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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34135 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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I’ve been wondering if generative AI will usher in a new appreciation for receipts. Something which will trace a “legitimate” film, soundbite or xeet back to its alleged author. If the NYT reports a police shooting, they should have the checksum for whatever bodycam footage they used. Or at least a way to follow those breadcrumbs back to whoever allegedly filmed the shot.

Then again, if the digital age has completely failed to bring this up for text documents, what chance does video have?

I am not proud that this came to my attention via the alpha/beta/etc. labeling in a certain story by 0HP Lovecraft.

I've wondered similar at https://www.themotte.org/post/440/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/85958?context=8#context , albeit overengineered a little.

containers for digital media (video, audio, hell why not text documents or tweets) that's trusted for public decisions must be cryptographically signed and checksummed by the originating device before it hits userland, and further signed by a trusted location service that claims the capturing device was actually present. Media without the container is considered not possibly trustable. Unpacking the container and doing ANYTHING to the contents, without the private key of the originating device, becomes detectable. The entire problem reduces to a) key management, which is merely moderately hard at scale, but made easier by centralized management for many (almost all?) mobile device, b) the trusted location service, c) protection against extracting the signing key of the originating device. Obviously this trades off significant amounts of privacy, but if you're submitting your film to the MSM to influence public opinion, that's maybe acceptable.

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