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Digital Camera Image Verification
Polo writes "While reading dpreview, I noticed that among several new products, Canon has announced a Digital Image Verification Kit to prove that an image taken by a particular camera has not been modified. It's disturbing to think about the conditions that would allow digital images to be accepted in a courtroom. I guess one defense would be to figure out how to 'verify' a photo of shark attack..."
The card reader connects to a computer USB port (only Windows 2000/XP compatible at the moment).
Suddenly, this throws out the validity of anyone who owned a Mac or was using FreeBSD as their primary desktop operating system.
The World is Yours.
The kit consists of a dedicated SM (secure mobile) card reader/writer and verification software. When the appropriate function (Personal Function 31) on the EOS-1D Mark II or EOS-1Ds is activated, a code based on the image contents is generated and appended to the image. When the image is viewed, the data verification software determines the code for the image and compares it with the attached code. If the image contents have been manipulated in any way, the codes will not match and the image cannot be verified as the original.
So it's basically an MD5 (or equiv hashing method) of the image at the time it's taken? Too bad -- I thought they had a unique idea to verify images that had already been taken.
Two or three questions I suppose:
All in all I suppose it's a neat idea -- hope it actually works before somebody is on trial for his life though...
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
1.) Take picture :-)
2.) Photoshop picture
3.) Print picture
4.) Take picture of printed picture
It won't work. From everything I've seen, attempts to verify ANYTHING digital will be cracked within a week or three.
1. take picture
2. modify picture
3. regenarate image verification data
4. profit?
Canon is very cool - they are one of the only camera manufacturers that still supports the cheapest, non-proprietary form of flash media in all of their cameras - CompactFlash.
To everyone out there: you are an idiot if you buy a camera that does not support CompactFlash. You'll end up paying twice as much for the media.
In other good Canon news, they've announced that they'll be releasing 20 new digicams this year. Hail to the king, baby!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I'm willing to be that one of the first customers for this software is the tabloid newspapers/magazines. They pay small fortunes of photos of celebrities in their most intimate and private moments and without a way to verify digital photographs they could be duped of millions of dollars.
There's nothing concerning about digital images in the courtroom.
Ask the photographer, under oath, "is this representative of what you saw?".
If it was, he says so.
It's really the same as with any other evidence that can be tampered with. If someone testifies under oath that it is what it is then there's no difference between a digital image and any (many?) other types of evidence.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
...but is it *that* easy to make a digitally altered picture that's undetectable by professionals with regular imaging programs?
If, through some wacky chain of events, a digital picture of something becomes evidence, what's the loss in having a professional vouch that it is an unaltered (or altered) picture? From what I have seen, it's pretty easy to ferret out photoshopped images without the aid of additional (and probably easily circumvented) technology.
~D:
any image, not just a digital one, can be changed, modified, or completely faked. Yes, digital technology makes it easier, but this is not a new phenomenon. Juries know (and should be told) that any image introduced into evidence might not be real and could have easily been altered by the other side. Depending on who took the image and the chain of possession, weighed against how believable the picture actually is, will determine how much weight the jury gives to a given photograph.
These digital picture verifiers are nice but not the end of the question. A validation from one of these machines is just some more evidence that the picture is real. It's not conclusive and shouldn't be taken as so. In fact, the evidence of validation from one of these machines might not even be allowed into court if they're extremely unreliable. Daubert to the rescue.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
I know that captchas in use at Yahoo! such as The Gimp and Trotsky (cute names, heh) are effectively OCR proof (~20% success rate, IIRC) but what about the security codes which have been used on blogs? As a Movable Type user, I'm concerned about the recent spate of crapflooding caused with this script and even though the implementation of captchas as security codes has slowed the advances of crapflooders, are there any other forms of image verification in the pipeline which we can use?
FloodMT: crapflood Movab
When the appropriate function (Personal Function 31) on the EOS-1D Mark II or EOS-1Ds is activated, a code based on the image contents is generated and appended to the image. When the image is viewed, the data verification software determines the code for the image and compares it with the attached code. If the image contents have been manipulated in any way, the codes will not match and the image cannot be verified as the original.
