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Generally, signing digital files is a great way to have some strong form of authenticity. There's a lot of unsigned content on the internet which makes imperson

Generally, signing digital files is a great way to have some strong form of authenticity. There's a lot of unsigned content on the internet which makes impersonating people quite easy. We have fake news, fake comments, fake reviews, propaganda departments from intelligence agencies from hostile countries meddling with elections and public affairs, companies and lobby organizations spreading FUD, marketing companies specializing in bending public opinion, etc. There's a lot of good reason to start insisting of people using digital signatures for everything they produce. Even without considering AI. People obsess about what AIs can do here. But you might just make the point that at some point it starts rivaling what a determined hostile person could do manually right now. Sure, it adds scale and convenience for those with such intentions; which makes the problem more urgent than it already was. But it was pretty bad before that. Putin did not use AI a few years ago. He simply just put some teams of writers to work to flood the internet with content intended to bend Elections this way or that way or erode public confidence. Web of trust has been tried before of course but IMHO it deserves another chance. The current state is not sustainable when we might get AI generated content dwarfing the amount of genuine content very soon.

Retr0id 3y ago
I do think there's something useful here. It's like having photographers PGP sign all their images, but with an actually workable UX, and with keys (presumably) stored in a secure enclave within the camera body. This is good. I just think that marketing teams are inevitably going to oversell it. The moment someone posts an obviously fake image to social media, with all checks from this tech giving the green light, it will destroy the public's confidence in it. The actual usefulness of the tech is nuanced, and it will be a struggle to convey it meaningfully (to technical and non-technical audiences alike)
loceng 3y ago
What if what was recorded or photographed, you don't want your identity associated with it due to its contents - e.g. whistleblowing classified government/state documents exposing horrific crimes against humanity? If no digital signature then it's automatically fake? It doesn't seem to matter at the moment though anyhow, the corrupt establishment so far seems to be a good enough job suppressing what they don't want out and maintaining control.
- Kon-Peki 3y ago
  It’s identifying the camera, not the photographer. Of course there’s going to be metadata that could tie a camera to an owner, and some organizations may have checkin/checkout procedures that tie the camera to a specific person that is supposed to be in possession of it. So… This camera owned by the New York Times, who only keeps track of the fact that an employee has a camera from the pool, not which camera in the pool. And if you’re not from some news organization, then I guess you’re in the burner camera category?

Retr0id 3y ago

I do think there's something useful here. It's like having photographers PGP sign all their images, but with an actually workable UX, and with keys (presumably) stored in a secure enclave within the camera body. This is good. I just think that marketing teams are inevitably going to oversell it. The moment someone posts an obviously fake image to social media, with all checks from this tech giving the green light, it will destroy the public's confidence in it. The actual usefulness of the tech is nuanced, and it will be a struggle to convey it meaningfully (to technical and non-technical audiences alike)

loceng 3y ago

What if what was recorded or photographed, you don't want your identity associated with it due to its contents - e.g. whistleblowing classified government/state documents exposing horrific crimes against humanity? If no digital signature then it's automatically fake? It doesn't seem to matter at the moment though anyhow, the corrupt establishment so far seems to be a good enough job suppressing what they don't want out and maintaining control.

Kon-Peki 3y ago
It’s identifying the camera, not the photographer. Of course there’s going to be metadata that could tie a camera to an owner, and some organizations may have checkin/checkout procedures that tie the camera to a specific person that is supposed to be in possession of it. So… This camera owned by the New York Times, who only keeps track of the fact that an employee has a camera from the pool, not which camera in the pool. And if you’re not from some news organization, then I guess you’re in the burner camera category?