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Photographic Evidence is Dead

By Bruce R.

We have now witnessed the death of almost 200 years of photographic evidence. It is time to relearn what was so obvious to our ancestors: the SOURCE is as important as the content. "Do you trust or believe the source?" This can be a personal choice; we no longer have the convenience of "socially accepted" sources.

The mainstream media can not be trusted without question; they are polluted with corporate greed and control.
The government cannot be trusted, without checks; they are polluted with keeping control.
The non-mainstream sources can not be trusted without question; they are polluted with the desire for control.
People on social media sites can not be trusted; many repost fake news to get attention.
Individuals cannot be trusted, until you have seen, or heard about, their patterns of bias.

The old patterns of trusted sources have to be rebuilt. Luckily, we have some technological advantages that didn't exist 200 years ago: public/private key encryption makes it possible to build "webs of trust" that can be wider than your contacts. The bits of any digital files (text, images, videos, etc.) can be signed by individuals, so you can trust that those exact bits have not been tampered with after that person has signed them (see the Note at the end). Also, the chain of trust to that individual can be followed to help determine if that person can be trusted to have signed an untampered file. Yes, this can be complex, but it can also be simplified if groups want to build a reputation for being trustworthy by allowing audits and third-party witnesses who can verify that the images (or other evidence) match what they have seen.

This is a new age: all sources will always be questionable, and all the old sources must build up their reputations from ground zero with a verifiable audit trail. For journalists, this audit trail of sources could be kept private but still be auditable. People smarter than me know how to do this. In this new age, putting your trust in an unverified source is just plain foolish. "We are all being deceived."

So it comes down to a personal choice of who you will believe. The questioning of the sources will always be acceptable. It will become rude to not allow others to question, to see a verifiable "chain of trust". But even then, the chain will still end with individuals or organizations; do you believe they can be "trusted"? Reputation will become a precious commodity, as it was in the past.

My touchstone on evaluating my level of trust in someone else is that if they see no need to question their sources, I will rank them lower than people who question even "reliable" sources.

Signing

Note: The content, between the PGP signature markers, has been signed by my PGP Public Key. You'll need to download this html file and my public key to verify this text. If you know me, and you know this really is my public key, then you can trust that these are my words, including the typos.

For signing tools see: GNUPG and OpenPGP. Building a "web of trust" is documented with many articles.

Update - 2025-08-19

I watched this video: How to Spot Fake AI Photos | Hany Farid | TED - Jul 18, 2025

He lists 4 things that can be done to spot fake videos. The second one: International Standard for Content Credentials is being created to authenticate real image created at the source. Even with this, will you trust the source and the authenticating organization? Here is a list of some links I found related with a search for "International Standard for Content Credentials." People like touching up photos; will the standards have an audit trail for tracking the edited versions?

https://c2pa.org/
https://contentauthenticity.org/how-it-works
https://contentcredentials.org/verify
https://ifcpp.org/news/13462005
https://iscc.codes/
https://iscc.io/
https://opensource.contentauthenticity.org/docs/getting-started/
https://spec.c2pa.org/post/contentcredentials/
https://www.iso.org/standard/90726.html

URL: https://moria.whyayh.com/essay/photo-evidence.sh
Essay Home
$Source: /repo/local.cvs/app/essay/src/pub/photo-evidence.sh,v $
First draft: 2006/08/13
Last updated: $Date: 2025/08/20 05:11:42 $ GMT $Revision: 1.15 $