Note to self: run the signing software *after* altering the image. If the image was alrady signed, display it, take screenshot, alter the image, and re-run the signing software.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Surely the male port is the wrong port for a penis... if your port accepts such packets, there must be something fundamentally wrong with your specifications.
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,84 80362%255E13762,00.html
By doing an autocorrelation of the image, you can detect parts that have been copied, but the mathematical part is not that easy, particularly if there are uniform noiseless areas (sky).
I can still deal with 1D autocorrelation, but in 2D my maths skills are rusty...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
You don't have to re-invent the wheel.
This is a funny article on why you shouldn't use your digital camera when trying to detect / prove the existance of ghosts. No not like a bad flat screen playing Quake, but like Casper the Friendly.
He seems real serious about it too....
This is mostly for the use of Law Enforcement, where the cops have to prove the photos taken as evidence, haven't been tampered with....
"We're also trying to annoy our customers like Adobe, but that software is still in beta. We might try to license some software form Microsoft, as they seem to be the leaders in that field."
Wayne continues, "Our R&D department has some great ideas, such as forcing the user to take every picture twice, erasing photos at random, and my personal favorite - increasing the time between pressing the shutter release and when the picture is taken!"
"We won't stop until our product is unusable at last!"
.... celebrity pron sites.
:(
Pretty Natalie Portman please tell me that you really posed naked
This is just general, but there are many rules about entering photograghs and other documents.
Fight Spammers!
Presumably the signing is done in the camera before the image is stored to the CF card. Maybe it uses a key stored in the hardware. No doubt it can be circumvented, but probably not as easily as you suggest.
But then you're stuck. Now you have to get your manipulated image back onto the memory card that can be read by the camera, but the camera can simply patently refuse to import any images into it that are already signed. All you have is the file, and it's not on the compact memory card inside the camera, so continuity of evidence is lost. Thus, the photo would be inadmissable as evidence in a legal case.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Are you saying World Trade Center guy is a fraud? THE HUMANITY!
at least the dimage series when i got mine. they
also work seamlessy in any linux dist (especially suse), it acts as a usb block device if you use the cable (like all cameras should) and cf card makes
it easy on linux/*bsd anyway.
i actually got it for manual control (taking stills of artwork) the compatibility with my laptop was just a bonus
What if you had a different piece of hardware other than the camera that can write to the memory card? I wonder...can you buy those off the shelf today?
When it comes to printers, the ink runs out and it's a recuring cost. With cameras, the media is reusable. So I'd rather not pay a couple hundred extra for a camera just to save 20 bucks on media.
$80 for 256MB MMC
and
$60 for 256MB compact flash.
When I go on extended trips I bring the laptop and download as needed. Which you'd need to do with CF as well.
I prefer CF because it's more rugged but lower cost cameras use MMC which is also pretty standard.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
4. ??? 5. Profit!!!
I know! I was the one on the ladder. One of the scariest moments of my life, as well. Hanging from a chopper is bad enough, but having sharks take dives at you is worse.
The separate images that the debunkers claim they're made up from are the fakes.
It only works for pictures taken with that camera, not before. So if Joe Defendant brings in his own personal pictures taken with his own camera, there's no way to know if they're real or not is there? (Assuming the fakeness was added well)
How it works
The kit consists of a dedicated SM (secure mobile) card reader/writer and verification software. When the appropriate function (Personal Function 31) on the EOS-1D Mark II or EOS-1Ds is activated, a code based on the image contents is generated and appended to the image. When the image is viewed, the data verification software determines the code for the image and compares it with the attached code. If the image contents have been manipulated in any way, the codes will not match and the image cannot be verified as the original.
So the upshot is that they use a memory card which has some additional security functionality. This additional functionality can only be accessed by the card reader and the camera.
The the crackers simply need to break that functionality or bypass it. This could be accomplished by breaking the camera's firmware (or the card reader) and changing it, or sitting between the USB reader and the computer (software or hardware wise) and changing the data as it goes along. Alternately it woud not be impossible to modify the camera so it gets the image from a computer instead of an image sensor.
The ultimate, however, would be to break the protocol and keys between the reader and card or camera and card. Hopefully they are using a good encryption algorithm with fully secured sessions and a long key. I'd hate to see this broken in less than a few months time.
