Albereth
Honorary Master
So two witnesses in the Motata case have claimed that digital data is easy to manipulate and vd Merwe (a professor from UNISA) says no special skills are necessary.
Quick recap - Motata was drunk, drove his car through a wall, and then hurled racist abuse at all and sundry. Oh, and he is/was a judge.
The chap who owns the wall used his cell phone to video record what was going on. He copied the stuff off of his cell phone onto a computer and now there is a debate in court about whether this is admissable evidence.
Enter the genius.
He claims that digital data is easy to manipulate, that you don't need special skills, and there is no way of determining its authenticity as there is no original against which to compare it.
My thoughts - digital data is easier to manipulate than analogue data but this doesn't make it easy. All those people who have their names at the end of the CGI movies do have skills. On proving that it is authentic, well I'd content that that component is irrelevant.
The defence does not want this evidence led in court as it clearly shws Motata, drunk, behind the wheel of the car that crashed through the wall, being rasist and abusive. If the digital video had been manipulated without skill, then there would destruction in the data. In which case the precution wouldn't be trying to have it admitted as it wouldn't show anything. The alternative is that the video was fabricated.
So, without skill, one chap recreated the scene, the people, and the sound track. Hmmm. A single frame on a CGI movie can take hours to days to render and needs a chunk of computing power. This chap invested millions to support his claim for damages for a garden wall worth a few thousand rands? I think not. He managed, again without skill, to draw a realistic likeness of Motata and is also a natural mimic in getting all the voices done just right too.
Oh, why did I say that comparing to an original is irrelevant? Well, in order to prove manipulation should either be very simple - there will be edits in the file being viewed, or the entire file had to have been rerendered to remove 'evidence' of edits in which case we're back to the considerable natural talents of the chap who made the recording and his significant investment in cgi equipment.
Quick recap - Motata was drunk, drove his car through a wall, and then hurled racist abuse at all and sundry. Oh, and he is/was a judge.
The chap who owns the wall used his cell phone to video record what was going on. He copied the stuff off of his cell phone onto a computer and now there is a debate in court about whether this is admissable evidence.
Enter the genius.
He claims that digital data is easy to manipulate, that you don't need special skills, and there is no way of determining its authenticity as there is no original against which to compare it.
My thoughts - digital data is easier to manipulate than analogue data but this doesn't make it easy. All those people who have their names at the end of the CGI movies do have skills. On proving that it is authentic, well I'd content that that component is irrelevant.
The defence does not want this evidence led in court as it clearly shws Motata, drunk, behind the wheel of the car that crashed through the wall, being rasist and abusive. If the digital video had been manipulated without skill, then there would destruction in the data. In which case the precution wouldn't be trying to have it admitted as it wouldn't show anything. The alternative is that the video was fabricated.
So, without skill, one chap recreated the scene, the people, and the sound track. Hmmm. A single frame on a CGI movie can take hours to days to render and needs a chunk of computing power. This chap invested millions to support his claim for damages for a garden wall worth a few thousand rands? I think not. He managed, again without skill, to draw a realistic likeness of Motata and is also a natural mimic in getting all the voices done just right too.
Oh, why did I say that comparing to an original is irrelevant? Well, in order to prove manipulation should either be very simple - there will be edits in the file being viewed, or the entire file had to have been rerendered to remove 'evidence' of edits in which case we're back to the considerable natural talents of the chap who made the recording and his significant investment in cgi equipment.
