Digital signature as a means of non repudiation is exactly the way this should be done. Any official docs or releases should be signed and easily verifiable by any public official.

I have said for years all media that needs to be verifiable needs to be signed. Gpg signing lets gooo

Huh. They actually do something right for once instead of spending years trying to ban A.I tools. I'm pleasantly surprised.

Yeah good luck getting to general public to understand what “cryptographically verified” videos mean

I don't blame them for wanting to, but this won't work. Anyone who would be swayed by such a deepfake won't believe the verification if it is offered.

Fucking finally. We've had this answer to digital fraud for ages.

It would become quite easy to dismiss anything for not being cryptographically verified simply by not cryptographically verifying.

I can see the benefit of having such verification but I also see how prone it might be to suppressing unpopular/unsanctioned journalism.

Unless the proof is very clear and easy for the public to understand the new method of denial just becomes the old method of denial.

This doesn’t solve anything. The White House will only authenticate videos which make the President look good. Curated and carefully edited PR. Maybe the occasional press conference. The vast majority of content will not be authenticated. If anything this makes the problem worse, as it will give the President remit to claim videos which make them look bad are not authenticated and should therefore be distrusted.

the technology to do this has existed for decades and it's crazy to me that people aren't doing it all the time yet

Why not just official channels of information, e.g. White house Mastodon instance with politicians' accounts, government-hosted, auto-mirrored by third parties.

You mean to tell me that cryptography isn't the enemy and that instead of fighting it in the name of "terrorism and child protection" that we should be protecting children by having strong encryption instead??

When it comes to misinformation I always remember when I was a kid I'm the early 90s, another kid told me confidently that the USSR had landed on Mars, gathered rocks, filmed it and returned to earth(it now occurs to me that this homeschooled kid was confusing the real moon landing.) I remember knowing it was bullshit but not having a way to check the facts. The Internet solved that problem. Now, by God , the Internet has recreated the same problem.

I think this is a great idea. Hopefully it becomes the standard soon, cryptographically signing clips or parts of clips so there's no doubt as to the original source.

Government also puts backdoor in said math, gets hacked, official fakes released

what if I meet Joe and take a selfie of both of us using my phone? how will people know that my selfie is an authentic Joe Biden?

I've always thought that bank statements should require cryptographic signatures for ledger balances. Same with individual financial transactions, especially customer payments.

Without this we're pretty much at the mercy of trust with banks and payment card providers.

I imagine there's a lot of integrity requirements for financial transactions on the back end, but the consumer has no positive proof except easily forged statements.

We need something akin to the simplicity and ubiquity of Google that does this, government funded and with transparent oversight. We're past the point of your aunt needing a way to quickly check if something is obvious bullshit.

Call it something like Exx-Ray, the two Xs mean double check - "That sounds very unlikely that they said that Aunt Pat... You need to Exx-Ray shit like that before you talk about it at Thanksgiving"

Or same thing, but with the word Check, CHEXX - "No that sounds like bullshit, I'm gonna CHEXX it... Yup that's bullshit, Randy."

This is sadly necessary

Official Joe Biden NFTs comfirmed

So should Taylor Swift

I've been saying for a long time now that camera manufacturers should just put encryption circuits right inside the sensors. Of course that wouldn't protect against pointing the camera at a screen showing a deepfake or someone painstakingly dissolving top layers and tracing out the private key manually, but that'd be enough of the deterrent from forgery. And also media production companies should actually put out all their stuff digitally signed. Like, come on, it's 2024 and we still don't have a way to find out if something was filmed or rendered, cut or edited, original or freebooted.