Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Detecting deepfake videos: Saving our structures of trust

Digital watermarks.  Currently used for purposes of detecting violations of media copyright laws. 

OK, it's more complicated in the context of political personages:  but elected people capable of initiating horrendous acts like initiating nuclear war MUST insist on all media with them in has to contain a secure watermark, similar to a public key, that says the media was approved by them.  If it doesn't, or if it doesn't meet the watermark tests, they didn't say it, weren't there, or didn't do it.

News organizations will have a time with this approach, since they want to broadcast videos they generated of public figures -- but a similar method of including watermarks to identify the source could help inform consumers about the veracity of the information.  Maybe this could act as a way to counter the current mantra of "fake news" that is so present now.  An issue here is the possibility of some political figure saying something really stupid that (1) they don't personally watermark and (2) is extremely inflammatory in a military sense.  How to deal with this?  The news org adds its own watermark so others can determine it's news from a legit source but not necessarily policy from the people in the video.

Social media companies like F***book, G*ogle and the like will be required to use S/W to verify the veracity of videos, if they don't they get hit hard.  They ARE interested in the truth, right??? (not)

Other public figures will likely want to come on board so they can't be subject to specious media -- videos, audio, photos -- and that increases the chances that fakes will be quickly identified.  In an ideal world deep fakes will be confined to an advertisement tool that will quickly become passe'.

A recent PBS news broadcast mentioned various types of video-analysis approaches that can, at present, detect fakes.  But that approach will eventually prove to be useless -- the bad guys will figure out what the good guys are doing, and will improve their software to counter.  So there will be the equivalent of an arms race, and continuing controversy on what is real and what is not.

As technology continues to create problems, it is necessary to adapt while maintaining the precepts outlined in our constitution and amendments.  It's nuts to insist on a "pure" interpretation of those documents, given how technology has (and will) continue to change.  I could go into many other aspects of change that those old white guys (some slave owners among them) could not have dreamed of:  so we need to get over a purist approach of "if they didn't talk about it, we don't, either".  The basic concepts laid out are good, but in today's environment they need to expanded to cover current issues.  And that must be continued as humankind continues to evolve in a technological, social and genetic frame.

Now that the genie is out of the bottle, it is necessary to tattoo the genie so he/she/it can't get away with deceiving the more intelligent among us.

Unfortunately that seems to be the minority.

I currently have no digital watermark.  But in this age, maybe everyone will need one, like a digital fingerprint that no one other than myself can place in a document.  That's an interesting subject in itself, spanning personal freedom issues and ID theft problems. ...

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