As we move forward through the pandemic, I find myself with more time looking at problems that may be faced in the years to come. With the impending election, one issue is the use of fake videos and pictures to mislead people about the actions of politicians and candidates. Some of these fakes have already turned up on social media and have caused some level of consternation among both parties. A couple years ago, an article talked about how dangerous this new weapon could be. (See Here) How do we detect and defend ourselves from these productions? The early examples have been of moderate quality but it is a matter of time until the production improves plus there are many who would believe any video or picture without any attempt at validating the data. For those, I am afraid no technical validation would help – their confirmation bias will simply not allow their minds to discount any evidence to the contrary. In addition, we see an increasing need to protect data from external and internal threats – therefore, the increase in encryption has proliferated.
The combination of these two needs could indicate a common use option. I have started to engage in more conversations about file encryption to secure critical communications. Microsoft Office in most of its iterations has supported file-level passwords (with some level of encryption) but what if the same technology used in Self-Encrypting drives was implemented on cameras and video production? For example, when a picture is taken – the camera user is prompted to protect the original file. If they chose to do so, the file is encrypted and a hash of the file is stored within to validate the picture. This file wrapper could also be applied separately to the metadata of the file – therefore information about when and where the file was created would be encrypted and a validation hash stored. The metadata would be linked with the original picture/video as well. Then, either the metadata or the picture/video could be shared by the owner. This could also assist with copyright uses so that a file without validated data and metadata would not be considered a legal copy. As with most ideas, it has some holes but i believe the time will come when we will have to find a way to validate and protect pictures and videos at inception in order to believe what they contain.