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Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

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Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#31
post #23

i do wonder, that in the age where we have image and video creation out of the bag, whether or not this will result in whole classes of evidence becoming completely unreliable.

You should see what people were capable of in the darkroom, let alone before all this. You could always manipulate imagery ever since there was imagery to manipulate.

We've gone from highly skilled people being able to forge some specific photos and documents using substantial time/energy/resources, to any asshole being able to generate realistic full-motion video in minutes.

I get that there is a certain type of moron who thinks that the collapse in cost of misinformation has no harm... but all you've done is announce to the world that you are a moron.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#32
post #16
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the US? Probably a large double-digit percentage of cases imo…

Especially if law enforcement uses Parallel Construction [0], lying to the court about the process taken. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

[dead]

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about a system that saves in some way the hash in a Blockchain, and if you, eg, XOR the hash of the video with the hash of the previous block you will "certainly" know that the video was created between the previous block and the block where the hash is saved in. That's a starting point.

Might have a point. This was before blockchain. I suspect that the cops wouldn’t like the chain public, though.

Like when people discuss voting, I believe a blockchain [0] is a terrible pitfall compared to a classic distributed database system of predefined nodes run by different organizations. For example, imagine a couple hundred predefined nodes run by different states, federal agencies, etc.

An attacker altering the ledger would still require compromising an unreasonably large number of independent groups at once, and even then the rest would be able to clearly see that some unusual and suspicious event occurred.

By limiting membership a bunch of problems simply vanish, like long-clearing times, wasting hardware on mining, vulnerability to foreign botnets, etc.

[0] A blockchain is distinguished by its core requirement, from which a cascade complexity flows: Uncontrolled node membership. Don't be fooled by people pitching "private blockchain", its a contradiction in terms designed to rehabilitate hype, like "multi-sample Theranos test" or a bicycle as "Segway passively stabilized inline wheel model."

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#34

i do wonder, that in the age where we have image and video creation out of the bag, whether or not this will result in whole classes of evidence becoming completely unreliable.

The end-game is that people will willingly surveil themselves 24/7 on behalf of The System because that will be the only way to prove what they didn't do.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#35
post #15

I wonder how many people have been unjustly imprisoned between planted evidence, made up evidence, and illegal parallel construction…

Here in the US? Probably a large double-digit percentage of cases imo…

> large double-digit percentage

This is a very very intense claim, and if true, would represent a monumental institutional failure across hundreds or even thousands of disparate organizations.

Do you have any data to support your hunch?

Strong claims require strong evidence.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#36
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine in this age of blockchains you could embed into a media file a signature that proved it was no older than the timestamp of when it occurred, the digital equivalent of a hostage-proof-of-life photo with a recent newspaper But I don't know of a cryptographic mechanism to ensure that a digital image is not more recent than a particular time

Interesting, There aren't any newspapers left in my country, neither printed nor not printed. The closest you can find is the weekly advertising booklet here and there. Which is irrelevant now because a computer can either stich new content to an old picture, or entirely producing a custom picture. That would be a use case for a block chain. But I still don't understand how you are securing the integrity of the valid…

Which country no longer has newspapers?

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#37
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be - probably still are - cameras that would digitally sign all their images. Used in crime scenes? Maybe we will end up seeing wider adoption of this, despite the privacy implications. Hackers attention then will focus (once again) on the certificate supply chain and crypto hardware.

I imagine in this age of blockchains you could embed into a media file a signature that proved it was no older than the timestamp of when it occurred, the digital equivalent of a hostage-proof-of-life photo with a recent newspaper But I don't know of a cryptographic mechanism to ensure that a digital image is not more recent than a particular time

> But I don't know of a cryptographic mechanism to ensure that a digital image is not more recent than a particular time

Many (most?) blockchain mechanisms include a timestamp in each transaction on the chain, so while multiple records from the same owner prove little (the timestamps could be faked over a given period of time) the interaction with the wider network and the chain would give some confidence that the record happened between within a small amount of time.

The other possibility, that doesn't require a chain with many independent active participants, is to have things signed by an external trusted authority. Submit a hash of the content and appropriate metadata to them, and have them sign it with a signing timestamp. I've considered abusing ACME certificates for document signing like that: the hash of content (or some signature based upon it) becomes the subdomain to sign¹ and you get a certificate that even after expiry is evidence that the CA saw that value at the signing timestamp. Note of the signing will also be in the public certificate transparency log. This wouldn't, on its own, prove anything about the authenticity of the content, that could have been doctored before signing, but it does prove that the content+metadata existed at that time (so might be more useful in copyright claim type cases, or agreed contract situations where all parties have signed the content and the signatures are included in the metadata, than for proving authenticity).

----------------

[1] based64²-ed with non-alphanumeric characters removed and truncated³ to fit or split, so acodha3sf7whsrhtqestkabtx0b4bbhyveee0ajnrpqcuxrjjvmhsujgcex.domain.tld or acodha3sf7whsrhtqestkabtx0b4bbhyveee0ajnrpqcuxrjjvmhsujgcex.w5jmmkpmyfgshx2jecsfordpnq.domain.tld

[2] names not being case-sensitive drops some of the entropy, if that is a concern use a 32-bits-per-character encoding instead and have names twice as long

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be - probably still are - cameras that would digitally sign all their images. Used in crime scenes? Maybe we will end up seeing wider adoption of this, despite the privacy implications. Hackers attention then will focus (once again) on the certificate supply chain and crypto hardware.

I worked for a company that made these. We sold expensive software to the FBI. Took about six months for someone to crack the hash.

"Crack the hash"? Does this mean you were employing some novel hashing algorithm and relying on its secrecy? If so your employer were never serious about security in the first place. Hardware attestation is more or less a solved problem, and that solution does not involve secret algorithms.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#39
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the US? Probably a large double-digit percentage of cases imo…

> large double-digit percentage This is a very very intense claim, and if true, would represent a monumental institutional failure across hundreds or even thousands of disparate organizations. Do you have any data to support your hunch? Strong claims require strong evidence.

I don’t know the numbers, but DNA exonerations give a bit of a natural experiment (where testable evidence was preserved).

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#40
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the US? Probably a large double-digit percentage of cases imo…

> large double-digit percentage This is a very very intense claim, and if true, would represent a monumental institutional failure across hundreds or even thousands of disparate organizations. Do you have any data to support your hunch? Strong claims require strong evidence.

Police in the United States is already in a state of "institutional failure"...
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