A Very Real Problem Which Needs To Be Addressed By Courts and Legislatures - It's Now Possible To Manufacture Digital Evidence In All Aspects, To Order...

It means that no digital evidence should ever again be admissible in court, because it can be faked, even including indicia which have been used up until the present to demonstrate authenticity...

This is a real problem, there's going to be a need to abandon digital evidence altogether - because everything, including timestamps and chain of custody information, can be faked - produced ex nihilo, to order:

“There is a lot to criticize about the hype around AI, but there is no disputing the fact that this new technology lets us create things quickly that look like they were created by a human instructed to create them. Those short audio clips required relatively little input from the users to get a manufactured dialogue that sounds like what you would get from voice actors tasked with producing it.

More importantly, it requires far less time and expertise from the users than would be required to train human actors. Anyone who has played around with AI image generators knows this. With a little patience, you can create images as good as what a professional can create. In fact, the results are often better because the robot does not have an opinion of your idea.

That is the part that makes this new technology so dangerous. If you can innocently create an image that can fool a human, then you can not so innocently create something that fools a human. For example, crooked cops could create a fake image of the suspect or even a fake video of him doing the crime. Creating fake audio confessions would be something any cop could master.

…

It is not a big leap to imagine the FBI using AI to create fake audio recordings of their targets plotting a crime. They could create fake images of the target at the scene of the crime or even video of the target committing the crime. This technology is already at the point where it can imitate real actors in films. The guys faking real life conspiracies to entrap people will soon be doing it from their laptop.

This presents three enormous problems. One is obvious. We can no longer trust our senses to tell us what is real. More accurately, we must stop trusting representations of reality, like video, audio, and expert opinion. If video can be faked to the point where we can easily be fooled, then all videos are fake. The same applies to audio and even the written word. Anything that relies on technology is now fake.”

The Death Of Trust

Or the digital media profferred by the prosecution - or defense - as evidence may not be faked - but with the advance of technology, now there is no way to tell - or detect the difference. A single break in the chain of custody can render evidence inadmissible - with the technology we have now, there is no way - other than direct physical control of the computational resources used to interact with evidence - to detect any tampering - and that fact should make all digital evidence which has been in contact with any device capable of transforming it inadmissible as evidence - and that could include the means for collecting that evidence, given that most digital devices including cameras (still and video) and voice recorders are connected to the Internet and thus subject to hacking by third party actors or other interested persons. And now most court filings - including evidence in criminal cases - are done over the internet, and there have been numerous cases in which these filing and storage systems have been hacked - here’s a recent one involving state courts in Kansas:

“Cybercriminals hacked into the Kansas court system, stole sensitive data and threatened to post it on the dark web in a ransomware attack that has hobbled access to records for more than five weeks, officials said Tuesday. The announcement of a “sophisticated foreign cyberattack” was confirmation of what computer security experts suspected after the state’s Judicial Branch said Oct. 12 that it was pausing electronic filings. Until now, state officials had released few details, describing it simply as a “security incident.” A preliminary review indicates that the stolen information includes district court case records on appeal and other potentially confidential data, and those affected will be notified once a full review is complete, the statement said.

…

A risk assessment of the state’s court system, issued last year, is kept “permanently confidential” under state law. But two recent audits of other state agencies identified weaknesses. The most recent one, released in July, said “agency leaders don’t know or sufficiently prioritize their IT security responsibilities.”

…

In recent weeks many attorneys have been forced to file motions the old fashioned way — on paper. “This assault on the Kansas system of justice is evil and criminal,” the statement said. “Today, we express our deep sorrow that Kansans will suffer at the hands of these cybercriminals.” https://apnews.com/article/kansas-courts-cyberattack-hack-network-offline-097a11cfa9de552ec5a9ea49b500d3d6

The real trouble is that the records in digital form could have been intercepted and altered - or entirely manufactured files could have been substituted - and there would be no way to detect whether that had been done. And this should by all rights be the end of the use of digital media as evidence or records, from here on out, they need to be in analog form or on paper.