Minnesota activist releases arrest video after manipulated White House version

Posted by petethomas 17 hours ago

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Comments

Comment by Aurornis 16 hours ago

The current link is basically devoid of information, but clicking through to this page shows the two pictures with a slider to move between them: https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-levy-armstrong-crying-...

The differences are not subtle

Comment by autoexec 16 hours ago

Of course they darkened her skin color.

Comment by kibbul4 15 hours ago

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Comment by krapp 15 hours ago

from where? What was the point at which law enforcement was putting out propaganda making suspects look whiter than they are?

Comment by kibbul4 15 hours ago

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Comment by krapp 15 hours ago

https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/coulters-law/

    Coulter’s tweet criticized the media for, in her perception, shying away from immediately disclosing the racial identity of a shooter when that person is not a white male, the typical identity of mass shooters in the US. The idea is that, due to their liberal worldview, the mainstream media deny evidence that might confirm conservative fears of Islamic terrorism in the US.
Oh, that's what this is about. OK. I knew you were working some kind of right-wing bullshit angle but you were being so obtuse I couldn't suss it out.

Anne Coulter makes a tweet and you lot call it "Coulter's Law" as if that means anything. Come with credible evidence or fuck off to Reddit.

Comment by nneonneo 15 hours ago

Don’t worry! According to the White House, it’s just a meme! Making up fake news is totally fine as long as you can say you’re memeing!

The WH using social media (X, Pravda Social) for official communication is highly deliberate - they get to declare post-hoc what is actually real communication and what is “just memes”. Of course it won’t make any difference to people amplifying the content. If the WH had to stick to traditional outlets for news they wouldn’t have this fig leaf to hide behind.

Comment by zahlman 11 hours ago

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Comment by cindyllm 11 hours ago

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Comment by the_gipsy 16 hours ago

I remember reading an article about how terrible AI could be in the hands of a regime like China's. What a time to be alive, I guess.

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Comment by bdangubic 15 hours ago

all this time we were “fighting China” and now we got China… except nothing gets done :)

Comment by salawat 14 hours ago

Evil transcends all borders, mate, and it all looks/sounds the same ultimately.

Comment by mattnewton 16 hours ago

I think we're never going to be able to have robust ai detection, and current models are as bad as they'll ever be. Instead we really need to have the ability to sign images on cameras that show these are the bits that came off this hardware unedited, that professional news outlets can verify.

But that's going to cost money to make and market all these new cameras and I just don't know how we incentivize or pay for this, so we're left unable to trust any images and video in the near future. I can only think of technical solutions and not the social changes that need to happen before the tech is wanted and adopted.

Comment by breve 16 hours ago

Sony cameras can sign still images and videos to vouch that they are not AI generated:

https://authenticity.sony.net/camera/en-us/index.html

https://www.sony.eu/presscentre/sony-launches-camera-verify-...

Ideally it'd become an open standard supported by all manufacturers. Which is what they're trying to do:

https://c2pa.org/

Comment by mattnewton 16 hours ago

Thank you, this is fantastic to know! I think we have to normalize requiring this or similar standards for news, it will go a long way.

Ideally we would have a similar attestation from most people's cameras (on their smartphones) but that's a much harder problem to also support with 3p camera apps.

Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 15 hours ago

More like I won't trust anything that doesn't come from a press photographer.

Comment by cmxch 15 hours ago

And what will make them more trustworthy?

Comment by ndsipa_pomu 3 hours ago

Their career prospects would vanish if caught doctoring images with AI. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of governmental employees.

Comment by 93po 15 hours ago

it doesnt really matter if you can just take a photo of an AI image that's been printed out

Comment by mattnewton 14 hours ago

That will look like a photo of a printout though. Seems easier to just hack the hardware to get it to sign arbitrary images instead.

Comment by throwaway89201 15 hours ago

This sounds like a good idea on its face, but it will have the effect of both legitimizing altered photos and delegitimizing photos of actual events.

You will need camera DRM with a hardware security module down all the way to the image sensor, where the hardware is in the hands of the attacker. Even when that chain is unbroken, you'll need to detect all kinds of tricks where the incoming photons themselves are altered. In the simplest case: a photo of a photo.

If HDCP has taught anything, it's that vendors of consumer products cannot implement such a secure chain at all, with ridiculous security vulnerabilities for years. HDCP has been given up and has become mostly irrelevant, perhaps except for the criminal liability it places on 'breaking' it. Vendors are also pushed to rely on security by obscurity, which will make such vulnerabilities harder to find for researchers than for attackers.

