NSP – Dec 10, 2011 – Co-host: JT

[zonsb]

On the show Marc and JT discussed planted news stories. It was a topic in relation to Ed Chiarin's work, who was a guest on last week's show. The following quote is a compilation of quotes from several sources about research on inserting fake video into live video feeds and government intelligence agents employed in-house at mainstream news media corporations. The first paragraph is from an article about Information Warfare.

Source

Quote: INFORMATION WARFARE
Prof George J. Stein, AWC
Airpower Journal - Spring 1995

Let us take just one example of how current technologies could be used for strategic-level information warfare. If, say, the capabilities of already well-known Hollywood technologies to simulate reality were added to our arsenal, a genuinely revolutionary new form of warfare would become possible. Today, the techniques of combining live actors with computer-generated video graphics can easily create a "virtual" news conference, summit meeting, or perhaps even a battle that would exist in "effect" though not in physical fact. Stored video images can be recombined or "morphed" endlessly to produce any effect chosen. This moves well beyond traditional military deception, and now, perhaps, "pictures" will be worth a thousand tanks.

Digitally altering live TV events has been possible since at least 1998.

A winner of multiple Emmy Awards for technical achievement, the Virtual Yellow 1st and Ten Line makes use of Sportvision’s patented video overlay technology to create the illusion that a yellow first-down line is painted on the field, allowing players to cross over and stand on it. Invented by Sportvision and first introduced in 1998, 1st and Ten allows viewers to see the necessary distance for a first down as plays progress... - sportvision.com

The media has been informing us that the technical capabilities of using TV fakery in live broadcasts exist and have been warning the public about its use before 9/11:

When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing

By William M. Arkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, Feb. 1, 1999

A Box of Chocolates is Like War

Most Americans were introduced to the tricks of the digital age in the movie Forrest Gump [1994], when the character played by Tom Hanks appeared to shake hands with President Kennedy.

For Hollywood, it is special effects. For covert operators in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, it is a weapon of the future.

When TV brings you the news as it didn't happen

Broadcasters are using virtual imaging technology to alter live broadcasts - and not even the news is safe from tampering

Monday, 24 January 2000
independent.co.uk

Viewers tuning into American broadcaster CBS's recent news coverage of the millennium celebrations in New York witnessed a televisual sleight of hand which enabled CBS to alter the reality of what they saw. Using "virtual imaging" technology, the broadcaster seamlessly adjusted live video images to include an apparently real promotion for itself in Times Square. The move has sparked debate about the ethics of using advances in broadcast technology to alter reality without telling viewers that what they are seeing isn't really there.

The technology to do this comes from the defence industry where, following the end of the Cold War, a number of companies have developed new ways of commercially exploiting their military navigation and tracking expertise.

None of the companies will publicly discuss how their's works. But the principle is common: each alters the live video image in the split second before it is broadcast.

Lying With Pixels

July/August 2000 (Updated)

Seeing is no longer believing. The image you see on the evening news could well be a fake—a fabrication of fast new video-manipulation technology.

By Ivan Amato
technologyreview.com

In the fraction of a second between video frames, any person or object moving in the foreground can be edited out, and objects that aren’t there can be edited in and made to look real.
~
Compared to PVI’s job, the military’s technical task was more difficult—and the stakes were much higher... the TIGER team manipulated a live video feed from a Predator, an unmanned reconnaissance craft flying some 450 meters above Kosovo battlefields... the task was to overlay, in real time, “georegistered” images of Kosovo onto the corresponding scenes streaming in live from the Predator’s video camera. The terrain images had been previously captured with aerial photography and digitally stored.
~
It is perfectly possible now to insert sets of pixels into satellite imagery data that interpreters would view as battalions of tanks, or war planes, or burial sites, or lines of refugees, or dead cows that activists claim are victims of a biotech accident.
~
There’s a big difference now, says Haseltine: “What used to take an hour [per video frame], now can be done in a sixtieth of a second.” This dramatic speed-up means that manipulation can be done in real time, on the fly, as a camera records or broadcasts.
~
The combination of real-time virtual insertion, cyber-puppeteering, video rewriting and other video manipulation technologies with a mass-media infrastructure that instantly delivers news video worldwide has some analysts worried.

