mugaliens said:Not as easy as Hollywood may lead people to believe, and certainly very time-consuming to get things to the point where most people could no longer tell it'd been manipulated. The Matrix was shot in far less time than it took for it's post-production special effects.
jarednjames said:Of course, I'd trust video over an eye witness any day.
You'd really want to do some damage to go out of your way and edit video for that purpose.
nismaratwork said:I'd add, what Freddie Wong can edit, another can find those telltales.
The trick is to remember that video evidence is often used as a means of identification or establishing a time-line... most crimes are not caught on video as they happen. There's also the matter of time: you can edit video quickly, but to cover your tracks well enough to not be hauled up on felony charges?... better be REALLY fast, and you need M.M.O. like any other crime. Generally speaking, video is collected VERY rapidly, and what if you edit 3 angles, but miss the ATM cam? Whooooops!
mugaliens said:It would definitely have to be explicitely intentional, and at that, you'd be leaving traces behind, such as:
One of the colleagues I worked with in the military had a brother who worked on visual effects for The Matrix. I never met his brother, but they were twins, and they had the same bug, as did I, so I got an earful. I even did a preliminary interview with the team in the hopes of doing an article on their network/storage requirements.
As for telltales, they're prolific. Given a single, ordinary picture involving a subject and it's background, if altered, there aren't just a few telltales, there are dozens, if not hundreds. Fuzzy logic and a host of algorithms available to video forensics can spot even a single pixel which appears to be out of place, given known RAW to JPG algorithms for modern cameras, and the same for chip to video compression schemas.
My point is, when you wind up with a video frame with pixels that cannot possibly have come from any known image using any known commercial video compression algorithm, you have a fake.
A corollary is that the only known way to fake a fake (to make it look real) is to alter the video, then stream it as if it were a camera feed, allowing for compression, and walla.
Problems: This means that it's an inside job, complete with access logs, and even then, my friends tell me there are ways of spotting this (they call it "older") trick.
So... Fake a video? Not likely.
Fake a real-time, date/time coded video stored on third-party servers with auditing seals?
Yeah, right. Figure that one out and wright your ticket to the next blockbuster movie hit.
As it is, police footage is largely (but not always) stored in a locked case inside the trunk. Either Internal Affairs or a similarly-dislocated unit reporting on high has access, and any unauthorized access would result in an immediate investigation as to how/why the LEO who signed out the vehicle allowed this to happen.
I think this is why you see so much police video, even that which incriminates the LEOs themselves, available on YouTube.
More than that, if you warp one video stream, telltales will be left, and if you warp a second stream, all it takes is one pixel of discrepancy to invalidate both video streams.
No, the only way I see of conducting the perfect video crime is...
"The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles [of protected First Amendment activity]. Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting the free discussion of governmental affairs."
But that's the Circuit Court of New England.Proton Soup said:oh, in case anyone missed it, it appears that it is currently legal to tape police when they are on duty. at least until it gets appealed, eh?
http://boston.com/community/blogs/on_liberty/2011/08/victory_for_liberty_and_the_ri.html
http://aclum.org/sites/all/files/legal/glik_v_cunniffe/appeals_court_ruling.pdf
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/08/30/first-circuit-upholds-right-to-videotape-arresting-officers/
i hope that puts the brakes on some of the crazy intimidation that's been going on. the republic is scaring me lately.
Evo said:But that's the Circuit Court of New England.
http://www.catea.gatech.edu/grade/legal/circuits.html
They can, especially if they have existing laws making it illegal. In other words do not assume that this ruling applies to you if you aren't in New England.Proton Soup said:yeah, i realize it's not very solid. but what does that mean exactly? those states in the court's jurisdiction may not safely ignore the ruling, but others are free to do as they will?
However, in federal systems the division between federal and local law may result in complex interactions. For example, state courts in the United States are not considered inferior to federal courts but rather constitute a parallel court system. While state courts must follow decisions of the United States Supreme Court on issues of federal law, federal courts must follow decisions of the courts of each state on issues of that state's law. If there is no decision on point from the highest court of a state, the federal courts must attempt to predict how the state courts would resolve the issue, by looking at decisions from state appellate courts at all levels. Decisions of the lower federal courts (i.e. the federal circuit courts and district courts) are not binding on any state courts, meaning that interpretations of certain federal statutes can and occasionally have diverged depending upon whether the forum is state or federal. In practice, however, judges in one system will almost always choose to follow relevant case law in the other system to prevent divergent results and to minimize forum shopping.
Proton Soup said:yeah, i realize it's not very solid. but what does that mean exactly? those states in the court's jurisdiction may not safely ignore the ruling, but others are free to do as they will?
Evo said:They can, especially if they have existing laws making it illegal. In other words do not assume that this ruling applies to you if you aren't in New England.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stare_decisis#Verticality