Podcast
Root Causes 336: Digitally Signing Images on Cameras


Hosted by
Tim Callan
Chief Compliance Officer
Jason Soroko
Fellow
Original broadcast date
October 3, 2023
A recent press release discusses efforts of camera manufacturers and the digital imagery supply chain to create an ecosystem for digitally signed images. We describe what such an ecosystem would do, where it could do in the future, and the advantages and limitations of these schemes.
Podcast Transcript
Lightly edited for flow and brevity.
That’s the world we are living in right now. I don’t think that that’s ever gonna go away. It’s not like all content will be digitally signed because modified images are the reality. In fact, I was trying to think of analogy, Tim, but the fashion model magazines, for example, what image hasn’t been retouched ten ways from Sunday from its origin from the camera.
You can still digitally sign it saying, hey, you know, Studio X has professionally prepared this image for a magazine cover and we’ve signed it and therefore it is a copyrighted piece of material that’s gonna be on the cover of a magazine. That’s terrific. So, that can be signed. But on the other hand, still, the majority of what you are going to be looking at is gonna be unsigned. And not only that, most people consume their imagery in a way where you don’t even have the infrastructure to check the signing mechanism.
Now maybe that starts with a high-end SLR from Canon. Maybe that’s where it begins. And a deal with Thomson Reuters and maybe that’s how you get a footprint and you start expanding. There’s just a lot of distance between this particular solution set and something that helps you and me know that a picture we see of someone famous is real. Right?
And so, you just mentioned an image and a browser. There might be an ecosystem there for verifying signatures. Ok. Great. I seriously doubt you are gonna have that with audio.
So, the point here we are trying to say is that hooray, PKI becomes even more ubiquitous and it has an absolutely valuable purpose but don’t read these articles as deep fakes will be solved anytime soon – first of all – or even at any point in the deeper future. I think it’s here to stay and all the warnings Tim and I have given you, keep it in mind.