“I’m amazed that we have not seen phony video,” he says, before backpedaling a bit: “Maybe we have. Who would know?”

It’s just the sort of scenario played out in the 1998 movie Wag the Dog, in which top presidential aides conspire with a Hollywood producer to televise a virtually crafted war between the United States and Albania to deflect attention from a budding Presidential scandal. Haseltine and others wonder when reality will imitate art imitating reality.
~
Combine the potential erosion of faith in video authenticity with the so-called "CNN effect" and the stage is set for deception to move the world in new ways. Livingston describes the CNN effect as the ability of mass media to go beyond merely reporting what is happening to actually influencing decision-makers as they consider military, international assistance and other national and international issues. "The CNN effect is real," says James Currie, professor of political science at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington. "Every office you go into at the Pentagon has CNN on." And that means, he says, that a government, terrorist or advocacy group could set geopolitical events in motion on the strength of a few hours' worth of credibility achieved by distributing a snippet of well-doctored video.
~
With experience as an army reservist, as a staffer with a top-secret clearance on the Senate’s Intelligence Committee, and as a legislative liaison for the Secretary of the Army, Currie has seen governmental decision-making and politicking up close. He is convinced that real-time video manipulation will be, or already is, in the hands of the military and intelligence communities.

Coincidentally, a mainstream network president had even warned in 2000 about fake plane crashes using CGI:

CBS Is Divided Over the Use Of False Images In Broadcasts

Published: January 13, 2000
New York Times

[Andrew Heyward, the president of CBS News,] said that he understood the argument against the use of the technology -- which is widely employed in sports and some entertainment shows -- on news programs. The danger is "that it looks too real and therefore it's wrong or potentially wrong," he said. "I certainly agree it's potentially subject to abuse."

He noted that advances in computer-generated techniques had made things like missiles hitting Baghdad and airplanes crashing look so real that it was incumbent on networks to underscore that these were not real images.

Now we know that the military has talked about using TV fakery for psyop operations and that the technology to insert digital images into "live" TV broadcasts existed before 9/11. All the military had to do on 9/11 was control the TV airwaves and air a couple of videos showing an image of a plane looking like it crashed into the South Tower and if you need to control the media, what better way to do that than have your own people on the inside before 9/11:

Army 'psyops' at CNN
News giant employed military 'psychological operations' personnel

Posted: March 03, 2000

By Geoff Metcalf
worldnetdaily.com

CNN employed active duty U.S. Army psychological operations personnel last year, WorldNetDaily has confirmed through several sources at Fort Bragg and elsewhere.

Maj. Thomas Collins, U.S. Information Service has confirmed that "psyops" (psychological operations) personnel, soldiers and officers, have worked in the CNN headquarters in Atlanta. The lend/lease exercise was part of an Army program called "Training With Industry." According to Collins, the soldiers and officers, "... worked as regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would have worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped in the production of news."
~
The CNN military personnel were members of the Airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations Group, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. One of the main tasks of this group of almost 1200 soldiers and officers is to spread 'selected information.' Critics say that means dissemination of propaganda.

Beijing Olympic 2008 opening ceremony giant firework footprints 'faked'

10 Aug 2008
telegraph.co.uk

What they did not realise was that what they were watching was in fact computer graphics, meticulously created over a period of months and inserted into the coverage electronically at exactly the right moment.
~
Meticulous efforts were made to ensure the sequence was as unnoticeable as possible: they sought advice from the Beijing meteorological office as to how to recreate the hazy effects of Beijing's smog at night, and inserted a slight camera shake effect to simulate the idea that it was filmed from a helicopter.

"Seeing how it worked out, it was still a bit too bright compared to the actual fireworks," he said. "But most of the audience thought it was filmed live - so that was mission accomplished."