Slashdot Mirror
Lawmakers Worry About Rise of Fake Video Technology (thehill.com)
Lawmakers are concerned that advances in video manipulation technology could set off a new era of fake news. Now legislators say they want to start working on fixes to the problem before it's too late. From a report: Technology experts have begun to sound the alarm on the new software, which lets users take existing videos and make high-quality altered video and audio that appears real. The emergence of the technology opens up a new world of hoaxes driven by doctored audio or video, and threatens to shake faith in the media even further. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the most vocal members of Congress on tech issues, painted a grim picture about what the advances could mean for the future of discerning truth in media. "Since we can't rely on the responsibility of individual actors or the platforms they use, I fully expect there will be a proliferation of these sorts of fictions to a degree that nearly drowns out actual facts," Wyden told The Hill. "For those who value real information, there will still be some reliable publications and news outlets, and their credibility will need to be guarded all the more intently by professional journalists," he added.
The media desperately want to keep a lock on being the only ones who can manipulate video for propaganda use.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I trust the media but I do not trust the people working in it nor the people they interview.
"To summarize [...]: people are a problem." — Douglas Adams
#DeleteFacebook
...there is absolutely Fuck-All they can do about it.
So, what they're saying is the media has to hire real journalists now and actually do their job correctly instead of bumming off reddit and twitter posts?
That worked out well, didn't it?
Wow. A story that mentions digital image manipulation that doesn't contain the word "AI". Impressive!
The said that with the Amiga's Video Toaster. Yes kiddies, that was a thing. What we need is for the media to get out of our lives and people to turn of their devices and see what reality really is. I feel like we live in a Videodrome more and more each day.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
The loss of faith in MSM is entirely self inflicted. They've been caught time and again faking on location scenes, reporting entirely unfounded stories which when disproved they are slow to retract, and they bias their stories with a slant to their political ideology. It's gotten so bad even people of like mind are starting to get wise and tune out. Whenever I see a "breaking news" headline now I look for at least five sources before I even consider it might be real. They are so hyper focused on finding something to rag on the the current presidency they ignore news that Americans are actually interested in.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
If you can't trust anything digital you can only believe your own eyes.
Welcome to the future.
to those old Weird Al Yankovic interviews compared to what they have today.
A ton of work has been done on real time "photoshop". Like a lot of things the vanguard here was Adult movies and advertisements (I'm reminded of another old movie). Folks have been thinking about this and working on it for decades.
What we need is more education (and clean, lead free water and air). We probably also need to lessen deep seated religious devotion (since it tends to foster unquestioned obedience to authorities). Basically, we need an electorate that isn't just capable of critical thinking, but for whom critical thinking is the default state of being. This is all doable, but I'm not sure you can get Americans to pay for it. We get upset when we're told to pay for making other folks better.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"there will still be some reliable publications and news outlets, and their credibility will need to be guarded all the more intently by professional journalists,"
He said professional journalists.... hahahahahaha
There are none. Everyone is a hack, working for someone with an agenda. Right, Left... it does not matter which.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
Yeah, they are going to ban fake videos! It's gonna work just as well as banning underage drinking, poverty, pot smoking, illegal guns, prostitution, and all the other things Washington has banned! If you don't like something, pass a law against it, and it magically disappears! That's what Ron Wyden believes, and he doesn't let facts get in the way of what he holds dear and true!
Back in the usenet days someone posted about TV news saying Dan Rather and Barbara Walters are celebrities not journalists. He went on about as a journalist he walks the walk and talks the talk. He interviewed more politicians and criminals than anyone else would care to do. And he simply would write what he saw and heard.
But simply reporting what happened can be problematic as pointed out in other comments many thought of FH launch as fake. Then you have the other topic about "fake videos" where the simulation is so good people have a difficult time distinguishing real and fake. Add to that media is a business, editorials are written like news stories, headline are designed to be clickbaits.
There was a time when FCC requirement for a TV station license is station had to broadcast news part of the time. Station or networks get money broadcasting entertainment and sports, the news bureau was an expense to meet FCC requirements so the newsmen were not concerned if news stories make money or not (they still want to scoop the story before others but did spend time to be sure it is correct otherwise would be laughing stock).
mfwright@batnet.com
Fake news and the people who look at it are a self-perpetuating echo chamber. The rise of new ways to create fake news doesn't change the impact or prevalence as those who believe in that garbage don't need some advanced fake video to cement their beliefs. As it is they aren't swayed by logic or reality so why should these videos make the situation any worse?