If you have half of such a 'signed photos' system in place, it will become easier to dismiss photos of actual events on the basis that they're unsigned. If a camera model or security chip shared by many models turns out to be broken, or a new photo-of-a-photo trick becomes known, a huge amount of photos produced before that, become immediately suspect. If you gatekeep (the proper implementations of) these features only to professional or expensive models, citizen journalism will be disincentivized.

But even more importantly: if you choose to rely on technical measures that are poorly understood by the general public (and that are likely to blow up in your face), you erode a social system of trust that already is in place, which is journalism. Although the rise of social media, illiteracy and fascism tends to suggest otherwise, journalistic chain of custody of photographic records mainly works fine. But only if we keep maintaining and teaching that system.

Comment by 5 hours ago

Comment by direwolf20 15 hours ago

Then you can have a signed picture of a screen showing an AI image. And the government will have a secret version of OpenAI that has a camera signature.

Comment by matthewaveryusa 16 hours ago

realpolitik time folks:

First do a left-right on the link that Aurornis posted [1]. Notice the extra fat in the chin, the elongated ear, the enlarged mouth and nose, the frizzlier hair, the lower shirt cut.

You hate it. You think, intellectually, that this shouldn't work and surely no one would have the gall to so brazenly do this without the fear of being caught and shamed. And then you think, well once the truth is revealed that there will be some introspection and self-reflection on being tricked, and that maybe being tricked here means being tricked elsewhere.

Well someone, in an emotionless room, min-maxed the outcomes and computed that the expected value from such an action was positive.

And here we are.

https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-levy-armstrong-crying-...

Comment by knowsuchagency 12 hours ago

Why was this flagged?

Comment by youngtaff 5 hours ago

Because some of the HN readers flag anything to do with US politics — jgc for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46693887

Comment by zahlman 11 hours ago

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Comment by f1restar 8 hours ago

You either haven't seen the post, or are being disingenuous.

In case some readers haven't seen it, the altered image (crying & wailing, instead of calm & resolute) was posted by the official white house account with the following overlay text:

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ARRESTED FAR-LEFT AGITATOR NEKIMA LEVY ARMSTRONG FOR ORCHESTRATING CHURCH RIOTS IN MINNESOTA

---

The post is a reply to one made by the same account half an hour earlier, with the following text:

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MINNESOLA ARRESTS Attorney General Pamela Bondi @AGPamBondi

Minutes ago at my direction, @HSI_HQ and @FBI agents executed an arrest in Minnesota.

So far, we have arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong, who allegedly played a key role in organizing the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

We will share more updates as they become available.

Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP.

UPDATE: A second arrest has been made at my direction. Chauntyll Louisa Allen has been taken into custody. More to come.

WE WILL PROTECT OUR HOUSES OF WORSHIP

---

Obviously a joke, and we're stupid for not seeing it as one, eh?

This manipulative crap may have worked when you were in high school, but any adult with a "sense of humour and critical thinking skill" (as you put it in your other comment), would see through the ruse.

It's funny, because this exact way of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place. Obviously he was joking when he said he would do all those terrible things!

Comment by TFYS 9 hours ago

The government "just mocking people" is already disgusting behavior that belongs to failed states, but it's not even that, it was clearly just propaganda to make the opposition look weak. If it was a "meme" they should've said so in the post before being called out.

Comment by 28304283409234 7 hours ago

Except that now our fancy silicon valley tech is used. So we can discuss the tech, but not the social impact of it.

Comment by xrd 16 hours ago

Can I opt out of using my taxes to create memes? If Trump wants to use his cryptocurrency to shill for Truth Social I suppose I can't really complain. But, why do I have to pay for the department of meme wars?

Comment by 15 hours ago

Comment by camillomiller 16 hours ago

What else do you need, dear Americans? This is not who you are. Yet, by saying nothing, by thinking of tech as a neutral force, by working for the very companies that enable this, well, you are all silent accomplices.

Also, can someone explain to me why NOTHING of this is challenged in court or prosecuted? Where the hell is your judicial system?

Comment by gizmov21 16 hours ago

What, pray tell, can we do?

Tens of thousands of people are protesting and some getting arrested, anyone with a voice is doing what they can to sway public opinion.

Our higher courts are compromised (and feckless at times even when used correctly), and the police help ICE. And a large number of Americans do, in fact, want this. Others don’t care until it hits them personally.