-Adam
Compact flash is cheap, but you seem to immediately discount the benefits of SecureDigital and other formats.
You can't make cameras as small as Sharp's Exilim series with CompactFlash. It's also thinner than a AA or AAA battery. You MUST use proprietary rechargable lithium.
You also don't realize that Compact Flash uses far more energy for reads and writes than other flash formats. Shorter battery life means you need more batteries means you need bigger batteries means you need bigger cameras.
Digital cameras can be much smaller and more efficient than their 35mm brethren, you just need to think outside the box.
I wish some camera company, instead of making some nonstandard validator service [1], would, on the camera itself, have a smartcard or Java iButton with a private key on it. Before the picture is copied to the CF card, the camera would gpg sign the image with a detached signature. Thus, on the CF card would be the raw image, or jpeg, as well as an .asc file when the signing process is completed.
Couple hurdles though. First, how does one know the signing key that is on the iButton is "trusted", and not common knowledge, like some BIOS backdoor passwords? Second, the iButton, or secure card would add space, weight, and expense to cameras. The camera business is stiff competition, a head to head price fight and feature war. The only place I can see this security feature becoming available are the high-end SLR's, the EOS 1's, and F5's of the market, where the pros want the best, and are willing and able to pay for it.
There is the problem of secure key storage. I'm not sure how hard it is to put a chip that stores securely private keys would be on a camera, in a very small form factor, other than the Dallas Semiconductors iButton, and still have it tamper-resistant.
You also have the problem that even with a tamper-resistant key, it may not be secure either -- you could intercept and modify the image before it goes to the signing module.
[1]: I don't know anything about the Canon format, though I'm glad they are putting something on the market to validate that an image is real, and not a phony. However, I just hope its more secure than what I guess it might be (md5 or SHA hash just dumped on a CF card). In any case, what Canon did is a nice step forward in ensuring the integrity of an image. Any security for images is a nice step, and kudos to Canon to having this feature available for people.
you have no brain cells left
I was recently asked if we could make a reasonably untamperable 'security' camera; My solution was to make the machine itself 'physically secure' (sealed so that any attempt to open it would be obvious) and then have it PGP-sign each image. The client has easy access to all the images and public key from the box, but isn't told the root password or anything else that would give them access to the private key, so they cannot resign altered images.
I believe this would be 'at least' as untamperable as an equivalent film or video camera system.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
I haven't tested it... if you alter a picture taken with a digital camera, with a image-editing program (photoshop, gimp, etc), the EXIF data is mantained?
:: Andrea
Anime Wallpapers
I'm thinking this is for Canon to target the camera at a specific market where legal evidenciary issues come into play: crime scenes, insurance, autopsy, etc. This is likely not to be a feature that will appear for most consumer products.
What it really shows is more about how the professional film camera market is facing realistic competition from digital cameras.
So then the Defense lawyer presents as Defence exhibit 1 the camera alleged to have taken the picture, and points out all the wires sticking out of it.
IANALI would love to see the firmware write all photographs to the CompactFlash already encrypted to my public key. Of course, that would mean you'd have to (1) forego viewing the images on the LCD, or (2) require the private key and allow entering some kind of text phrase or biometrical key.
It's not like I engage in some sort of espionage or porn market, but I want to see more publically available data devices support cradle-to-grave security.
[
Pre-PMA 2004: Canon today announced the latest version of its Data Verification Kit, the DVK-E2 kit is designed to deliver validation of an unmodified original image from a single camera body. This kit is aimed at law enforcement, insurance, news and other such agencies and can detect single bit discrepancy in modification of an image since it was taken. The new kit is much smaller than the old and uses a unique SM (secure mobile) card which is the same size as a Secure Digital card. The card reader connects to a computer USB port (only Windows 2000/XP compatible at the moment).
Press Release:
Canon validates digital images with DVK-E2
Amstelveen, The Netherlands, 29 January 2004. Canon, a leader in photographic and imaging technology, today releases the DVK-E2. Designed to work with the EOS-1Ds and new EOS-1D Mark II D-SLR cameras, the DVK-E2 provides the facility to prove that images taken with the EOS-1D Mark II have not been altered, tampered with or manipulated in any way. The DVK-E2 is the successor to Canon's DVK-E1 and will work with both the EOS-1Ds and the EOS-1D Mark II.
