In all seriousness, it makes a ton of sense for the spooks be able to both spot and create good fake pictures. I'm sure it is a valuable trick of the trade in an industry where intrigue and blackmail are the norm rather than the exception.
This is mentioned in the OP's summary description, but just worth re-mentioning that this document comes from the CIA's professional journal, "Studies in Intelligence", a publication created to "support the development of intelligence as a professional discipline"
It was published in 1955 until 1992 (or at least, declassified), and 1400+ documents in this collection are available at the Archives.gov website. You'll even find some early NSA documents in it.
Edit: for some reason, I'm unable to perform searches within the aforementioned publication on Archives.gov...it gives me a "Search time exceeded" error...I don't know if that means the query timed out, or my browser/IP has spent the daily quota of archive browsing, or if archive.gov is feeling the HN effect...in any case, the articles I skimmed through are pretty fascinating and well-written. A few that might be interesting to HNers:
False captioning seems to be too easy to trace today with google image search and the general availability of photo materials in the Internet.
For example in the current conflict in Ukraine, Russian media has employed a lot of fakery, but the overwhelming majority of the times they were caught, they used false captioning.
Today it seems that no one will believe a clumsy photoshot jobs, however false captioning is potent as ever.
"Communists do not follow the rules when it comes to captions"
(For some reason this line in the article almost doubled me over with laughter. I guess it's hard to remember how bad the red scare actually was, but the repeat blanket statements about "communists" just struck me as funny.)
While biased, it is not unfair; There was only a limited number of Soviet publications and they were official official organs of either the Communist party or the government (obviously 100% communist party members). So it was that simple.
Of course, it would be unfair to communists living in democracies, since they often expressed their own personal views and a variety of party lines differing from the one in the USSR.
1969 was not anywhere near the "red scare" which was in the early 1950s. Anyone living in 1969 would have been well aware of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, in which a nuclear war almost broke out, and the USSR's brutal invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush the pro-democracy protests there. Pretty much the opposite of "funy."
Anyone reading this document would have known full well that "communists" in this context meant government officials of the USSR, North Korea, or China. All of those regimes had (and two still do) highly censored presses that were indeed not "careful with captions" -- or the lives of people who dared to expose the truth about the government in general.
Stalin was the worst mass murderer in human history, with Mao not far behind.
Between them they enslaved almost all of Asia and half of Europe, with no sign that they were content to stop there.
They had a nuclear gun pointed at the West's head for several decades.
But you think the "rhetoric" was "funny". Just paranoia, no doubt.
I've encountered this attitude before (generally, though not exclusively, among those who are too young to remember the heydey of the Marxist slave state), but never quite understood it.
So, tell us: just what more could they have done that would have made the threat serious?
Do you also read the Diary of Anne Frank and then post "LOL this girl really thought the nazis were after her haha" to Facebook? Because that is how you are coming across here.
It's interesting that an article about misreporting in the media is doing such a good job of misreporting (or at least being rather selective in its presentation of facts) itself. The reality is that all media
My single favourite bit of misreporting came from the UK's Sky News back in 2000, during the anti-globalisation protests in Prague. They had a reporter live in Prague talking about the protests and stating that the whole of the centre the city was in lockdown as the citizens were barricading themselves against the protesters. I may well have believed him if I hadn't been watching it sat in a coffee house in the centre of Prague at the time.
I didn't down-vote you(in fact I don't have the karma to do so), but I think the reason you were down-voted is because the intent of your statement is unclear.
What I think you're trying to say is that while false captioning _should be_(and indeed _is_) easy to trace(given modern tools), it is still more prolific and successful(potent) than you would have expected.
That said, your post reads like a train of thought, not an opinion.... You offer forth some conjecture, give an example, refute it, and then don't formally state your thoughts on the matter. It leaves us, as readers, nothing to respond to really...
Let me give you an example. I'm going to describe the same thing two ways.
a.)Bank robberies seem to be easy to stop today, with the multitude of security systems in place and general improved response time of law enforcement. For example, in the last decade multiple bank robberies were attempted and the overwhelming majority of them were foiled. It seems that no bank would be susceptible to a robbery, however robberies are as potent as ever. Check out these random sources I have relating to isolated cases of robberies [0][1]
[0]-source
[1]-source
b.) It's surprising to see that bank robberies are so potent given the multitude of security systems in place, as well as the improved response time of law enforcement. It seems that banks wouldn't be susceptible to robberies given the tools they have at hand, yet we have evidence of it happening regularly, I wonder why that is.
TLDR/In Short: You're offering us 'conjecture', that is; you're giving us your interpretation of how easy you think false caption detection should be(for the average pleb like myself), but you're failing to tell us why you have that opinion and then you exacerbate the situation by disagreeing with yourself.
Nice! I like that a lot better, in terms of my comprehension.
I get your point, can see that you have an understanding of the subject matter as well as anecdotal evidence to support it, and understand your thought process in reaching that conclusion.
It's almost a matter of empathy; when I read something online and don't immediately grok the point I tend to disregard it as invalid, when in reality I might very well be missing a well informed opinion that was simply not stated in a manner that I'm used to parsing.
Similar blatant fakery has been spotted in the NYTimes, pretending that different men where the same Russian Special Force soldiers by using low res imagery, while the hi-res version was quite easy to find on the net and clearly showed them to be different people.
