder of Bellingcat discusses this in his recent book. He mentions things like "where/when did this happen", where were the people/things in the video at that time, which source did this arise from. Basically there's a whole web of context to any event, which is why the breaking news is the best place for this, but the long term viability is much harder. He also mentions some NYT tech for timestamping their videos as they record them and to detect manipulation.

amelius 4y ago
Can you say more about this tech? I'm curious now :)
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  https://www.newsprovenanceproject.com/ https://www.newsprovenanceproject.com/ Mentioned on page 206, "The Perils and Opportunities of Artificial Intelligence" of the book. https://c2pa.org/ https://c2pa.org/ seems to be the latest iteration of it. > What is the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA)? > The C2PA is a Joint Development Foundation project to collectively build an end-to-end open technical standard to provide publishers, creators, and consumers with opt-in, flexible ways to understand the authenticity and provenance of different types of media. C2PA opposes efforts to make content provenance measures mandatory.

samatman 4y ago

Video integrity is an idea we have to let go of. Audio is robustly fakeable at this point, video is coming up to the threshold fast. What we can have is attestation and reputation, then provenance. It starts with a container format that allows signatures of both the entire video with audio, audio only, and video only, along with reasonable segments (three seconds?) of each of these. Excerpts of any of these can be transcluded into another such container. The editor can transform it in any way, the resulting display doesn't have to match the particulars of the excerpt (captioning, noise filtering, color correction) but the excerpt is itself included, or at least the signature. It would be useful for some people to have cameras which do this at the moment of recording, along with GPS, cell location data, and so on, to get really bulletproof documentary footage. I don't want that built into my phone, necessarily. As a container format and ffmpeg style tool, this would support anonymous attestation which can be demonstrated by the keyholder at any future time. As a built-in subpoena-able feature of my phone or mirrorless camera? Hmm, probably don't want that. If it snitches proactively, not a chance in hell.

HPsquared 4y ago
Even just a verifiable time stamp would be a big win.
- lvkv 4y ago
  One way to get a verifiable time stamp would be to show knowledge of an unpredictable but well-known thing in the past (providing a lower bound), then to create the same thing yourself (providing an upper bound). I wrote about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33558566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33558566. Your comment in particular made me feel like it was worth posting!
initplus 4y ago
Building attestation into hardware sounds like a good idea in theory, but doesn't actually work. All it tells you is "this is what the camera saw", it doesn't actually tell you that what the camera saw was real. You can just point your camera at a high resolution screen playing a doctored video, and so sign whatever doctored content you like. Or take a video of a real faked scene with actors.

jchanimal 4y ago

Starling Lab focuses on data integrity for video evidence. It’s worth checking out their recent efforts here: https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2022/06/33571-starling-lab-and-hala-systems-file-cryptographic-submission-evidence-war-crimes https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2022/06/33571-starling-lab-and-hala...

mrshadowgoose 4y ago

It would require hardware changes, but we already have all the required cryptographic primitives to mostly mitigate these concerns. Trusted timestamping can attest that a given piece of media was not created after a given instance in time. Trusted hardware running trusted code, combined with remote attestation, can offer a high-degree of assurance that a given video clip is not a product of CGI/ML. Digital signatures by the entity responsible for a video clip's capture/creation mitigates the creation of media not sanctioned by that entity. Subjects in a particular piece of media could additionally apply their digital signatures to further increase trust in its authenticity. (This is effectively a cryptographically enforced version of your third point.) This isn't a silver bullet, and suffers all the pitfalls normally encountered in the implementation of cryptographic schemes.

nullc 4y ago
I can just project a video into a camera's lens...
- pjc50 4y ago
  Fun fact: the original Apollo TV broadcast from the surface of the moon was "slow scan", with a different resolution and framerate to broadcast TV. The conversion process was to display it on a suitable slow-scan TV (long retention phosphor) and .. point a terrestrial camera at the TV.
- mrshadowgoose 4y ago
  Sure, and if you eventually get caught, nobody would trust anything that you've digitally signed.
  - nullc 4y ago
    You can say that just as well about a world without the camera hocus pocus part.
    - mrshadowgoose 4y ago

pfoof 4y ago

>Multiple camera angles. A simultaneous left / front / right view of a person speaking With enough training data and modified network this can also be done.

atleta 4y ago

Cryptography. Honestly, all sources (news outlets, self publishing celebrities, etc.) should start cryptographically signing their content one way or another. Including video and audio. (I haven't looked up whether there are existing, easy to use/practical schemes for this, but I guess there are and no need to reinvent the wheel. Even if the actual tools are missing.)

lvkv 4y ago

Your comment inspired me to post a blog post on this very topic. You can find it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33558566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33558566