When these horrible, barbaric atrocities are committed by maniacal groups who then broadcast videos of the deeds, I hear “the US government has authenticated the video” or *“has not authenticated the video yet.” *
How does the gummint authenticate such a film? Is it a techie thing involving the video itself, or a political behind-the-scenes diplomatic thing or what?
CIA and the like.
Yes, but HOW do they confirm the authenticity?
That’s what I’ve always presumed it meant. They have access to experts who can tell if it’s special effects and ketchup, or a real beheading and real blood.
Depends on what they are “authenticating”. I don’t think you’ll usually hear them say something is or isn’t straight out - well certainly not “is”.
As already mentioned they have “experts” to say whether or not something looks real, but sometimes what they are confirming is whether or not such and such came from such and such group.
I do t think there is some organization somewhere that puts a stamp “authentic” on something. In some cases the FBI - if they have access to the actual equipment or such - can do forensics on it, but nowadays it is more likely to be an emailed/texted photograph or video.
They will look for stuff like accents, clothing, associated info (like IP address where uploaded to YouTube) to try and see if it jives with what they know.
If it is a video - even trying to confirm whether it is part of the same event can be challenging, but they might be able to say stuff like:
“We know this was taken during the attack on XYZ, but don’t know if it shows the death of john smith.”
“We know this shows John Smith, but can’t confirm when it was taken.”
“We know this was released by Al Qaeda, but can’t confirm its contents.”
Some of the fancier type forensics type stuff they could use:
Is trying to tie a camera to a specific photo. So if they know that photographer X is suspected of taking photograph Z - and they have other pictures the know are from X - they can sometimes match up or exclude a camera from consideration.
If they have example photos of an individual - they can try and do facial recognition.
Most of the time when you hear this - it is usually (if my recollection is correct) more a perfunctory thing to stall for time. It is often no different than “this is part of an ongoing investigation and we will wait to get all the facts before responding”.
“Authenticate” just sounds much more professional than “waiting for his buddy to call us back to see if it looks and sounds like him.”
Good points.
This is the kind of thing I’m talking about. If you Google
ISIS videos real or fake
you get a lot of discussion.
For example, a CNN article says,