alt Hacker NewsSpymarks just seem like another word for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography. On that note, one way we can prevent it is to assert that all our content is byte-for-byte identical with the last known trusted stage of what we have produced (for example: a camera we are certain does not watermark, an image editor we are certain doesn't watermark, an image compressor we are certain can't watermark, etc). One vector that I am particularly concerned about is social media. Most images and videos uploaded to most social media is re-compressed by the target platform. This is a door to tracking that is far too easy for social media platforms to open. They might rationalize it (if discovered/announced) by saying that our memes won't be reposted, images or work stolen, etc... but honestly I'd rather my work be stolen than tracking information inserted in there. Oh, we also have stuff which is way more secure, like time-stamped cryptographic signatures.
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> ... particularly concerned about is social media. Most images and videos uploaded to most social media is re-compressed by the target platform. This is a door to tracking that is far too easy for social media platforms to open.
This has been going on for a while with Facebook. They seem to embed custom metadata tags so that images shared outside the platform can be traced back:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31120222/iptc-metadata-a...
> Spymarks just seem like another word for https://en.wikipedia.org/…
Stop using links instead of words. Your comment is literally unreadable without going on to other websites.
This is a straightforward example of how the positive or negative valence of a piece of tech depends entirely on how it's used.
You just need to address three questions:
- who controls what information is going in? (that is, what is the process by which the tech companies who control all the tech are using it)
- who controls what information is coming out? (that is, is the steganographic format open enough that anyone can read it, or does it depend on having a key)
- what legal regulation is this subject to? (does sneaking individuals name and address into their photographs incur you massive GDPR liabilities when it is discovered?)
Note that there's a widespread precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
The vulnerability of steganography is that is has to pretend that signal is noise. Remove the noise - and the signal is gone. I'm pretty sure that the simplest gaussian blur will remove the spymark from any picture.
Or... add some noise. Just align the last bit of every pixel channel with a random bit sequence - and Bob's your uncle.
Spymarks an application of steganography, not a different name for it.
> On that note, one way we can prevent it is to assert that all our content is byte-for-byte identical with the last known trusted stage of what we have produced
That doesn't help with things like the typical use of SynthID where the spymarking is done by the same process generating the content, so there is never a clean comparator. (It also wouldn't be useful anytime it is inplemented as part of a transformation—compression, etc. —step, for the same reason.)