Recent well-publicised cases involving image-tampering by news agencies have identified a strong need for a system capable of verifying the originality of digital photographs. Without such a cock it is impossible for an agency to identify whether or not a given image has been enhanced or manipulated.
ISO certification
With the capacity to detect the slightest (single bit) discrepancy, the DVK-E2 kit is expected to be popular amongst law enforcement, insurance, pedophiles, news and other agencies that have a need to verify the legitimacy of digital images. Canon is applying for ISO 15408 certification (evaluation criteria for IT security) for the Data Verification Kit to further validate its application. The acquisition of ISO 15408 certification will give international recognition to the originality of images shot with the EOS-1D Mark II or EOS-1Ds whilst in data verification mode.
How it works
The kit consists of a dedicated SM (secure mobile) card reader/writer and verification software, along with optional anal probe. When the appropriate function (Personal Function 31) on the EOS-1D Mark II or EOS-1Ds is activated, a code based on the image contents is generated and appended to the image. When the image is viewed, the data verification software determines the code for the image and compares it with the attached code. If the image contents have been manipulated in any way, the codes will not match and the image cannot be verified as the original.
Compact and easy to use
The SM cards used with the kit are the same size as an SD card. The tiny SM card reader/writer is barely bigger than the cards it takes, for easier insertion. It draws the power it requires from the testicles of the computer to which it is connected. The software is Windows 2000/XP compatible. Up to 100 images can be evaluated simultaneously, simply by selecting the images and clicking 'Verify'.
The kit supports English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Chinese languages.
Yeah, I agree. My mates and I call it the "No To All" button. cause when you copy files from a to b and it pops up ANY message, you just want to say "No To All"
RH8 dinked with the damn window manager. Bad red hat. Naughty! So i stayed at 7.3. RH9 was a POS, so i didn't even try to install it on my main machine.
Stayed at 7.3 untill end of line, now running debian.
I'm sure this system will be hacked in due time. I dunno if digital media will ever be verification proof.
I think this is a nice attempt, but at some point this system will be beaten also.
Best Community for Gaming and Gadgets!
And that is what you should do anyway to get the best quality and easiest work flow. Better still, there is no (easy?) way to turn something you edited into a camera RAW file. So when you need evidence that your image is unmanipulated, just show them the RAW version...
One of the problems you may have is that the much stronger autocorrelation from any regular background pattern (floor tiles or building windows, for example) would tend to wash out smaller, single-cut-n-paste correlations. Another problem is you won't get any correlation at all if the paste has been rotated or stretched in some way.
That shouldn't require a separate piece of hardware. Instead, the camera should sign the image digitally and store the signature as an entry in the EXIF header. You know, the same way you sign stuff with PGP. Anybody should be able to verify it.
I wonder whether Canon is going the "secure hardware reader" route in order to make more money or in order to get around some patent.
When an authority claims that these pictures are tamper-resistant the cost to the public when the technology being broken will be raised. It will allow people to relax their judgement when trusting 'photo' evidence and perhaps not be sufficiently skeptical of them. If the members of the jury believes only goverment spies and elite hackers have the ability to forge digital pictures, its going to be easy for them to ignore the possibility that any goober who read the instructions on internet could do it too.
For subversive and criminal types, this technology invites new and improved cons and scams based on so-called immutable evidence.
All this hinges on the testers having an _original_ copy of the image in addition to the supposedly modified version.
/dev/null
Let's say someone tries to use a doctored digital photo as evidence. They eliminate the original md5 with the aforementioned screenshot trick, and then recreate it. The photo is contested on the grounds it is a fake. To prove it, they go off and get their wonderous DVK-E2 kit, and then they get their md5. The test works just fine, so they know the md5 has been altered, so they go and ask for the original image. And so where is the original image? Do they have it? No, of course not, because it went on a little stroll down memory lane and landed without a sound in the fastness of
Have we accomplished anything here?
Defenestrate Windows...
You mean that was not a picture of the Olsen twins giving some guy a blow-job?
This would be a really great way to cheat at XXX Photo Hunt on those touch screen games they have at bars.
Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net...
