🚀 go-pugleaf

Rodger Coghlan writes:

>I was just thinking about the new vision phones that
>are (again) being marketed by AT&T (et al).  The vision portion is just 
>bits and bytes so you could tailor what someone sees when they call you
>by using a good graphics package, and a lotg of tinkerin 
>around and you could be anyone you wanted to be (just like on a MUD but
>with pictures).  I may not be articulating this very well.  For some
>interesting ideas you could read John M. Ford's _Web of Angles_. 
[etc.]

Sure, someone will figure that out.  

The question is, how can you ensure that a particular image has _not_
been altered?

One way is to receive an image by two methods, so that you
can compare them.

Would it be possible to send, as part of the image on the vision
phone, some kind of "thumbprint" or verifier-of-genuineness, so
that you know my image is really what I look like?  I think not.
You could pretty well depend on my ignorance or lack of skill
in distorting my image, but theoretically there's no way you could
know for sure that an image is what a person says it is.

In some "media" we have verification-of-genuineness by signature,
fingerprint, retinal-scan (in sci. fi. anyway), or password.  Generally
though, don't you have to take someone's word for it that a thing
is genuine?  Let's consider the obvious
example: the genuineness of the current message:  do you really know 
that "I" wrote it?  (In fact I _have_ been mis-represented in another
newsgroup -- I have no idea how my "signature" got inserted into one of 
their messages.)  A bank will sometimes ask my mother's maiden name,
and if I can supply that "password", they take it as a clue that I'm
who I say I am (when I call on the phone).  Dick Tracy used to use
voice-prints -- which I suppose could also be altered in the same
manner as you suggest.

What's real anymore?

I don't know why this thread is in alt.uu.future but it's been fun 
anyway.

Given a choice, for my image I'll be {famous person #1} or {famous
person #2} and then make that image do some wierd stuff.  Oh that 
reminds me, as a further assurance that it's really Leona or really 
Phyllis, you guess that anyone else would be scared they'll find out 
who did it (the fear-of-call-tracing-or-wire-tapping factor) 
(so that people won't distort images).

(not much assurance, if in a free country)

lehman@ames.arc.nasa.gov