So what specifically are people to do, like myself, who live in an unaffected area and who’s politicians are in fact speaking out against this?

Comment by autoexec 15 hours ago

> What, pray tell, can we do?

Vote better for a start. The amount of support this administration has is still way too high considering everything they've done and are doing. It's shaken my faith in humanity a bit to see how many of the people around me don't seem to actually value humanity.

Comment by zahlman 10 hours ago

> and the police help ICE.

The current discussion is about Minnesota, where this is very much not the case.

Comment by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3 hours ago

Comment by 3 hours ago

Comment by psadauskas 16 hours ago

And most Americans are just trying to survive, working 3 gig jobs for barely minimum wage, while the cost of everything is skyrocketing.

Comment by defrost 16 hours ago

Indeed.

With all the deepest respect toward the US citizens I know, have talked to, and those that don't support the current administration ...

Theres's now _zero_ respect for the US.

Yours sincerely, long time five eyes allies.

Comment by mvdtnz 9 hours ago

This is who they are. Source: reality.

Comment by 16 hours ago

Comment by anal_reactor 15 hours ago

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Comment by idibiks 15 hours ago

Your phrasing of the reality of democracy and voting is basically a less-polite version of where political science has been on the topic for 80ish years. The first half or so of that they spent trying to figure out some way that the stupidity and ignorance naturally balances out into… something that’s not scary. Law of averages, wisdom-of-the-crowd sorts of stuff.

They eventually (more or less) gave up, finding all their efforts at comfortable explanations unsupportable. Nope, it’s just luck, momentum, and the difficult of intentionally directing large chaotic systems keeping things tolerably sane. It’s, in fact, very scary and it’s astounding it works at all.

Comment by CamperBob2 15 hours ago

It’s, in fact, very scary and it’s astounding it works at all.

It no longer does. Social media was the tipping point.

Religion wasn't enough to break democracy, newspapers weren't enough, radio wasn't enough, TV was almost enough... but now, with social media as the proverbial last straw, the bug is fully exploited, completely unfixable, and likely fatal.

Comment by idibiks 14 hours ago

Oh, I agree. I think it more likely than not that we have invented a combo of technologies that produce an environment in which liberal democracy cannot exist outside maybe smallish countries with tight controls on incoming media from outside (so, also fairly tight foreign capital ownership rules).

The medium is the message, and I think the “message” of the global Web + social media + (now) generative AI may not include liberal democracy.

Comment by autoexec 15 hours ago

> turns out, majority of voters are dumb fucks.

In fairness, many people have been working hard for decades to turn as many people into illiterate dumb fucks as possible. We didn't get here accidentally.

Comment by kibbul4 15 hours ago

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Comment by direwolf20 15 hours ago

Why do you suppose they didn't?

Comment by lostmsu 15 hours ago

> It's not that big of a deal.

Comment by direwolf20 15 hours ago

[citation needed]

Comment by kibbul4 15 hours ago

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Comment by direwolf20 15 hours ago

I don't think they'd ever answer. They'd probably block you on X if you asked. Why do you think that is?

Comment by kibbul4 14 hours ago

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Comment by defrost 14 hours ago

It's blatant lying and misrepresentation by officials in a public office.

Sackable offence in many countries.

Principally those countries with a regard for law, order, fairness, transparency, justice, etc.

The question really is, why would this be acceptable in the USofA by any administration.

Comment by kibbul4 12 hours ago

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Comment by camillomiller 7 hours ago

You are a dangerous person, and part of why America is at the point it is. You are the degenerate. Disgusting. This woman is a civil rights ACTIVIST, arrested with NO CHARGES, for fuck's sake

Comment by kibbul4 5 hours ago

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Comment by camillomiller 10 hours ago

The fact that this community is thoroughly downvoting this conversation because it’s seen as political is quite a clear sign of how morally rotten tech people have become. Get out of your cocoons, cowards.

Comment by zahlman 11 hours ago

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Comment by burnt-resistor 16 hours ago

Corruption and fealty run deep, and so does Democratic impotency (except for about 100 clean ones, but it's not even close to enough to make a difference) because their corporate masters desire it.

Comment by kibbul4 14 hours ago

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Comment by cdrnsf 16 hours ago

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Comment by actionfromafar 16 hours ago

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Comment by mothballed 16 hours ago

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Comment by cmxch 15 hours ago

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Comment by 000ooo000 16 hours ago

Good news Satya, we finally found a use for all that electricity you're burning!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46718485