Fakes are not the issue, they’re an excuse for people to do something they would have done anyway, nothing more. No amount of reasoning or facts will ever will ever change a biased person’s beliefs. Fake news is just a symptom of the real issue, it’s not the problem.
There is a category of people for whom that is true, but is there not also a category of people whose beliefs and actions are affected by evidence?
That may be the case now, or maybe it only was in the past? What will we do when ALL true evidence is indistinguishable from fake evidence?
(By the way, I think you mean "provenance," and as I've edited my post and bio blurb to explain, I too am against methods that disclose the identity of the witness. Rather, my methods would help multiple witnesses to an atrocity [such as police firing live ammo at nonviolent protestors] to corroborate one another's accounts before identifying themselves. They could possibly even effectively discredit an official, faked account without identifying themselves.)
I mean, at least in the US, trial lawyers bill by the hour, which, as I see it, is already a conflict of interest on a meta level. This system is pretty inefficient. What if we could prevent most "he said, she said" situations (and, probably, billable hours) by making recording of all one's experiences the norm, while also safeguarding the privacy of those recordings until such time as a dispute (such as a court case) arises? (This latter, especially in the context of doctor-patient relationships, was the original root, circa 2004, of my line of thought. The idea then was "universal surveillance by private individuals of their own lives, encrypted by default, with proof of existence, optional decryption, and sharing.")
Being recorded 24/7 is not healthy and in my opinion a net negative for any meaningful future; yes, it has the potential for good, but way more potential for abuse. Please stop spending time on the idea.
I am not quite still an anarcho-capitalist, as after 2004 I began to see a lot of truth in Marx and other anti-capitalist writers. So I'm in a healthy tension that enables me to embrace paradoxes and even hypocrisy. (Anyone not a hypocrite, I suspect either has less than an admirable set of values or is in prison or dead or swiftly heading toward one of those states.)
Bottom line, my hunch and hope is that some of us will see that if our goal is safety, we need not always give up freedom for it. There are other ways to achieve some of the goals we've entrusted to the State.
Yes, I am aware that with alarmingly increasing frequency the State can compel us to divulge our encrypted evidence and the keys to it. Perhaps there would be more pushback against this if such evidence were to play a greater role. Right now, people tend to say "I have nothing to hide." If everyone had a lot to hide, already recorded and encrypted by default, then I think most of them would push back against 4th amendment violations (in the US; and equivalent protections in other jurisdictions).
I am aware that the stupid and the evil will mess things up. I don't know what to do about that. I suspect they'll always be with us. The latter we might reduce in number through greater accountability, through more evidence. The former, I have no idea; our society doesn't really quite have natural selection.
I should walk back "24/7" or whatever I said. I was a bit hyperbolic. I think certain types of situations known for being contentious should be recorded routinely by both parties, by default, maybe. That should be normalized, maybe. For instance, in any situation wherein at least one party is required to carry liability insurance, the insurers could compel recording -- maybe.
Also, and I am VERY FAR FROM CERTAIN about this, but POSSIBLY even in some instances of sexual encounters, at least where there is not a fully executed (signed, maybe notarized) written agreement, i.e. enthusiastic consent -- possibly, if the tech were sound enough (which should be our goal) these too should be recorded, as a matter of course -- MAYBE.
