She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all
Madi Hime is taking a deep drag on a blue vape in the video, her eyes shut, her face flushed with pleasure. The 16-year-old exhales with her head thrown back, collapsing into laughter that causes smoke to billow out of her mouth. The clip is grainy and shaky – as if shot in low light by someone who had zoomed in on Madi’s face – but it was damning. Madi was a cheerleader with the Victory Vipers, a highly competitive “all-star” squad based in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The Vipers had a strict code of conduct; being caught partying and vaping could have got her thrown out of the team. And in July 2020, an anonymous person sent the incriminating video directly to Madi’s coaches.
Eight months later, that footage was the subject of a police news conference. “The police reviewed the video and other photographic images and found them to be what we now know to be called deepfakes,” district attorney Matt Weintraub told the assembled journalists at the Bucks County courthouse on 15 March 2021. Someone was deploying cutting-edge technology to tarnish a teenage cheerleader’s reputation.
But a little over a year later, when Spone finally appeared in court to face the charges against her, she was told the cyberharassment element of the case had been dropped. The police were no longer alleging that she had digitally manipulated anything. Someone had been crying deepfake. A story that generated thousands of headlines around the world was based on teenage lies, after all. When the truth finally came out, it was barely reported – but the videos and images were real.
It's incredibly rare a patrolman has access to DF tools at all.
They aren't given to patrolmen. They have dedicated and specially trained units. Otherwise the evidence can be nullified.
Source: have worked in digital forensics.
There are several agencies that have some patrolmen doing on-scene digital forensics in the US.
Source: I currently work in digital forensics and have trained patrolmen.
On-scene stuff is a bit different. You're not doing the actual analytics on scene if you can help it, you're obtaining the evidence. Of course that still needs specialist training, you can't simply copy and paste shit, but it's very different to what goes on in the forensic lab.
Yeah absolutely. We're on the same page. Just pointing out that they're slowly rolling more tech out to the knuckle draggers which can be concerning if not done properly (and a lot of the time it isn't).
Indeed. I'd say the on-site guys really need training. Beyond working directly on the master image and writing to it or reporting false findings, there isn't as much that can be irrevocably fucked up in the analytics room.
Acquisition is a whole different story. One seemingly small fuck up and the evidence is toast.