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Comment by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 | Hacker News Reader

I find it amusing that Congress has suddenly become so interested in the dangers of deep fakes. When they started going on and on about the dangers I thought “why is this dude so worried?”.

Then of course the Epstein stuff becomes news[1] months later and the cynical part of me can’t help but think they’re looking for a defense if they ever partied at his island or ranch.

1. https://nypost.com/2019/11/18/jeffrey-epstein-accuser-claims...

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Deepfakes are readily understandable as a problem for politicians. Politicians are experts in public messaging; this technology has the ability to alter previously-immutable messages.

I think the bigger problem is it provides deniability and removes accountability. The "I never said that" kind.

Could blockchain give us a secure audit trail for digital video clips?

"simple" would suffice.

kind of... you can create a hash of the video, and store the hash on a blockchain.

Then when viewing the video in the future, you can check it's hash and compare it to the one stored on chain to be sure the video wasn't tampered with.

But then you need to establish that the hash was posted on the chain by a trusted source, too.

And ensure that they weren't hacked, etc. Then you need another immutable blockchain to keep track of the bad posts on the first immutable blockchain.

The blockchain could provide a timestamp, but it's hard to see how that would help.

Every type of video authentication system I've ever heard proposed can be defeated by simply pointing a 'trusted' video camera at a screen playing a fake video.

In real world you could have an event that happened under five different, unaffiliated cameras. If all of these match up, that seems to be something a judge should consider.

I was chatting with someone about making deep-fake-resistant video. An interesting solution that came up was making artifacts that would be hard to simulate: ex. surround the speaker is a swirling vortex of confetti, where words have a minimal but detectable effects on the air currents.

Video could be 'authenticated' by post facto tracking of particles to validate both continuity and plausible velocity deltas based on generated model of air currents. It wouldn't eliminate the possibility of deepfakes, but would drastically increase cost of production.

Similarly, I predict that cameras will increase in resolution past the point of utility for human vision: tetrapixel camera video would be extremely expensive to produce without leaving tiny artifacts.

I suppose you could have 'trusted devices' where upon taking pictures/videos a hash of the file is committed to blockchain. Although a privacy nightmare.

This obviously wouldn't solve the 'no fake videos' problem but would least mean 'this video isn't fake' for a select subset. There could be tiers of information in the future where this audited media is weighted higher.

Commiting a timestamping hash is not a privacy nightmare, as you don’t need to reveal the evidence until you need to use it for proving what happened.

"Every type of video authentication system I've ever heard proposed can be defeated by simply pointing a 'trusted' video camera at a screen playing a fake video."

That's a good point. But I'm imagining situations where the camera itself is a reasonably secure device. For example, a city CCTV camera or a police body worn camera.

If a video stream can be securely (cryptographically) matched to a particular device, with an unforgeable (blockchain?) timestamp, it would increase confidence in video evidence presented in court, for example.

Of course not. There’s no plausible mechanism by which it could.

Well blockchain can solve any problem, and everyone working with it is totally reputable and competent, so what could possibly go wrong?

cf. XKCD -- "Bury it in the desert. Wear gloves."

We've had the ability to make convincing fake videos for a long time. There are whole industries devoted to the task.

Yeah but it definitely never was this accessible.

Why are deepfakes now a huge problem, or any worse than photoshop? This technology has existed for decades.

Video used to be the holy grail for 'that's real'. There's a realpolitik side to some american politics where if the traditional international order gets reshuffled they'd be happy to prove international misbehaviour with video footage and then use that as evidence for escalation. Also in the justice system video footage is seen as good as gold.

The credibility of still footage has dropped before. I don't know where that leaves us for authentic media...

Also, don’t courts have pretty strict chain of custody rules for anything submitted as “evidence”?

Is there any benefit to deepfake technology besides maybe entertainment?

Of all the places where you could find "epstein news" you choose to link the New York Post.

I would honestly love to link to a trusted MSM report, but these outlets have been burying Epstein stories[1]. It's awful.

1. https://www.newsweek.com/abc-jeffrey-epstein-story-amy-robac...

Miami herald for the big story last spring that lead to a lot of this coming back up.

I'm not criticizing the New York Post for being too indie. I'm criticizing them for being profoundly untrustworthy.

Can you provide examples?

They have a string of controversies like most news organizations, but I think they may be referring to the fact it is owned by News Corp, which is run by Rupert Murdoch who is notorious for companies like Fox News.

The New York Post story you linked is just a write up of original reporting done by CBS.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-epstein-accuser-maria-f...

That article is from nov 18th versus 5th?

Besides, for credibility they should have been writing about the obvious problems with Epstein, and everyone but fringe outlets were basically silent over the last decade(s), and in some cases complicit (abc news).

Both articles are from November 18th. The New York Post one is from four hours later and just summarizes the CBS interview. Your New York Post article links to the CBS one and leads with a picture of the woman telling her story on CBS.

Except it "didn't air because we could not obtain sufficient corroborating evidence to meet ABC's editorial standards about her allegations." This should be an article about journalistic integrity, and ensuring we don't accuse people of things without corroborating evidence. Just because more evidence came out after that point, does not mean it was wrong to require more evidence at the time. I cannot see how this is anything other than a good thing.

The New York Post has actually been one of the most consistent places for breaking Epstein news. Most major news outlets have employees implicated with Epstein and have reported (or not) accordingly.

It's quite telling when the corruption and scandal is so large that only "fringe" outlets are able to report on in. Also cf. with Ronan Farrow and Weinstein.

Same. The cynical part of me was looking to see if this project came out of MIT Media Lab (it didn't, just MIT)

The President of MIT (Rafael Reif) while not directly implicated in fraternizing with Epstein did work to actively cover up the Joi Ito scandal and has essentially side-stepped all responsibility. There are still students protesting and calling for his resignation.

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