The Hidden Signs That Can Reveal a Fake Article

 

Science!

I didn’t even want to get up this morning, but I was doubly annoyed when I sat down at my desk at work, opened Firefox, and was immediately confronted by the day’s array of Pocket-curated propaganda aggregation. Worst – and therefore the one I naturally felt compelled to click – was a BBC Future piece, “The Hidden Signs That Can Reveal a Fake Photo”, which lured me in with the infamously awkward Life magazine image of Lee Harvey Oswald clutching his rifle and striking a truly unique contrapposto. “Is BBC Future promoting JFK revisionism?” I kidded myself, preparing for the pain.

Before the author, Tiffanie Wen, gets around to the ritual humiliation of “conspiracy theorists”, however, she first lulls her readership of transatlantic shitlibs into complicity with a handful of anecdotes about doctored photographs of politicians – for instance, a non-existent and innocuously self-aggrandizing Time magazine cover that hangs in some of Trump’s sport clubs, and an obviously facetious meme image of Barack Obama holding a telephone receiver upside-down.

Priming her readers to swallow the lone gunman orthodoxy and Life hokum later in the article, Wen concedes that some governments do, on occasion, manipulate photographs – but the only examples she gives are Iran and other countries obnoxious to the US foreign policy establishment and Zionists. “When photographs from places like North Korea, Iraq and Syria are used to help governments make crucial security decisions, their veracity must be verified wherever possible,” she writes, citing “leading expert in digital forensics and image analysis” Hany Farid. But America’s CIA would never do something so underhanded.

Finally she comes to the Oswald picture and – spoiler alert – IT’S REAL, as any number of shitty and shady Trump-boosting Twitter accounts might put it:

“More often than not, people think that the real images are fake and that things that are fake are real,” says Farid. “And their confidence is very high. So people are both ignorant and confident, which is the worst combination.” […]

Let’s look at a famous photograph that has had conspiracy theorists whispering for decades.

The photo above is of Lee Harvey Oswald, the former US Marine who assassinated President John F Kennedy in 1963. According to authorities, the photo was taken in Oswald’s backyard and sent to his friend in April 1963. Investigators used it as evidence of Oswald’s guilt after matching markings from the rifle in the image to the gun found in the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas, after the assassination. Questions over the authenticity of the photo have fueled conspiracy theories that Oswald was framed for the assassination by the government, or criminal groups, particularly because Oswald himself denied the photo was real and was killed by a gunman before he could stand trial.

Conspiracy theorists have pointed to a few features in the picture as “evidence” of tampering – the shadows, particularly those on Oswald’s face, appear to some as if they are cast from a different light source than the shadows of other objects in the photo. Oswald’s chin looks broader than in his mugshot while his stance supposedly looks odd given the weight of the gun while others dispute the length of the gun itself in the image.

Farid and his colleagues examined the photo in a series of papers published in 2009, 2010 and 2015. In their analyses, researchers built 3D models of the scene and of Oswald based on his mugshot, his known height and weight, and the weight of the gun. They found that the shadows in the scene were consistent with a single light source, with the shadows on his face accounting for the appearance of a broader chin than that in his mug shot.

They also found that his posture was plausible given his centre of mass and the way he was carrying the gun, and estimated that the length of the rifle in the photo, after accounting for perspective, was 40.186in (101.2cm) long, less than an inch shorter than the length reported by the manufacturer. In all, the researchers couldn’t find any evidence of photo tampering.

Frankly, the matter of this photograph is fairly low-stakes quibble-fodder for me. Even if I were convinced that it was indisputably undoctored evidence of a crazed communist gun nut’s propensity to violence, it still wouldn’t convince me of the government’s lone gunman bullshit given everything else I’ve learned about the JFK assassination over the years.

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“Farid also suggests looking at the source of the image,” Wen concludes her article: “‘Photos published on mainstream and reputable news sites like The New York Times have a high likelihood of being real as compared to photos published on unknown media sites, blogs, or Facebook,’ he says.” What about Uncle Tom Arabs who lend themselves out to endorse Zionist narratives in BBC articles? Do they have “a high likelihood of being real”? Wen relies on Farid’s expertise throughout her article – so who is this asshole?

Wikipedia tells us, “In June 2016, Farid, as a senior advisor to the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), unveiled a software tool for use by Internet and social media companies to ‘quickly find and eliminate extremist content used to spread and incite violence and attacks.’” So, in other words, he’s devoted to censoring the internet so as to stifle the spread of politically inconvenient speech – “hate speech”, “conspiracy theories” and the like.

The Counter Extremism Project was founded by “former senior government officials, including former [Bush administration] Homeland Security adviser Frances Townsend, former Connecticut Senator [for Israel] Joseph Lieberman, and [Bush administration alumnus] Mark Wallace, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. The mission of the organization is to fight global extremism […]”

So Wen’s photographic forensics wizard works with a bunch of bloodthirsty neocons at this Zionist NGO that “can accept tax-deductible contributions on a confidential basis,” according to Wikipedia: “For security reasons, CEP generally declines to name its financial backers, except for Thomas Kaplan, a billionaire investor who also supports United Against Nuclear Iran.” Kaplan’s United Against Nuclear Iran is “a very pro-Israel group,” observes Mondoweiss’s Philip Weiss, who adds that Kaplan is a “leading supporter of Israel” and “has connections to Sheldon Adelson and the Council on Foreign Relations”.

Does any of this mean that Hany Farid is lying about his analysis of the Oswald photo? Of course not. But it does grant him permission to go ahead and kiss my American ass. In conclusion, I’ll just invite readers to share my amusement in learning that the Arabic name “Hany” can sometimes mean “the embellisher”.  

Rainer Chlodwig von K.

Rainer is the author of Drugs, Jungles, and Jingoism.