Comments on: Are fake videos next?

There's been a rash of fake photos on the Web. Now, a Dartmouth professor crafts tools to spot doctored video and audio.
Photo hoaxes

[iameline]

Lessons learned

Don't use jpeg if you're going to fake photos!

(Of course trying to fake it out at the raw level will be even tougher to do undetected.)

The real lesson is that you shouldn't fake photos and expect to go undetected. Experts will almost always be able to detect meaningful alterations -- they're usually alot smarter and more experienced in image and signal processing than the people doing the faking.

(Speaking as someone with 20 years of experience in that field, I doubt you could get a fake past me, assuming I had a few hours to examine the image closely.)

[herby67]

Problem is...

You don't need to fool the experts. Most of the time with fooling the general populace your objective is achieved. Publish an authored people of Bush torturing an Arab and 90% of the people (the same ones that forward chain mails believing they are for real, for instance) are going to believe it. And even if they later read the picture was fake (they'll probably not) their sentiments will already be altered (the brain has an ability for self delusion and self justification that can be very useful in spreading and maintaining FUD).So the real learning is: teach your kids not to trust what they see, be skeptic and treat every source of information as unreliable until proven true.

[dsherr1]

What part of "Wag the Dog" don't we understand?

Having just watched Part I of the ABC "Dramatization" of pathway to 9/11 with its disclaimers, I would say that faking videos isn't necessary. Distorted dramatizations are good enough to drive opinions. Shame on harvey Keitel for participating.