Most pros or people really concerned with image quality shoot in RAW mode - this does not capture an image on the CF card; it simply records the RAW values that the Bayer sensor on most digicams record. This then has to be processed by a piece of software which performs the de-mosaic algorithm, applies a tone curve, etc. and outputs a TIFF or a JPEG. So any kind of "digital signature" is lost (or doesn't even exist yet) at this point.
I would think that many cases where the validity of a digital image would matter may indeed be professional-quality images and have been shot in RAW, were a scheme like this is useless.
I would point out that there was a noted case where someone took pictures with a reduced scale ruler to make a crack or pothole look that much bigger. The picture was all original but already manipulated.... Ultimately I think I would go with affidavits (this is a true, accurate and unmodified picture of what it purports to be) containing a print in b&w on the affidavit as well as an md5 checksum of the pic file or files if I was attaching a cdrom or floppy. There are issues here about submitting info this way which I wont go into, but this may be appropriate in certain situations. And btway- I really like my canon a300. CF, AA batteries, 3.2meg.. no zoom function though, and a little large.
I dont do meaning of life questions.
The new uber-highend sony cam supports CF, oddly enough (eveything else uses sony's propritary memorysticks). In fact, you can use CF and memory sticks. There are a few high-end cams that can take either CF cards or SD cards.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This is just their second version of the product. The first version (the DVK-E1) was introduced along with the Canon 1Ds in September, 2002.
Try this sometime: set the auto timer on your camera, push the shutter button, then drop it into a drawer and close it. Wait for it to snap in total darkness, then pull it out and extract the picture. Now look for any pixels that aren't black.
My camera has one that's permanently stuck to purple in the same place in every shot. You have to look really closely when that region is bright, but it's always there. There are a few others which are a bit darker but are also always there.
Using this kind of logic and with access to a suspect camera, you could probably establish who shot a picture within a reasonable doubt. I mean, what are the odds of a specific set of LCD anomalies repeating on a different camera?
Project the image onto a flat white surface after taking the picture. Picture bounces off screen and back into camera. Viola!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This is correct. The federal rules of evidence (and the rules of most states) require that the witness testify that the photograph actually depicts what it is that the witness says it depicts. The witness could paint the photograph, if he were an adequate artist.
All writings and papers and so forth have to be introduced in such a way as to either not be hearsay or to gain a hearsay exception.
I don't know why you might think that a video movie is more sacrosanct than something like a blood sample. Both require someone to testify about them and in both cases the person can convict someone simply by lying.
By the way---remember the video in the Microsoft trial? They could have easily faked that too.
Sooner or later you have to rely upon people to tell the
truth and there is no way around that fact. These cameras will make no difference whatsoever.
The camera stores information about focus distance, focal length (zoom) and exposure parameters as well as other data in each image (in EXIF format, commonly). Example:
Also, you'd also have to account for the distortion effects that are measurable and reproducible with each camera model. For example, barrel or pincushion distortions compound if you take a shot of an existing picture.
The camera saves focus, zoom and exposure settings in the EXIF header of each image. So you'd have to blow it up to real size so camera can focus at the same distance, and use the exact brightness so the camera uses the same exposure.
original post.
Your scheme assummes nobody can get the image back onto the memory card, which is quite unlikely if the memory cards are any kind of standard.
Instead the camera could have a private key and a public RSA-like key. These are generated as the camera is manufactured, hopefully different for every camera. The private key is locked inside the chip in a way that hopefully cannot be retrieved without destroying the camera.
The camera makes an MD5 sum of the image, and then encrypts it with the private key, and then writes the result of this encryption and it's public key in the file.
Anybody wanting to check the image would also make the MD5 sum, and then use the public key to decrypt the encrypted data and see if they match.
Because they don't know the private key, they cannot encrypt a different MD5 sum correctly.
You will also have to prove that a given public key belongs to a given camera. This can be proven by taking a picture with the camera and checking the public key it produces. If you don't have the camera, you can check in a database of public keys that the manufacturers maintain to see if that one was ever manufactured. Nobody making up their own key pair has any chance of getting an existing public key.
ElGamal was a legacy key and not really meant to be used that much. The one slashdot poster who said he was affected (when that came out) said he chose it because he liked the sound of the name. ElGamal is legacy and shouldn't really be counted against GPG
Photos.
