# Would video evidence be reliable nowadays, with all the deep fake technology now?



## ironpony (Jan 5, 2020)

For my story, there is a leader of a group of criminals, and he has collateral evidence on all of them in case any decide to turn on him.  So it's like a if you take me down down, you are going down with me policy.  I wrote it so that he secretly videorecorded them comitting the crimes, which he will use as leverage on them.

However, with deep fake technology being so good nowadays, is video evidence even reliable in court now?


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## Ralph Rotten (Jan 5, 2020)

Yes because an expert can take apart video and tell if it was genuine or not.
Personally I would not rely on blackmail for this villain.
Like I said, you need to make this guy scary, physically imposing, casually violent.
This is a man who leads a gang of rapists. He would need to be a violent man, and to keep control of his gang he would also need to be tough.

Think about it; if you tried to blackmail a group of rapists, they would only have to gang up on you, and put a blow torch to your scrotum to get you to tell them where the tapes are hidden...and a gang of rapists are exactly the kind of people who would be willing to do that.

But if he is physically imposing, and the kind of monster that even a gang of rapists would fear, then they would be far less likely to disobey him...blackmail or not. 

You need a man who can go from laughing to murder and back in mere seconds. Make your readers fear this guy.


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## Foxee (Jan 5, 2020)

Okay, since you're asking writers rather than, say, police or detectives or maybe going to a tech forum and asking I'll give you an answer from fiction.

Michael Connelly, any of the Harry Bosch books deal with making sure evidence is verifiable to the satisfaction of lawyers in court. A criminal would have the same problem if the video ever was to be used. Of course, a criminal might not think about that...which is where the story goes one way or another.


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## ironpony (Jan 5, 2020)

Ralph Rotten said:


> Yes because an expert can take apart video and tell if it was genuine or not.
> Personally I would not rely on blackmail for this villain.
> Like I said, you need to make this guy scary, physically imposing, casually violent.
> This is a man who leads a gang of rapists. He would need to be a violent man, and to keep control of his gang he would also need to be tough.
> ...



Well it's just you see this kind of blackmail used by criminal organizations in fiction before.  And for the story to go where I want to it to, I need the blackmail to be in there, since it's a huge part of the plot and builds towards the ending I want.  So what can I do to make it work then?  Plus the leader of the gang is not really physically huge or anything, he is more of a villain that uses his brains rather muscle, like say a Hannibal Lecter type or of that sort.

Plus the gang members also know that the blackmail is for their own good cause then the members are all kept on leashes.  What good is it to torture the leader to get the collateral, only to have another member of the gang go off his leash then, and be more or a risk then, since their is leverage leash to have them on...


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## Ralph Rotten (Jan 6, 2020)

You actually think the members would be okay with being blackmailed?


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## ironpony (Jan 6, 2020)

Well it's happened before in fiction.  In a movie like Internal Affairs, the drug lord villain had audio recordings of his conversations, with his men and was using them as leverage, but his men didn't come after him for it.  It actually worked to keep them at bay.

But I think maybe they were okay with being blackmailed cause the blackmail demand was don't betray the gang.  So maybe they thought that that was acceptable demand?


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## Irwin (Jan 6, 2020)

If it helps your story, let it be unreliable.  

On most systems, there are backups of the original, so if you can confirm that the video matches the original, that would be verification that the it wasn't tampered with, or if it didn't match, proof that it was a "deep fake."


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## ironpony (Jan 6, 2020)

Oh okay thanks.  Well the way I have the story written is that the main character finds out about the leverage videos cause from recording a conversation between the villains about it.  So this is the evidence needed to bring the villains down for the ending I have.


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## Ketan (Jan 10, 2020)

Had to research this once - from a legal point of view, both sides have their shot at the video.  Each side will present "experts" - who will then either substantiate or try to discredit the video, just as they do with witnesses.  Preponderance of evidence and validity ultimately wins.


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## ironpony (Jan 11, 2020)

Oh okay, well in my story the video of the crime is real so as long as they can tell that it's real I guess it's good then legally.


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## epimetheus (Jan 11, 2020)

Deepfakes are an interesting topic and a fast evolving one - whatever you write about it now will likely be old news by the time you publish. One interesting aspect is that humans are now pretty bad at identifying deepfakes compared to machine learning techniques designed to detect it (humans have already gone from being able to spot about 90% of deepfakes to 53% in a few years). For AI detection methods it's an arms race. I've no idea about how this translates to law courts but i did find this article that focuses on legal aspects.

An advantage we currently have is that it takes hours of video to make a deepfake (i think the one of Obama needed 9 hours) - that will be hard to obtain for people who aren't famous, but that time will shorten as the tech matures.


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## ironpony (Jan 11, 2020)

Oh okay, well how about this... has there ever been a real life crime that was captured on camera where a person was arrested for the crime, but then it turned out to be a deepfake framing later?


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## luckyscars (Jan 12, 2020)

ironpony said:


> Oh okay, well how about this... has there ever been a real life crime that was captured on camera where a person was arrested for the crime, but then it turned out to be a deepfake framing later?



Doubtful. It could happen in the future but the technology needed to fake a video of a crime that stands up to modern forensic scrutiny isn't really there. It could be possible to deepfake something like a confession, but most guilty verdicts of capital crimes nowadays don't hang solely on one piece of evidence (so the video alone wouldn't be enough to frame an innocent party) and it's just so easy to debunk fake videos. Just because the average viewer could be fooled doesn't mean a police forensics team would be. 

Bear in mind: The whole reason we can identify deepfake videos is because they are quite easy to identify as such.


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## epimetheus (Jan 13, 2020)

This was state of the art last year. Judge for yourself. Unless you want to explore technical, ethical or legal aspects of the technology in your story there's little reason to even mention it.


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## Sam (Jan 13, 2020)

That's what expert testimony is for.


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## ironpony (Apr 10, 2020)

Oh okay.  Do you think that it's a plot hole then since it was pointed out in this post?  Would it not make sense to keep leverage on members of your group if they are just going to torture you for it?



Ralph Rotten said:


> Yes because an expert can take apart video and tell if it was genuine or not.
> Personally I would not rely on blackmail for this villain.
> Like I said, you need to make this guy scary, physically imposing, casually violent.
> This is a man who leads a gang of rapists. He would need to be a violent man, and to keep control of his gang he would also need to be tough.
> ...


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