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Comment by kp1197 | Hacker News Reader

This seems like an obvious solve. Produce cameras with HSM (hardware security modules) that cryptographically sign the image using the existing certificate infrastructure. Get browser vendors to visually indicate signed images. Now you have a "class" of images that are known to be produced by taking a photo with a verified device.

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Except you suddenly lose the ability to resize, edit, crop etc without having to have a “trusted editor”.

And the analog hole is still there. You can always just point your expensive HSM equipped camera at a high quality print (like a film telecine) of an edited image and it’ll have a good signature.

Great point on the analogue hack. But I think it's a perfect-is-enemy-of-good situation. There is currently no such thing as digitally verifiable media. If such a thing existed, it would at least partially shove the cat back into the bag (maybe people would abuse the cameras with the HSMs in this way, but its one step better than having all images with no verifiability). Whats more, Photoshop has existed for 25 years - and convincing Hollywood SFX for 30+ - so clearly it is deep fakes specifically that are the nascent threat. Doesn't HSM at least help address low effort deep fakes from people without HSM enabled cameras? Also, you could put in a depth range sensor and make the depth reading part of the signed payload.

I just think we’re trying to find a tech solution to a social problem here. We don’t need to trust media, we just need to tie media to the account that uploads it and decide what accounts we trust. The issue is that current social media encourages users to reupload media rather than simply point to existing uploads, breaking the paper trail up. It does this because there aren’t any integrations between social media sites: they’re all centralized and isolated from one another.

> Except you suddenly lose the ability to resize, edit, crop etc without having to have a “trusted editor”.

The algorithms of an image manipulation program form a (very dumb) AI that does the respective operations as requested by the user.

Most cameras use heavy AI inside. you just move the market for AI effects and editing onto camera vendors. It does nothing to solve the underlying problem but generate a monopoly somewhere else by restricting information flow to solve a social problem.

Movie piracy still exists and stronger than ever despite billion spent trying to lock things down.

Basically you are arguing Web Integrity but for Camera.

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