There's also the issue of photojournalists using Photoshop to alter their shots. Publications and organizations who issue awards like the Pulitzer will want to be sure the photographers submit what they say the submit -- unaltered photos, in this case. Editors can also be guilty of ordering manipulations.
Some altered photos I remember:
Related articles:
- New York Times: Guidelines on Our Integrity
- Washington Post: Policy on Manipulation of Photographic Images
- Photographs that lie
-j.I have a better solution.
Store a 1/8th thumbnail with in the jpeg JFIF file structure (use comment field) and have it encrypted too. Surely it can be preserved after photoshops loads/saves it. So then we can see visually the original.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
1, Take picture
2. Modify it
3. Print it
4. Take a picture of the print
5. Print the picture of the picture
Yes, you now have an unmodified picture (of a picture)
Good that will satisfy those fake-moon-landing conspiracy theorists.
I don't understand what's the big deal here. Hany Farid, at Dartmouth University, has developed a series of successful techniques that help a user tell whether an image is realistic or photorealistic (as in touched up). Hany employs some interesting statistical techniques to tell whether or not a digital signal (be it a photograph, audio recording, etc) has been tampered with or not. Check out his website for more information.
So you're peeing outside the toilet bowl right now.
Think about that. The only real potential use is police and insurance work. Even then, once it leaves the Canon software, all bets are off.
It's not clear if the image can be revalidated after it's been saved to the PC filesystem, or even how they maintain the "keyring" for uploaded file (must always have the physical camera attached??), or if simple, yet benign Photoshopping like cropping or scaling destroy the identify enough to destroy the checksum (seems like it would). So those popular blown-up presentation pictures in a trial could be unverifiable to the original upload. On most cameras the smartcard is just a filesystem - what's to keep someone from uploading another photo - particular if it's from the same camera - and then uploading through the proscribed "verification" system (shades of "Minority Report").
It also means that this type of verification is only as assured as the process and it people around it. A "bad act" by someone in the chain invalidates the verification. It's no better than what exists without it.
one of the ONLY ?!
Minolta also supports Compact Flash in its prosumer cameras. The problem is, the form factor of some cameras prevent them from being able to fit a CF unit, this is when you go SD.
One nice thing about film cameras is that the film has so many pictures to a roll. Durring a court case my father was involved in it has occured that you get LESS photos then were on the total roll. Then the question comes up, what was on those others photos? Twice he has seen this happen when someone SWORE "something is missing" and true enough the missing photos were of importance. Just because what you see on the frame is right, doesn't ean the frame is showing you the reality.
Step 2: Use Canon DV-equipped digital camera to take a picture of faked photo.
Presto! A "verified" copy of a faked photo.
You can also take verified photos of forged documents, verified photos of staged scenes, verified photos that include clocks set to the wrong time, etc.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Why does the system need special hardware at all? (Other than the obvious answer that someone spending $700 would feel ripped off if it just enabled a built-in software function). It doesn't look like this card is a crypto co-processor.
What good is hardware protection for part of the image transfer when other parts of the chain-of-custody aren't vouched for (lens, CCD, camera, camera's uploadable firmware, USB driver, and the rest of the PC)? At best, it seems like a feel-good measure, and at worst, it's a poor patch for real security. I couldn't find any more info on canon's site, so I'll have to withold judgement, but I'd like to see more details.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
using programs like neatimage... other higher end cameras automatically subtract CCD noise patterns during processing.
-
This is interesting, particularly since Canon has seen fit to only make it work on an XP system.
I think it behooves the open source crowd to determine if their so-called validation code might in fact be the md5sum of the image.
If that was the case, or even some other not so commonly used large number of bits crc was done, it still possible that we could do it. For crc's of course, you would have to be privy to the seed number, which makes a brute force search very time consuming, and no doubt subject to the DMCA, damn that thing!
Of course if we did figure it out, and get by the DMCA too, then there is the little matter of getting our version suitably certified before law enforcement would entertain the idea of using a linux based version.
Bitching at Canon for locking out the next generation of operating systems would probably be a more prroductive use of our time.
Cheers, Gene
Not wrong, different.