Just search for youtube conspiracies that that prove the planes hitting the WTC were digital fakes to see what I mean.
This won't change the status quo.
This was all inevitable. I knew this would happen ever since I saw Total Recall.
Umm, how about digital signatures?
The idea of fake news isn't new. It's been easy to print complete fabrications since Gutenberg. The real problem is uncritical consumption of "information."
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
i smell a Manchurian actor like usual.
So do I. Don't look now - he's inside your post!
Hollywood's fake reality is clearly marked as fiction. Fake news is intentionally disguised as fact.
Photoshop's a thing.
We all know that pictures can be seamlessly and basically indetectibly edited...so we're skeptical, even of images.
This just extends that to video.
Personally, I believe that the only people who should fear this are the people WHO HAVE ALREADY HAD THAT CAPABILITY, effectively losing (or at least devaluing) their secret monopoly.
So tell me again why I should be sadface that the government and media don't like people generally having this capability?
-Styopa
To my mind out and out presenting faked footage is like doping in sport, it's cheating.
The news is fake in part because we like it that way. Sure we know that the person on screen is lying and misleading but it's part of the entertainment. When it's done well we can admire how people onscreen are able to misrepresent reality better than we could. For example I respect Kelly Conway's skills (especially compared to Sarah Sanders' amateurish attempts) and that would be a lost art if the alternative were to simply cut to one of David Daleiden's videos
Nullius in verba
When did 60 minutes lose a libel case? Because they've been openly and notoriously deceptive editing interviews for decades.
Their favorite trick is to change the questions, so the answers come off as incredibly weasley.
They still have credibility, with morons, to this day. It's really amazing...
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Not that this is overly practical or ultimately secure. But the problem is that the *original* can now easily be altered by too many evil monkeys (not that this is a surprise).
One counter measure that offers some–if not even nearly perfect–protection would be to go back to analog/analogue. Sure, photographic film has always been retouched and altered for ill reasons (seems all totalitarian regimes are experts in that – hey, Russia ...). But altering movie film is fairly painful, especially on smaller formats (lots of really small pictures like Super 8). And at least right now it would have to be done by hand.
I have no doubt that technologies can be created to alter photographic movie film automatically, and maybe even do so convincingly (i.e., scrutiny of the original film does not reveal the changes). And you could certainly copy a film (or digitize and "re-film") and inject changes in the copying process. But doing all this takes more and different (!!) hardware, skill, and general resources than are required to perform video editing of digital film files on a computer. It certainly takes much longer. At some point you can fake almost anything, some kind of trust and/or "system" would be needed to create a reasonably well "non-faked" film. Still, not entirely impossible.
Not that all this is a long term solution. But I have been wondering for a while whether some photo journalists would go back to shooting analog film just so that they can more believably claim that what they show has not been doctored with.
I shoot film (again) because it makes me do photography. Digital cameras let me take pictures. I do not say this to flaunt a snobbish attitude, it's just how it works for me. Film is cumbersome, in many ways limiting, but also strangely liberating and most certainly easier to archive long term. And it takes more effort to fake.
Do your own thing. And overdo it!
This was debunked somewhere, I just can't find the related links right now. As I remember it, the press was allowed a very limited amount of physical space by cops such that the camera person accidentally ended up in the shot.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't recall the last time I saw CNN doing this. Nor the Washington Post or NY Times. Heck, Jon Oliver & the Daily Show are both meticulously researched (as Oliver put it, they have to be or they'd be sued into oblivion by the mega corps they periodically go after).
I suppose you could say that about Fox News. You might even say the same about Politico and Mother Jones. Though those two aren't exactly MSM and Fox News themselves claims to be an entertainment network (that's how they get out of equal time rules and the like). But for most of Main Stream Media there's enough cross checking going on that you don't get too many stories that count as fake.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
that doesn't mean I want it legalized (drugs, OTOH, I _do_ want legalized, but that's another conversation).
Some things _should_ be illegal. And for law to be fair there needs to be specifics about what is and isn't illegal. Right now this tech is so new there isn't much of anything on the books to address it. That makes it possible, even likely, that somebody could do something to ruin your life (stopping just short of framing your for a crime) and get away with it.
Let's say you're applying to Google and I videoshop you into a white supremacist rally. Is that illegal? Heck, it might not even be libel.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Once upon a time, a picture was worth a thousand words (and few of them required any careful thought). Those days are over.
Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own lying eyes?
Once upon a time, that was a punch line. Those days are over, too.
Somewhere in Africa is the next Wolfgang Beltracchi, and soon he'll be earning his PhD in human–computer collaboration by moonlighting on Amazon Turk.
I skimmed a book on money laundering recently by a world authority in undercover tactics. He was too much the bigoted cop for me to make it all the way through the book (no court has ever done anything right, with a hint of anal rape as just deserts).
He did explain the fascination with overvalued art, though, before I bailed. It's already so hard to tell good art from bad, the mule can slip a pricey painting beside a couple of pieces of crap for the cottage, and customs will rarely notice the difference. Then some drug dealer from Bolivia will buy it at a substantial Sotheby's discount, and stick it in the upstairs guest bedroom of his third home, where it functions much like Bitcoin: valued more for its cross-border portability in a dirty laundry crunch than its ability to ever escape the black market.
Once Interpol deploys their own ANN image ferret, the era of antique coloured canvas as a poor man's Bitcoin will also draw to a close.
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is dying, and I expect that any islands of sanity in today's world are as well.
Enigma
Putting aside all the criticism or futility of trying to deal with the widespread fake information, it is a real problem to democracies. Media is the so called forth pillar of democracy intended to check and balance the other 3 (legislative, executive and judicial). This is the pillar, which makes society check upon their representatives and without it or with a dysfunctional one democracy cease to function, especially when people either do not give a damn or do not have time to give a damn.
At the moment in the US there are already enclaves of alternative realities, and more and more bridges are being shuttered, history teaches us what usually comes next.
BTW, being cynical will not help.
that someone will create fake videos of them acting in the public's interest.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
That's a different case. Often what happens is that somebody interprets a broadcast as X happening, but the story is more involved and Y really happened. But the accuser either doesn't know that Y really happened and keeps spreading X (or others copy it), or maybe doesn't care that he/she is wrong and spreads BS for the hell of it because they can.
It would be nice if MSM would give their side of the accusation in a consistent, easy-to-search area (blog, page, etc.) However, I suspect the volume of accusations may over-tax them: you can't fight off every troll on the Interwebs: they have to pick their battles carefully, for the volume of trolls is Yuuuge.
Table-ized A.I.
Start requiring video recording devices to to add EXIF style data to a video file. It should at least give enough of a fingerprint to let people know if video has been transposed, or modified in an unusually way from the devices profile.
Believe none of what you hear, half of what you see. Verify everything. Most of the third world already knows this (where they don't expect gruberment to "protect them").
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I was not aware that Canada had been annexed by Russia. We do share similar seasons (cold, less cold and colder) but other than that...
#DeleteFacebook
Never allow audio or video recordings of press conferences to happen.
I think if there is no technological fix for this then we will enter an era where politicians will not speak on camera in a public setting, and maybe not even in a controlled one (depending on the technological solutions that may come to pass)
Its real :)
[($)]
> Is there some kind of dedicated site that archives incidents like these?
Youtube for starters. Go to Google and enter
newsman in canoe
in the search field. You get stuff like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
The phrase "Main Stream Media" is a bug-a-boo of the right. Like Dog Whistling your intentions were clear. It didn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out what you were on about.
/. you're not one of them, you're one of us.
Also you're moving the goal post. You attacked the media for falsified stories and now your saying the stories don't need to be false.
And now you're just making up stories. I guess the good news is that to anyone on the fence your silly hyperbole will put them off. The bad news is there's lots of folks like yourself who've bought into the clap trap being pushed by right wing, pro-corporate media.
I suppose it's possible your one of those Russian trolls I keep hearing about, or just a regular troll. If it's the former, well, I can't argue with who signs your paychecks. If it's the latter, you're not helping yourself. You're actively hurting yourself. Don't kid yourself, the right are not your friends. They're going to eat you alive (and your family if you've got one). Their goals are clear: lower wages and fewer protections for the working class. If you've got time to post to
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
people make mistakes. Also, it doesn't help that the gunman (no longer alleged, he's confessed) _is_ a White supremacist. I'm aware retractions don't get as many page views, but in this case I'm not so sure it's such a big deal. The bigger news to me is that there's somebody out there who's such a nut case that the white supremacists looked at him and say "uh... no" and he still had an AR-15.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/