‘It was extremely pornographic’: Cara Hunter on the deepfake video that nearly ended her political career
The Irish politician was targeted in 2022, in the final weeks of her run for office. She has never found out who made the malicious deepfake, but knew immediately she had to try to stop this happening to other women
Politics is not going to be able to stop this. Sorry and all that but it just isn’t. The tech exists, it will be used because there are bad people out there.
The only solution – and it’s the one that will happen just because that’s the way the world works – is that in a decade or three we’ll simply accept that video evidence is not evidence. Too easy to fake therefore that’s that – we’ll just, as a society, assume that it is faked. It will all be as convincing as cutting out a face from a photo and sticking it on a Page 3 girl.
Doesn;t help people today when it’s maybe and about believable that something might not be a fake. But as I say the solution, the end point, is going to be that having film of something just isn’t proof of anything at all other than a few command lines.
Did she not try the defence
“This is a picture of my arse. It looks nothing like the one in the video.” ?
Quite. The days of ‘pics or it didn’t happen’ are over.
On the other hand, the existence of deep fakes is a gift to no-goodniks. If a real video emerges all he has to do is say, ‘Well done to whoever made that. If I didn’t know better I’d say it almost looks real.’
There is usually metadata related to the video, which may conflict with the narrative. The cops, at least some forces, are getting better at analysing this stuff.
There’s cryptographic technology that can provide proof that a picture or video was captured by a particular device (and generally where and when) – similar to NFTs.
How long til metadata can be faked? Then “orthodata?” Then “paradata?”
Lot of Irish posts today. One on its domestic politics & one on its colony in mainland Britain.
I’m assuming there will be some flailing around at “solutions” like trying to get markers put into all videos. This will go nowhere but might keep some box tickers in jobs for a bit.
I tend to agree with your conclusion Tim but its part of the drumbeat of attempts to regulate and censor internet discourse at the supranational level. The article such as it is doesn’t seem too horrendous. She’s far less objectionable than any Guardian columnist but no doubt this will keep a string of jobsworth at the Irish, EU and other Supranational bodies on the gravy train for a few years, all at our expense.
I noticed in our local news, Spain along with other European countries will soon be getting a backdoor into communications on Whatsapp & other communications apps.So goodbye to cryptographic security.
BiS – you can’t be a totalitarian state (And the EU is or certainly wants to be) unless you have control of your subjects and the EU Parliament is almost akin to the North Korean State assembly. The commission is absolutely identical to its DPRK counterpart other than having a more tedious line in language.
There seems to be an argument going on in Europe about who’s going to implement it. Spain, France, Ireland. etc want to. The North-Eastern Europeans don’t. And there’s fence sitters. Be interesting to see what happens if Orban digs his heels in.
Brussels may want to be a totalitarian state but several of the nations don’t. I wouldn’t count on Spain, other side of next election. Nor France. Germany?
They are detached from reality. All major social media platforms are from US. Trump has told EU US companies will not be dictated to by EU. Severe tariffs threatened. So I think all this talk is posturing, and nothing is actually going to happen.
The technology behind WhatsApp doesn’t allow even WhatsApp to access the content of messages. They rely on this to resist demands from the EU and similar clueless organisations. The EU can (try to) ban WhatsApp, but there are other (often less reputable) alternatives with the same features.
EU occasionally talks about home grown media platform, but no one seems to be developing one. Probably because specifications must include a gazillion hooks for government to control it. Perhaps EU will contract an American firm to make them one (“selling the rope . . .” stuff).
The technology behind WhatsApp doesn’t allow even WhatsApp to access the content of messages.
That’s a bit of Meta puffery. Messages are encrypted ONLY during transmission but on the devices at either end (sender and receiver, and presumably on the WhatsApp back-up) they are en clair as a prolific, but previously unsuspected, drug dealer recently discovered when he was convicted on the basis of WhatApp messages found on his computer.
Well, yeah – if the communication remained encrypted on the phone, it would be a bit pointless, wouldn’t it! WhatsApp (or your phone company) could capture the encrypted transmission, but lack any means to decrypt it. You can always intercept anything if you have control of the end points, but that’s nothing to do with WhatsApp.
I recall the fun that ensued when Theresa May became PM. There just happened to be a pornstar called Theresa May, and some interesting images appeared when that name was googled………
p.s. wasn’t there some row about a cartoon of TM doing / having something done to her?
One of the things I admire TM for is that she in fact met the other TM and they had a very sensible chat. Think I recall that correctly…..
As opposed to the politician about whom I find nothing to admire.
The “glamour model” spells her name without an H.
