Schneier on Security

Seiran • December 14, 2010 5:00 PM

@BF Skinner, false positives based on eyewitness testimony might increase in the short term, but once these kind of cases are more prevalent and widely known, there is a corresponding increase in plausible deniability.

It was only a matter of time until humans’ favorite and most ancient biometric, the facial image, would be broken. Fingerprints are already clonable (search for “CCC Wolfgang Schäuble fingerprints”), and passable voice spoofing is available for high-level applications courtesy of Los Alamos National Labs (search for “I am being treated well by my captors”). It’s only a matter of time until the voice generator trickles down within reach of hobbyists, too.

There are already accusations of fraudulent “telemarketing” outfits editing phone calls to falsify verbal confirmation, by copying a customer’s “yes” from other portions of the call.

Photographic still evidence is already being called into doubt, mostly owing to the existence of Adobe® Photoshop® software and its ilk. Once 3D rendering technology advances to the point where an animated “security camera video” can be made forensically-realistic, we may very well see video evidence called into question. Technology could be on the way to enabling SFX forgery artists to frame or vindicate potential suspects. If and when this happens, it would hopefully lead to the inadmissibility of video as a reliable form of evidence.

I note with concern that courts have been known to accept printouts into evidence, but these can usually be backed by some original source, and any lawyer worth his or her carbon should be able to challenge any crucial evidence where there is a break in the chain of custody.

Eventually, on-demand DNA foundries will make genetic copying more accessible than ever. Should DNA evidence be tossed next?

“Your honor, the jury, I did not steal the cookies from the cookie jar. The video showing that I did that, is fake. I can tell by some of the pixels, and from seeing quite a few renders in my time. Secondly, most security camera footage is not widescreen. They do not have soundtracks. I would also like to note that the complaining witness used to work for Weta Digital, and is currently employed by The Walt Disney Company.”