Rittenhouse lawyer claims iPad pinch-to-zoom uses AI to fake video footage
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
There was a previous witness who had enhanced several videos for the prosecution. He testified that part of the enhancement process did involve "adding pixels that weren't there previously". It seems important that these videos were enhanced by a person who has a professional reputation to uphold. Those videos were admitted as evidence. The defense is positing the concern that a similar enhancement process happens when you zoom in on a video on the iPad. If it does, there is obviously no professional oversight. Keep in mind that this is a very small section of the screen that they were concerned with - a very small number of pixels of a slightly different color than there surroundings would be construed to be the object in question.
I have no idea if playback software the defense intended to use had an auto-enhance feature, but it does seem telling that the prosecuting attorney declined to certify when the judge asked that the video would not be altered. Instead he continued to make an argument of "we all do this all the time in our daily lives, it's common sense".
I do not recall him mentioning which software he intended to use for playback, so it would be hard to say for certain whether he was correct or not.
This is probably true of the technology that's currently in the courtroom, but not for much longer, e.g.[1]. Apple have even done research on this[2], although I can't find anything that says it's currently in use on the iPhone/iPad.
[1] https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/the-secret-behind-8k-upsca...
And then as soon as I got in the jury room, I found that 3-4 people had fallen for this technique hook, line and sinker.
Prosecutions do this because, unfortunately, it works. Often jury trials unfortunately aren't about objective proof, they are about feelings and convincing the lay-public.
It looked like Rosenbaum chased him for like 10 seconds while Rittenhouse was running away, threw something at him, and they're going to argue that in the last single second before the shooting he possibly raised his rifle in a grainy video where the question of pixels is an issue?
That seems weak but I guess the prosecution needs something.
From what I've read, the prosecution has been pretty weak. Their witness are often helping the defense at least as much as they're helping the prosecution, and the judge got angry with them the other day for likely deliberately going somewhere they weren't allowed to go.
https://apnews.com/article/kyle-rittenhouse-trial-judge-dire...
The prosecutor was saying that Rittenhouse must be guilty because he chose not to speak before the trial.
That is an egregious violation. Judge wants a clear jury verdict due to the politicization of the case. In any other circumstances, I'd bet heavily that a mistrial with prejudice would be immediate.
I'm guessing there's a non-zero chance that the prosecutor gets officially censured for this case. Between that and the testimony about coercing the witness and interfering with the detective, there's a lot of wrong stuff going on here.
Well, this post (or rather the HN thread) is about a mention to the technology and its impacts on society, not the case itself. Being so politically charged it's a much worse topic for an online forum
> This is a standard objection in any criminal proceeding when digital evidence is introduced.
As it should be - they need to understand what is going on to make fair calls.
In this case the lawyers and prosecutors (and judges, and jury) may have no idea that when we say a pixel is 'imagined and created' when magnification is applied it is very unlikely that enough pixels will be created to insert an human-recognizable object where there was none
Come to think of it, software to introduce objects when zooming in on image/video would be quite challenging. It's an interesting problem
https://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-accidentally-a...
Personally I find it remarkable how well legal commentators who viewed the footage shortly after it happened predicted how the trial would go. The trial itself and the reactions of various interest groups have been completely unsurprising.
Thus the prosecution's star witness justifies Rittenhouse's firing at him.
Grosskreutz even volunteered sua sponte that Rittenhouse was at risk of head trauma in the seconds before Grosskreutz aimed his gun at Rittenhouse(!!).
Thus the prosecution's star witness justifies Rittenhouse's shots at the man who kicked him in the head and the man who swung a skateboard at his head.
The medical examiner says marks on Rosenbaum's hand indicate it was close to or touching the muzzle of Rittenhouse's rifle(!!!). This, together with the video showing Rittenhouse retreating, justifies Rittenhouse's shots at Rosenbaum.
That leaves no murder or attempted murder case against Rittenhouse. That's the prosecution's main witnesses' doing.
Then Debruin accused the prosecution of trying to get him to change his story, and got into a he-said-he-said on the stand with the prosecutor about a meeting he had with the prosecutors(!!!!). This means that either the witness is lying under oath and so committing perjury, or the prosecutor -- who is an officer of the court -- is lying to the court! You can't make this stuff up. What can possibly remedy that situation? The bare minimum is a bar complaint seeking the prosecutor's disbarment.
