Detection of Overlapping Passive Manipulation Techniques in Image Forensics

With a growing number of images uploaded daily to social media sites, it is essential to understand if an image can be used to trace its origin. Forensic investigations are focusing on analyzing images that are uploaded to social media sites resulting in an emphasis on building and validating tools. There has been a strong focus on understanding active manipulation or tampering techniques and building tools for analysis. However, research on manipulation is often studied in a vacuum, involving only one technique at a time. Additionally, less focus has been placed on passive manipulation, which can occur by simply uploading an image to a social media site. This research plots the path of an image through multiple social media sites and identifies unique markers in the metadata that can be used to track the image. Both Facebook and Twitter were utilized on both phone and web applications to fully understand any differences between direct and secondary uploads. A full metadata analysis was conducted including histogram and size comparisons. This paper presents several differences and unique metadata findings that allow image provenance to be traced to an original image. This includes a review of IPTC, ICC, and EXIF metadata, ICC profile and Color Profile Description, Encoding Processes, Estimated Quality Values as well as compression ratios. A checklist of variables is given to guide future evaluations of image provenance

Icts, Social Media, & the Future of Human Rights

As communication increasingly shifts to digital platforms, information derived from online open sources is starting to become critical in creating an evidentiary basis for international crimes. While journalists have led the development of many newly emerging open source investigation methodologies, courts have heightened the requirements for verifying and preserving a chain of custody—information linking all of the individuals who possessed the content and indicating the duration of their custody—creating a need for standards that are just now beginning to be identified, articulated, and accepted by the international legal community. In this article, we discuss the impact of internet-based open source investigations on international criminal legal processes, as well as challenges related to their use. We also offer best practices for lawyers, activists, and other individuals seeking to admit open source information—including content derived from social media—into courts

Facial re-enactment, speech synthesis and the rise of the Deepfake

Emergent technologies in the fields of audio speech synthesis and video facial manipulation have the potential to drastically impact our societal patterns of multimedia consumption. At a time when social media and internet culture is plagued by misinformation, propaganda and “fake news”, their latent misuse represents a possible looming threat to fragile systems of information sharing and social democratic discourse. It has thus become increasingly recognised in both academic and mainstream journalism that the ramifications of these tools must be examined to determine what they are and how their widespread availability can be managed. This research project seeks to examine four emerging software programs – Face2Face, FakeApp , Adobe VoCo and Lyrebird – that are designed to facilitate the synthesis of speech and manipulate facial features in videos. I will explore their positive industry applications and the potentially negative consequences of their release into the public domain. Consideration will be directed to how such consequences and risks can be ameliorated through detection, regulation and education. A final analysis of these three competing threads will then attempt to address whether the practical and commercial applications of these technologies are outweighed by the inherent unethical or illegal uses they engender, and if so; what we can do in response