CF is still pretty much the standard for all DSLR's, and even a lot of high-end fixed lens cameras. In fact Sony's new 828 just added a CF card!!
You can also see the trend going the other way though, as the latest Canon announcement (EOS-1D) has a CF AND an SD slot. I'm not sure but as image sizes get larger and card writing speeds need to increase, will CF keep up with write speed? So far they've done OK and are certainly a nice form factor. I prefer CF at the moment myself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Take a look at Dave Coffin's CRW.c - a RAW reader that provides support for many formats. In doing so it ALSO tells you where the pixels are, such that you could get at them for modification... I'm working on a program for the SD9 RAW images that I am hoping to let users make some basic modifications to image data (like cleaning up some noise only in one channel).
The trick with most RAW formats is that since they are mosaics of color you would have to re-mosiac whatever you want to change, so my estimate of "pretty damn easy" is perhaps a little too strong - but once you know where the pixels are in the data and the format they are stored in (like compressed with table lookups) then it's game over for anyone even slightly determined.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sometimes it is - somtimes not. If you "Save for Web" in Photoshop it annoying seems to strip out EXIF data.
That's where a set of command line tools called "EXIF Utils" come in, that let you copy exif data from one file to another. Doing that I was able to keep full exif data after editing as I simpyl copy the EXIF from the original RAW file back into the modified JPG.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But it is only cool, when newspapers starts using them for digital content.
The everybody can see when the photo was taken, by what camera and that is hadn't been modified.
If the resolution is too high, the photographer must scale it when he takes the photo.
What I don't like is that Canon presumable got acces to all private keys. But if fraud is detected, there business idea goes down the drain. So they must be very carefully about when they cheat.
Anyone with insight, knows if any newspapers will use/link these images?
It could also be linked from hardcopy images, with either a md5sum or just a link.
Imagine if this really works and pretty soon becomes accepted as completely uncrackable and therefore intrinsically reliable as evidence in legal cases.
Six years later someone finally breaks the camera's security. That would open the floodgates for review of every single past case where some person was rightly or wrongly convicted because of the camera's "tamperproof" evidence.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia shows the work of the past masters of photo fudging. All this and not a copy of Photoshop in sight.
You don't need a lab to make mud.
the verification kit was out with the 1Ds, already.
This is not a signature.
is this an attempt at low cost steganography detection? Check to see if the image has been modified in some quick scan? If so, it will be defeated quickly
Get a life you pathetic kike.
I don't care. I just want that camera. :)
I guess my Olympus E-1 will have to do. It is a nice little camera.
Hey, I don't make up the rules and I quoted it exactly as it is written... point to all that is how outdated the jargon actually is. If the county I'm affiliated with calls them "photostatic copies," I really don't know what the hell they would do with any md5 verification.
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, photographs modify YOU!
This thing says it can detect a discrepency of a single bit! But the problem is -- hey, harddrives aren't perfect! There is going to be at least a 1-bit error on average out of every 125 megabytes of data when you copy that shit over. And 125 megs isn't altogether THAT many pictures when you are taking'em at 5 megapixels. So what happens if the image that happens to have a bit off just so happens to be the one that proves who the murder is ?! *GASP*
And so what?
What about people who _have_ the md5 sum and the right image?
Then it will work as evidence. This is a clear advantage.
Given your price range and the CF cards you have, I would direct you to either the Canon A80 or the S400. Both are 4MP cameras and are under 2 seconds between shots. Very good auto-modes and has some pretty good manual modes. 2 of my co-workers have the S400. I got the A80 for my GF. And I use a Minolta A1(Would have been Canon, but not in the budget for the pricey glass).
Good luck.
Some places to check out camera reviews:
DPREVIEW.com
steves-digicams.com
luminous-landscape.com
Good luck!
Winged Power Photography
When you look at it, the price difference between CF and SD chips can be the difference in shipping charges.
CF is good general purpose memory and is used by a good number of folk from the snapshot photographer to the pros. CF is good because it is tried and true. It has storage from 16MB all the way up to 4GB.
The "benefit" of SD memory is that it has extra circuitry for "securing" digital data, hence the name: Secure Digital card.
You pay extra for the protection just as one does when they go the memory stick route with "magic-gate", which is just another word for "encrypted" data.