20 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 44.6 ms ] threadIn all seriousness, it makes a ton of sense for the spooks be able to both spot and create good fake pictures. I'm sure it is a valuable trick of the trade in an industry where intrigue and blackmail are the norm rather than the exception.
It was published in 1955 until 1992 (or at least, declassified), and 1400+ documents in this collection are available at the Archives.gov website. You'll even find some early NSA documents in it.
Description of the series: http://research.archives.gov/description/6922330
Edit: for some reason, I'm unable to perform searches within the aforementioned publication on Archives.gov...it gives me a "Search time exceeded" error...I don't know if that means the query timed out, or my browser/IP has spent the daily quota of archive browsing, or if archive.gov is feeling the HN effect...in any case, the articles I skimmed through are pretty fascinating and well-written. A few that might be interesting to HNers:
- Observations on the Double Agent: http://research.archives.gov/description/7283476
- What it's like to be a CIA trainee: http://research.archives.gov/description/7284002
- Notes on how to estimate things: http://research.archives.gov/description/7283640
- Deducing the Soviet's atomic energy capability from a photo http://research.archives.gov/description/7283639
- Using Bayes Theorem for intelligence work http://research.archives.gov/description/7283645
For example in the current conflict in Ukraine, Russian media has employed a lot of fakery, but the overwhelming majority of the times they were caught, they used false captioning.
Today it seems that no one will believe a clumsy photoshot jobs, however false captioning is potent as ever.
For examples see these sources:
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/03/05/ukraines-activists-...
http://www.stopfake.org/en/
"Communists do not follow the rules when it comes to captions"
(For some reason this line in the article almost doubled me over with laughter. I guess it's hard to remember how bad the red scare actually was, but the repeat blanket statements about "communists" just struck me as funny.)
Of course, it would be unfair to communists living in democracies, since they often expressed their own personal views and a variety of party lines differing from the one in the USSR.
Yeah, really funny.
Anyone reading this document would have known full well that "communists" in this context meant government officials of the USSR, North Korea, or China. All of those regimes had (and two still do) highly censored presses that were indeed not "careful with captions" -- or the lives of people who dared to expose the truth about the government in general.
I'm not suggesting the Russians didn't abuse the Czechs.
It's just the blanket statements and rhetoric (yes, it is rhetoric) used in the article strike me as funny
Between them they enslaved almost all of Asia and half of Europe, with no sign that they were content to stop there.
They had a nuclear gun pointed at the West's head for several decades.
But you think the "rhetoric" was "funny". Just paranoia, no doubt.
I've encountered this attitude before (generally, though not exclusively, among those who are too young to remember the heydey of the Marxist slave state), but never quite understood it.
So, tell us: just what more could they have done that would have made the threat serious?
My single favourite bit of misreporting came from the UK's Sky News back in 2000, during the anti-globalisation protests in Prague. They had a reporter live in Prague talking about the protests and stating that the whole of the centre the city was in lockdown as the citizens were barricading themselves against the protesters. I may well have believed him if I hadn't been watching it sat in a coffee house in the centre of Prague at the time.
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Petty people who don't take the time to make an argument or don't have one to make might feel differently.
What I think you're trying to say is that while false captioning _should be_(and indeed _is_) easy to trace(given modern tools), it is still more prolific and successful(potent) than you would have expected.
That said, your post reads like a train of thought, not an opinion.... You offer forth some conjecture, give an example, refute it, and then don't formally state your thoughts on the matter. It leaves us, as readers, nothing to respond to really...
Let me give you an example. I'm going to describe the same thing two ways.
a.)Bank robberies seem to be easy to stop today, with the multitude of security systems in place and general improved response time of law enforcement. For example, in the last decade multiple bank robberies were attempted and the overwhelming majority of them were foiled. It seems that no bank would be susceptible to a robbery, however robberies are as potent as ever. Check out these random sources I have relating to isolated cases of robberies [0][1] [0]-source [1]-source
b.) It's surprising to see that bank robberies are so potent given the multitude of security systems in place, as well as the improved response time of law enforcement. It seems that banks wouldn't be susceptible to robberies given the tools they have at hand, yet we have evidence of it happening regularly, I wonder why that is.
TLDR/In Short: You're offering us 'conjecture', that is; you're giving us your interpretation of how easy you think false caption detection should be(for the average pleb like myself), but you're failing to tell us why you have that opinion and then you exacerbate the situation by disagreeing with yourself.
Let me start over:
* False captioning (FC) is easy to spot if you compare sources.
* Clumsy Photoshoping is too apparent today, at least for the internet crowd. Its plain for the eye to see, so to speak.
* While easily "debunked", for FC you have to read blogs or other media. Good photoshop jobs take a lot of effort and talent, FC is easy to do.
* Things were definitively different just 15 years ago. Viewers expected lower resolutions and photoshopping was that prevalent.
* In the end of the day FC seems to be preferred form of deception ("fakery"),
I get your point, can see that you have an understanding of the subject matter as well as anecdotal evidence to support it, and understand your thought process in reaching that conclusion.
It's almost a matter of empathy; when I read something online and don't immediately grok the point I tend to disregard it as invalid, when in reality I might very well be missing a well informed opinion that was simply not stated in a manner that I'm used to parsing.