Reply to post: Background Electrical Hum and digital signing of pictures

Help. The political process is corrupted, full of lies and state-sponsored deep fakes. Now Microsoft's to the rescue

Eclectic Man Silver badge

Background Electrical Hum and digital signing of pictures

I understand that everywhere on Earth there is a 'Background Electrical Hum'. The BEH is unique to the location and the time and is present on any recording. Deep fake videos can be detected by isolating the BEH from the recording and checking it for continuity. Basically as the BEH is an analogue signal, any breaks in it indicate some editing process has happened, and where in the recording it happened. This should be detectable in high quality videos, but I don't know how easily, or how much processing is required.

I also remember years ago when professional quality digital cameras arrived, Canon at least (and probably Nikon too) provided add on devices to digitally sign each frame to prove authenticity. This faltered as almost every photograph used by 'the press' (even, I suspect those on the venerable and highly esteemed Register) are edited in some way, if only by cropping.

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