The Andy Seidl Phenomenon

214255 Resource 187691 21 21 1223742376317 1231118822441 Controlled Video Technology: Seeing is not always believing

It used to be you needed the likes of George Lucas to make believable fake videos; not any more.

There's a great spoof video going around the Internet--or more accurately, a class of spoof videos--posing as a news story about an unknown presidential candidate taking the election by storm.  For example, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.news3online.com/index.php?code=46C237JiS34j81FQ0Ohr">I'm taking the election by storm</a>.Okay, obviously I'm not running for office.Now, I'm guessing that you understood the previous sentence to be true without flinching.  You did so based on a principle that I like to call the "Henry Kissinger's Wife Rule".  The idea goes like this:<blockquote style="margin-right: 0px;" dir="ltr">I know that Henry Kissinger's wife is not three feet tall.  Why?  Because if she were three feet tall, I would have known that fact by now.  But I don't know that fact.  Therefore, she is not three feet tall.</blockquote>So, if I were a serious candidate for president, you would have known it.  But you don't know it.  So, I'm not.But you did not know I was not running because of the quality of the spoof video.  In other words, the quality of the video would not cause most viewers to reject it has a fake.But what about this <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSAOQuLxSdY">Fox News video</a>?That's a little tougher call, eh?  The quality makes it believable and the Henry Kissinger's Wife rule is no help here.  (That is, Fox News might or might not do something like this.  And if they did, you would not necessarily know about it.)Now, here's the interesting ponderable...Stop and think about the first video suggesting that I was running for president.  That video was programmatically generated based on some very simple input (i.e., my name) that was entered into a web form by my not-quite-six-year-old daughter.  She's an very bright kid, but when it comes to technical knowledge about making believable fake videos, she falls considerably short of George Lucas.So, given the the rapidly advancing video technologies (that will soon make it possible to generate billions of mass customized fake videos for next to nothing), and given the undeniable willingness of certain classes of people to exploit technology for every imaginable purpose (e.g., selling pills, selling sex, stealing money, etc.), what types of fake-video-based scams are coming down the pike?Brace yourself. 9 application/xml false Andy Seidl fake video Fox George Lucas scam The Andy Seidl Phenomenon News3Online is your breaking news center http://www.news3online.com/index.php?code=46C237JiS34j81FQ0Ohr Who's That Hiding In My Fox 5 News Logo? Fox News is using subliminal advertising techniques... or are they? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSAOQuLxSdY Web Fraud 2.0: Fake YouTube Page Maker Helps Spread Malware | Washington Post A new Web Fraud 2.0 tool makes it a cakewalk for criminals to create fake YouTube pages in a bid to trick people into installing malicious software. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/09/fake_youtube_page_maker_helps.html What types of fake-video-based scams are coming down the pike? Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120121 Firefox/3.0.5 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 188081 false false true false false false true 214465 Resource 188081 173239 21 1224114287243 1224115259808 Controlled I'd vote for you

I'd vote for you, Andy. I'd love to see what the Seidl White House would be like (beer? free? yes?) :)

Back in the early 90s, whilst in college, I did a huge project on subliminal messages.  Back then, it was limited to TV ads, but mostly print media.  The fake video possibilities of today are mind-numbing.  As it is, we have advertising at the gas pump (and it scared the shit out me, BTW, when the pump greeted me and suggested that I treat myself to a pop), the ATM and zillions of other places.  Maybe next time, the pump will just show me something with a subliminal ad in it....ugh. 10 application/xml false Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 187691 blog blogsite/FASeidl/web