A detective admitted on the witness stand that he had a search warrant for Grosskreutz's phone that the prosecution told him not to execute(!!!!!), and that they didn't take Ziminsky's gun (he was the first to discharge a firearm, in the direction of Rittenhouse, while chasing Rittenhouse, which further justifies Rittenhouse's claim of self-defense). Together with the Debruin issue and with subsequent gross misconduct by the prosecution, the prosecution is now looking malicious.
These are the prosecution's witnesses!! What the **** are they doing?! The incompetence they are demonstrating is unbelievable.
And then the prosecutor crosses a number of lines in court besides the one mentioned above with Debruin. Trying to use a defendant's silence against him is an absolute no-no (note though: under Salinas vs. Texas, if a defendant said nothing at all upon arrest, not even that they want a lawyer, or that they're pleading their 5th amendment right to stay silent, then that can be used against them at trial, but this isn't relevant here). And several other incidents I'm not listing.
The prosecutors also display a severe lack of knowledge of firearms and firearms law -- surprising for a prosecutor who must have many firearms cases. (This trial has been very educational.) They tried to get Rittenhouse to admit that at 17 years of age he could not possess a rifle under Wisconsin law when in fact he could (what he couldn't do was purchase a rifle at 17) -- this is simply not something for the witness to admit as it is a matter of law and only the judge can rule on that, but still, Rittenhouse knew the law and answered correctly.
The thing about the prosecution telling the detective to not execute a valid search warrant for their star witness' phone is absolutely shocking and astounding. That alone should be enough to toss less notable cases out.
The mind boggles at all of this.
It's pretty clear that the judge wants to toss the prosecutor out of the court, and probably the whole case as well, but isn't doing it -- possibly for good reasons, and/or possibly for bad reasons, but there's multiple rationales for allowing the trial to continue under these circumstances.
It's also clear that the prosecutor is crossing those lines on purpose (one instance is one thing, two is pretty surprising, three is purposeful). Either they are trying to get a mistrial without prejudice so they can try again and that time not get sandbagged by their own witnesses, or they're trying to get a mistrial with prejudice so they can have another round of riots (yes, the latter is a pretty cynical take, but it has to be considered a possibility at this point).
If there's a mistrial w/o prejudice, I think the prosecution can possibly win a conviction on one charge at retrial with the benefit of hindsight and knowing what won't work from the first trial. They shouldn't get two bites at the apple though after all their misconduct.
I'm by no means a legal expert so can't get into the weeds on all these legal arguments but my common sense says there needs to be at least a consequence for a teenager who arms himself with a rifle, travels to somewhere outside his hometown and ends up killing two unarmed men (not accidentally) and severely injuring a third one.
If the only consequence of such set of actions is an internship offer at the Congress then it only makes sense for other kids to emulate him.
If it's too blurry to tell, the actual intelligence of the observer will indeed fill in the detail of what they believe is happening. So if the prosecutor continues to assert "he is pointing his gun" while the pixels blurrily shift around, that may become the observer's impression regardless of what the pixels are actually showing or not showing.
Other lawyers pointed out correctly that prosecutor is stuck between rock and hard place, the best outcome for him personally would be to get mistrial.
Judge said he has no idea on how this technology works and only mentioned "inserting pixels" because the prior expert who looked at the pictures told them about "inserted pixels".
Judge told prosecutor he is free to bring a expert who can attest to accuracy of video taken with zoomed in iphone and then zoomed in through iPad for display to Jury. Prosecutor also couldn't tell Judge which software they were using to zoom in on iPad.
Both are right in some way. I think the defense raised a good point that while interpolation algorithms are everywhere, people don't generally understand that by definition these introduce new information not present in the original. It's a general problem with technology, but isn't brought up often in court. On the other hand, I think the prosecution's magnifying glass analogy was apt, but for the wrong reasons; it's an older form of upscaling technology that introduces its own distortions, but is accepted as accurate. It is kind of ironic that the format of the video and whatever transcoding has been performed wasn't delved into.
But this story reeks of "Sufficiently advanced technology = Magic"
Blaming it on the boogie monster of "AI"