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Graphics Advances Make Identifying Real Images Difficult
destinyland writes "The FBI's geeks admitted they were nervous over computer-generated images at a recent forensics conference. In court they're now arguing that a jury 'can tell' if an image is real or computer-generated — which marks the current boundary between legal and illegal. But reporter Debbie Nathan argues that that distinction is getting fuzzy, and that geeks will inevitably make it obsolete." Note: some of the linked (computer-generated) images may be disturbing.
The justification for child porn laws is that real children are harmed in making it. The justification for arresting purchasers is that they create the market for it. It doesn't matter whether they buy CG or real porn, they still encourage the crimes against children.
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It'd be nice to see a "NSFW" (Not Suitable For Work) tag on the article. I clicked the link and I'm at work, and am now worried that large men with guns will appear. Saying "The following images may be disturbing" is too ambiguous.
The latest Scientific American has an interesting article on the current state of the art of how to tell whether a photo has been doctored. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=digital-image-forensics
Photos don't testify at trials, people do. Generally if you have photographic evidence you need to have the cameraperson testify, and they will need to testify that they took the picture and establish (sometimes by establishing chain of custody/development procedures) that the picture reflects what they saw and how someone edited or added things.
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The problem is when it's impossible to tell the real from the fake. At that point you couldn't prosecute any of the real ones because they'll just say it's a really good fake.
Also, think about this. If you look at pr0n, doesn't it make you horny?
Now, let's talk about child pr0n. Doesn't matter whether it's virtual or not -- if you're a pedophile, it will still make you want to go out and act on that, just as 'normal' pr0n does for the non-sexual-deviant.
Do you really think that stimulating child predators with pr0n -- even virtual pr0n -- is a good idea?
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... convincing a jury to dismiss photographic evidence -- including video from surveillance cameraIANAL, but I think video from surveillance cameras will be alright because all you have to do is have the person in charge of the surveillance swear the films haven't been altered. This would force the defense to posit that someone is trying to frame the defendant and is lying about the films being genuine. That would usually be considered unreasonable doubt (unless of course you've got some actual evicence and not just the accusation that the video is fake).
M'lud, I present exhibit A - a 1024-node renderfarm accompanied by a small army of animators and artists that we believe was used to fabricate exhibit B ;)
At the moment (as far as I'm aware - I have a friend who works in forensic IT who has a colleague that specialises in detecting doctored images and video), even the top-end CGI is relatively easy to distinguish from the real thing, especially where humans are involved (even more so for video). Whilst I agree there's a possibility that tech and skills capable of making realistic human animations and the like may only be a few years away, I still think it'll be a long time before such fare becomes indistinguishable from the real thing, and even if it was there'd be an inevitable paper trail (or lack of it) concerning the origin of the pics/vids.
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I think that's the point that nobody is watching the footage of these Big Brother cameras all the time. A "wired" criminal could have the resources to doctor the surveillance tapes before anybody notices the crime has been committed. At that point, the defense attorney is left with the hard task of demonstrating that it isn't his client in the videos.
Just like lie detector tests... surveillance videos are not infallible.
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I am against child abuse just as much as anyone, but the more I hear about this issue the more it makes me think that the laws are asking society to perfect hypocrisy. On the one hand we have music videos which are basically soft-porn, magazines on supermarket shelves at child's-eye level which are no less sexually explicit, but now we have artists charged and art exhibitions canceled because they have photographs of naked children.
Ok, I personally have no inclination of visiting such an exhibition - I don't agree with the idea, but to make that illegal is ridiculous.
My point is, so what if someone can render a CG image of a child or adult so cleverly so that it is 'real'? We are missing the point. Laws are meant to protect people from harm, not electrons. There has to be proof that there is a causative link between such an image and an abuse of a child. Nobody is going around arresting paintings of people being slaughtered or whatever. The Louvre, for example, contains numerous, magnificent works of art which depict terrible deeds - but they are not regarded as obscene.
There is a difference between child molestation and paedophilia. One is a criminal act, the other is a psychiatric illness. Why are we criminalizing a medical condition?
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Fittingly, their art is an homage to Diego Velázquez.
Hard for a layman to tell a photo of a Velázquez from a photo of its model. Like everything else, today's artists just have better tools. A good painter could have fooled the FBI in 1920, only easier than with a computer-generated image today.
The cameras weren't as good then, so it would have been harder to tell a photo of a model from a photo of a painting of the model. The cameras were not in color. Nobody expected a photo of a painting to be anything but a photo.
Lets see any of you lay persons who haven't been trained in art make a photoshop image as good as a Velázquez painting.
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At what point will photographs no longer be credible? When it progresses to the point that we cannot tell a fake from a real photo, could we have possibly blurred the lines between reality and illusion a bit too much? When it gets to the point that photographic evidence is no longer good enough to establish, let's say, an alibi, what will we look to then?
I was in a jury for a case where a guy has child porn that he "made" using legal porn he found online, but photoshopped on the faces of young girls he knew (including a stepdaughter). In Virginia, we found him guilty because he "manufactured child porn", so it was almost as bad as having actual underage girls photographed in those scenes. It was an interesting case because of the legal definitions.
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It's usually even easier than having to plant it on his laptop. (Not that that's hard either, given most people's security skills.)
Just post a few of those photos online, and chances are the Interpol will start wondering who's the adult child molester there. See, for example: Interpol appeal unmasks US actor as child abuse suspect.
There's even a funny bit at the end about another guy where the police had photos with his face "swirled" to hide his identity, so the police just reversed the filter. So you could even make it more damning by doing just that with that CG photo: apply some easy to undo Photoshop or Gimp filter, so it looks more believable. (After all, someone trying to frame him, wouldn't have tried to hide his face, right?;) Heck, if done right, it could even hide the imperfections of that CG photo.
There we go. No access to his laptop is needed.
Now, admittedly, actually planting it on the computer would make it easier to prosecute all the wayx through. But then again, if you just want to make someone's life hell for a few weeks, even the purely online version will do just fine.
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I heard that was true before digital cameras got cheap. Last I heard was a few years ago. At that time, some cop said most stuff is either pre-mid-70s or post-mid-90s, with more and more modern stuff showing up every day.
More recently I heard on TV that the rate of never-before-seen-before victims is slowing down a bit. It's slow enough that when a new victim shows up, the cops scramble to try to find and rescue her.
Combine the two and it indicates a trough in new material from the mid-70s to the mid-80s and a peak in new material in the early- to mid-2000s.
Anyone have more updated info?
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