Technology

You have it backwards. This is not too stop fake photos, despite the awful headline. It's to attempt to provide a chain of custody and attestation. "I trust tom only takes real photos, and I can see this thing came from Tom"

Not at all. From what I understand of this article, it wouldn't stop you from doing anything you wanted with the image. It just generates a signed certificate at the moment the picture is taken that authenticates that that particular image existed at that particular time. You can copy the image if you like.

This isn't DRM. I can't believe you have so many upvotes for such blatant FUD.

You're talking about "the whole truth". If the whole is true, then all of the parts are true, so photographing only a subset of the truth (framing) is still true. If a series of events are true, then each event is true, so taking a picture at a certain time (timing) is also true.

Photos capture real photons that were present at real scenes and turn them into grids of pixels. Real photographs are all "true". Photoshop and AI don't need photons and can generate pixels from nothing.

That's what is being said.

As I understand it, it's a digital signature scheme where the raw image is signed at the camera, and modifications in compliant software are signed as well. So it's not so much "this picture is 100% real, no backsies". Nor is it "We know all the things done to this picture", as I doubt people who modify these photos want us to know what they are modifying.

So it's more like "This picture has been modified, like all pictures are, but we can prove how many times it was touched, and who touched it". They might even be able to prove when all that stuff happened.

The point is that they can show anybody interested the original with the signature from the camera.

The problem is that you can likely attack the camera's security chip to sign any photo, as internally the photo would come from the cmos without any signing and the camera would sign it before writing it to storage.

Just like stealing an NFT.

It's signed, not encrypted. Think of it as a chain of custody mark. The original photo was signed by person X, and then edited by news source Y. The validity of that chain can be verified, and the reliability judged based on that.

Effectively it ties the veracity and accuracy of the photo to a few given parties. E.g. a photo from a known good war photographer, edited under the "New Your Times" newspaper's licence would carry a lot more weight than a random unsigned photo found online, or one published by a random online rag print.

You can break the chain, but not fake the chain.

I think you misunderstand what this does

It gives you a "certificate" that proofs that the Photo you took is genuine

It doesn't stop you from editing a Picture

I don't know about this specific product but in general a digital signature is generated based on the content being signed, so any change to the content will make the signature invalid. It's the whole point of using a signature.

I'm not expert in encryption, but I think you could store a key in the device that encrypts the hash, then that encrypted hash is verified by Leica servers?

And where do you see any resemblance to a blockchain?

From the article it is just cryptographic signing - once by the camera with its built-in key and once on changes by the CAI tool which has its own key.

It's one of the most obvious uses for it, I've suggested this sort of thing many times in threads where people demand "name one actually practical use for blockchains." Of course so many people have a fundamental hatred of all things blockchain at this point that it's probably best not to advertise it now. Just say what it can do for you and leave the details in the documentation for people to dig for if they really want to know.

It is a Leica.