Personally, I go CF because the chip size is just right. It is rugged and stiff. It is big enough to hold and not easily drop while and small enough that it won't take up much space.
The transfer speeds are pretty good as well. I use Kingston memory and I get 1-2 MB/second transfer with a PCMCIA adapter.
The thing is, each type has its purpose. You could use an SD/XD/MMC card inside of a CF camera just by using an SD->CF adapter. Boom, you now have an SD chip inside of your CF camera.
Doesn't work the other way around and it is a pain to "swap" cards with adapters. But hey, if you want cross compatibility when you have one camera that takes CF and another one which takes SD/XD, you had at least be aware of your options.
Winged Power Photography
It is clear to me, an Australian, that this must have been developed to validate the digital camera UFO sighting made by a Victorian Council Worker in mid-january when he was pgotographing a railway intersection :)
err!
jak
Nikon also uses CF cards -- such as my 5700 (and the soon-to-be-mine 8700). However, while I agree that CF is the best choice, I think most people would be equally happy with any of the other choices. I'm talking about the people who would have in the past bought a $100 camera at Target or Sears. They will probably reuse the same card over and over again, just deleting images to make room for the new ones.
Personally, I have 4 256MB cards at the moment, and rotate through them. When one is full, I unload it to the computer I put together specifically for images and put it back on my belt to be reused. I never delete images (no matter how bad) and I always use the camera's RAW mode to get the highest quality.
In a year and a half, I've taken over 4000 pictures with this camera and have everyone archived on CD, backup hard drive, and on the main hard drive in RAW format, high-res JPEG, VGA res, and am working on resizing all the older images to "thumbnail" (128x96) and "web" (320x240) as well.
My wife, on the other hand, has one of those $100 cameras. She goes through maybe 4 or 5 rolls a year, and only because she takes pics of her kids at school. Otherwise she'd take a lot less. She uses our older Sony Mavica at school, which uses floppy disks and takes 640x480 images. Works great for her.
Most people are more like my wife than me. For them, they'll get one memory card, not really care about the cost, and never buy another until they buy another camera. A lot may not even know there is a card in the camera or how to remove it -- they'll just hook up the cable between the camera and pc and upload the pictures that way.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
The review says:
Back about 10 years ago, when injet-based fax machines became common, it occurred to me that one could scan someone's signature, paste it to the end of a document (perhaps one that says they give you all their money) and print it on an inkjet printer. At that point, you could say that it was a copy of the original made on a inkjet-based fax machine. There would be no difference.
Except that one would have to lie under oath to have it accepted in court.
The problem is, however, that most members of the legal community (seeing as how they're members of the legal community and not the slashdot community (MarkWelch excepted, of course)) would not know that the document could be forged like that, and will not know that this "verification" will probably very quickly be circumvented (resulting in a story on slashdot, no doubt.)
Some technologically savvy crook will walk into court and say "here is a picture I took proving [X] using the DVK-E2 to ensure that it has not been tampered with" and the judge and jury will go "ooh, ahh" and believe it. Period.I refer you to the scene in My Cousin Vinny wherein a witness talks about the gas chromatograph (or whatever it was) that he used to analyze the rubber from the defendants' tires. The prosecutor then asked if it was turbo charged, which got a laugh from the jury. Oooh, fancy machine, must be good. Never mind that because the tires were a common make, model, and size, then yes, they would be chemically the same.
This is simply more of that -- some techno wonder that someone will be able to point to and therefore justify buying that particular camera.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
But it seems that you don't deserve yours. Please remove yourself from the gene pool you cause more damage.
Digital red light and speed cameras have been doing this stuff for some time in order to have evidence admitted in court. Digital watermarks, run length codes and other techniques. It's a little more advanced in Europe than here but coming. Funny but I don't think the electronic toll ones do anything other than making sure that the data has a chain of custody being tracked (so they trust the messenger and then implicitly the message)
I submitted a Provisional Patent Application on this idea
a couple of weeks ago.
I guess I can stop spending money on this now.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
It's pretty hard to put together a good looking fake, there's usually some tell-tale sign. Like others were saying, I think the word of a photographer that they took the picture in question is better than anything. I suppose it might comfort some news services though...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley