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Comment by tiffanyh | Hacker News Reader

Can law enforcement convict someone due to a Computational Photograph?

Google & Apple are digitally altering photos so much so to “enhance them”, couldn’t it be agrued the evidence of a crime photo has been tempered due to computational photography.

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I doubt it. “Tampering” usually requires an intent to obscure or subvert. Computation photography applied broadly to all photos doesn’t have that.

Definition from OED: “interfere with (something) in order to cause damage or make unauthorized alterations.”

The “in order to” seems to imply intent. Not sure if there’s a different legal definition however.

Wouldn’t every digital camera be guilty of that? White balance, lens correction profiles, noise reduction, compression.

Not if you shoot raw.

Plus none of these modifications really alter the content of the photo.

By the same logic should cropped photos or photos that have had the sliders mucked with count as altered?

I don’t see how cropping would introduce “reasonable doubt”. But a face being computationally altered by the photo seems like that would introduce reasonable doubt that the alleged person didn’t not in fact do the crime.

They'd have to throw out any digital picture taken in a JPG or GIF format, since those too require image "tampering" in order to get the size down

I doubt it. I'd think a court/opposing counsel would examine the nature of that tampering to see if it could have effected the evidence or not

Apps that use deepfake like algorithms to enhance photos can fall into that category.

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