Thursday, July 31, 2008

The dangers of going digital

The advent of the digital camera is slowly running the photo-film industry into the ground. It is indeed more practical, and definitely more economical than taking photos with film. The photo-taker is given more room for error since he is able to see immediately the photos he takes, and in an instant he is able to edit for himself the shots he wants to keep in his “roll”. Because of this practical feature, and because the technology is becoming more and more accessible, nearly everyone takes photos using digital cameras. The benefits seem to outweigh the consequences.

An added bonus is that a digital image lends itself to “tweaking” more readily than a film image would. Now, because of software like Photoshop, people with minimal graphics know-how are able to sculpt and smoothen undesirable body parts, clear spotty complexions, even correct photography booboos that went undetected in the photographer’s snap-happy session. But developing a propensity for digitally altering images can also yield much darker results.

In the days of film it was easier to call out a fake or a “doctored” photo. All you had to do to was to check the original film or negatives to discover if there were any irregularities attendant to the taking of the photo or to the developing of the film. Now, it is so much more difficult to tell whether or not a photo has been digitally altered. Because the source file is itself digital, only the photo-taker can truly know if what is reflected in the final product is what he actually captured. Alterations are done much more subtly, the results, more believable. It is next to impossible to tell which images have been altered, and which have not. And there lies the danger. Only highly-skilled experts could really tell which is which, leaving the average person susceptible to the graphic sorcery that others may wreak.

Early in 2007, we read about “Reutersgate” when photographer Adnan Hajj of Lebanon, a freelancer who occasionally worked with Reuters was called out for digitally doctoring his photos in order to up their selling price and ensure that his work would be seen. His work, depicting images taken during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, were harmless enough. He had digitally altered aerial bomb shots to make them more dramatic, and altered a photo of a jet deploying a flare to look like it was being plagued by several missiles when it was not.

But what of more dangerous images? When Bush’s “War Against Iraq” began, tens of hundreds of images or American and British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners were posted online, breeding fear and inciting even more hate from the Iraqis. They were used as effective recruitment tools by the Al Qaeda. But not all of those images were real. In the latter part of 2000 a video of a young Palestinian boy named Mohammed-al-Dura who died in his father’s lap while trying to avoid Israeli bullets was streamed and circulated within minutes all over the world. After that, 2 Israeli civilians were killed by enraged Palestinians who claimed they killed to avenge the boy’s death. Hours after, many pieces of evidence surfaced that indicated that the entire footage may have been staged, and that the boy may not have died till much later. Who knows how many other people have died because incensed Palestinians were trying to retaliate in his honor? It is not merely the access to this kind of software that we have to worry about, but the access to high-speed internet that allows these images to circle the globe in a heartbeat. In Hajj’s case, he was fired from Reuters, but what of others whose mischief led to the deaths of innocent people? This is another thing that our cybercrime law will have to address

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