Thing is, it’s been this way for some time. If you want veracity you have to shoot on film and hold the original.
Michael Crichton, again.
He did a murder story where the video was faked. Even the reflections caught on shiny bits were faked differently.
Something about a Japanese corporation?
Read it a long long time ago.
That was Rising Sun. I only ever saw the film version.
Rising Sun – great book, not a very good film (apart from Sean Connery’s performance). Several others of his novels are rather prescient – ‘Airframe’ and ‘Disclosure’ in particular. though they’ve not been given the big screen treatment.
Thanks both for recalling the title. Much appreciated.
I enjoyed ‘Airframe’ too, but it was too much like a documentary rather than fiction, being in the biz at the time.
There was a film of Disclosure – Demi Moore, Michael Douglas, Donald Sutherland. Did very well at the box office.
Zoom in on that reflection, flip, straighten, uncrop.
Looking at the clothed photos of this woman, if you’d told me she did porn, I wouldn’t question it. She’s “porn hot”, nice tits, lots of work on the hair, makeup, big earrings, dresses like she’s meeting the girls for a latte. Unsurprisingly, someone wants to make wank fodder out of her.
And it’s telling about the general lack of seriousness in politics. Barbara Castle and Mrs Thatch dressed like they were going to do serious work. A professional level of appearance. Few men were spanking the money to Teresa Gorman (there was something hot about her, though).
Takes all sorts, I suppose.
Not my oddest choice. Margo over Barbara in The Good Life.
I can go with that.
Agreed, that picture with the low cut T-Shirt doesn’t say serious women wanting to be taken seriously about policy.
Teresa Gorman would be a challenging wank.
Theresa, bless her, knocked 10 years off of her age in order to get selected as candidate.
One day someone will do a deep fake of a Muslim politician insulting Muhammad and something bad will happen to the politician.
There’s an idea…
TRB album cover stencil, “Not To Be Sprayed on Bus Shelters”
You may have a prescient concept here.
There have been a number of people stoned or pushed off buildings in islamic countries due to someone saying they disrespected the koran or said something about Mohammed.
No investigation of course, just a mob. One wonders how many of those were potential rivals or similar. Likely pretty much all of them.
that nearly ended her political career
She’s 30 and has been in politics for 6 years (!). She shouldn’t have a political career, she should be working on the perfume counter or something.
She is the youngest ever elected female politician in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Voting for dumb people with no experience of life is part of the cancer that’s eating politics. Chisel past the sedimentary layers of makeup and spray tan and there’s nothing there except another clueless talking head looking for attention and money while delivering zero value.
Thanks for the photo, Steve
“Nearly ended her political career”. Well, as one door closes…
Incidentally, the advert under my comment starts with the line “For older men”. Could say the same about the photo.
Nowt new here.
During voting season, it’s normal practice in Ireland for politicians, both existing and aspiring, to have large colourful posters up in their region featuring leery grinning snaps of themselves, with vacuous captions inscribed, such as “Vote for Michael Healy-Rae sure, and he’ll turn ye over”.
Some years ago, a Galway hopeful with the name Anne Rabbitte had her collection of mugshots plastered up, despoiling the countryside.
Driving through Ballynakill one morning, I was taken aback to see one such snap showed Ms. Rabbitte newly demonstrating the art of fellatio.
Some local wag had added quite a realistic portrayal of the male genitalia in a (very) largely tumescent state.
Blimey you want vacuous, Austrian politicians are experts at it. I think it was the late Thomas Klestil when running for President had the slogan “I am in favour of more fairness.” On his posters
If his socialist opponent had said “I like puppies.” He’d have romped it.
She should have gone into politics in Italy – they elect pornstars.
In USA legal, there’s an art to establishing evidentiary foundation for pics and videos to be admitted in court.
Well, there used to be.
Used to be, you could fairly well establish – technically, competently, accurately – which camera shots were true and unsullied, through various measures.
Now, not so. Now, any vid – any cop bodycam, any surveillance footage, any whatever – can no longer be examined and pronounced “real.”
So the danger becomes, we now switch back over to a subjective basis for acceptance of evidence versus the objective one that we were approaching. (Objective obviously being better, of course, as most all parties had to admit evidence is real.)
Now it will be real if it’s “from a trusted source.” And, to courts, that will mean from cops. And to people like me – ex-defense lawyer – it will specifically NOT be that.
So court is going to go back to being uncomfortable again until we figure this out. It’s one thing to lose a defense case to good evidence. It sucks to lose to possibly manufactured evidence.
There’s cryptographic technology that can provide unforgeable proof that a picture or video was captured by a particular device (and generally where and when) – similar to NFTs.