Errol Morris on "Photography as a Weapon"
Documentary film maker Errol Morris has a fascinating piece in the New York Times about "Photography as a Weapon." In it, he interviews Hany Farid, a Dartmouth professor and expert on digital photographic fraud.
Errol Morris: [D]octored photographs are the least of our worries. If you want to trick someone with a photograph, there are lots of easy ways to do it. You don’t need Photoshop. You don’t need sophisticated digital photo-manipulation. You don’t need a computer. All you need to do is change the caption.Photography as a Weapon (New York Times)The photographs presented by Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003 provide several examples. Photographs that were used to justify a war. And yet, the actual photographs are low-res, muddy aerial surveillance photographs of buildings and vehicles on the ground in Iraq. I’m not an aerial intelligence expert. I could be looking at anything. It is the labels, the captions, and the surrounding text that turn the images from one thing into another. Photographs presented by Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003.
Powell was arguing that the Iraqis were doing something wrong, knew they were doing something wrong, and were trying to cover their tracks. Later, it was revealed that the captions were wrong. There was no evidence of chemical weapons and no evidence of concealment. Morris's mockery of the sweeping interpretations made in Powell's photographs.
There is a larger point. I don’t know what these buildings were really used for. I don’t know whether they were used for chemical weapons at one time, and then transformed into something relatively innocuous, in order to hide the reality of what was going on from weapons inspectors. But I do know that the yellow captions influence how we see the pictures. “Chemical Munitions Bunker” is different from “Empty Warehouse” which is different from “International House of Pancakes.” The image remains the same but we see it differently.
Change the yellow labels, change the caption and you change the meaning of the photographs. You don’t need Photoshop. That’s the disturbing part. Captions do the heavy lifting as far as deception is concerned. The pictures merely provide the window-dressing. The unending series of errors engendered by falsely captioned photographs are rarely remarked on.
the latest
latest episodes
That is an awesome diptych there.
I don't think the captions on the right are all that plausible. Looks like a chemical weapons depot to me.
Hey! Super cool! They used my Iranzilla pic as the lead photo. Morris wrote in the NY Times article:
"The Iranian-Godzilla image might be my favorite, if only because it raises the specter of atomic disaster. Wasn’t Godzilla...accidentally awakened and mutated by the atomic bomb? The image ridicules the Iranians but at the same time reminds us of the possibility of an apocalypse in the Middle East?"
Exactly what I was thinking when I was making it! :)
I have to agree that captions are one of the most dangerous parts of a photo. During the New Orleans debacle, there were several photos taken of people who may or may not have been looters, each of which gave a different impression partially because of the short caption that accompanied it. This factor contributed to later accusations of racism and media bias.
@toxonix have you ever eaten at an International House of Pancakes? There are plenty of destructive things inside. The roof shape is wrong though. I'd guess maybe an Arby's.
That is definitely scary to think about.
Crap.
I remember the presentation Powell gave (I was watching it while on a contract assignment at a defense contractor -- good number of conservatives around), and in the case of one pair of photos he didn't even need captions...
Photo #1: A scene, taken from high altitude, of a bunch of trucks and jeeps parked on a wide patch of dirt.
Photo #2: Same patch of dirt, seen from a similar angle, but this time all the trucks and jeeps have -- how could it be? -- mysteriously disappeared!
There was actually a gasp in the room.
I imitated the gasp, and said something like, "My god. All those vehicles were there before, but now they're gone. What could have happened?"
I got a few dirty looks.:-) Surprisingly, in hindsight, nobody said anything to me about it.
...That's not an IHOP, it's a Denny's! :-P
That's not a Denny's, it's a 88EM8011 controller chip.
Pizza Hut! Come on, people. It's obvious.
And the Right's only argument at the time is that we have to trust our leaders on this.
Sure.
How about now?
Does anyone actually think this is the highest resolution photo they have of this building?
I have better resolution on Google Earth of my own house.
And of course, everyone has 10 foot berms of dirt on the outside of their house/IHOP/Dennys.
But I forgot this is the NYT, so even though the building is located in one of Saddam's military bases, with a big fracking "AGENT ORANGE" sign on the side, we should give the UN another 10 years to confirm if it is accurate!
Wait a minute... you mean to tell me that the captions on a photo might not be... accurate? That someone could pretty much write whatever they want under it?
wull, duh.
Remember the Maine.
Actually, back when they made the arguments based on those photos in the first place, I was trying to figure out how the heck they could magically determine what was going on inside a truck or building from a low resolution satalite image.
I mean, honestly, it's not like in an RTS where every building that perfoms a given task looks exactly the same. In most cases you can't tell what's going on inside a building with high-resolution ground-level cameras (say, your average comsumer model), without convenient signage and/or nice open windows.
I have to agree with #12 on this. Psts lk ths mk Dmcrts nd Lbrls lk bd. That's right, just because you squinted at a low-res photo printed in the NYT for 30 seconds you, too, are now an aerial photography analyst qualified to work in the CIA. There's no way the CIA/Military could have had better resolution pictures, or anything like infrared scans, or anything like a series of them to corroborate departure/arrival patterns. And oh yeah, it's like totally 100% true that if you can't find something, it must have never been there in the first place.
And oh yeah, it's like totally 100% true that if you can't find something, it must have never been there in the first place.
Yeah. And the best solution is to start a war and kill a million people until you find out that you were wrong.
I remember watching Powell's presentation to the UN. Seemed to me at the time that his heart just wasn't in it.
But a couple of questions to those who say "surely the military had higher resolution images in visible, infrared, thermal and who knows what realm of the electromagnetic spectrum" and such. I agree.
So what did the items in the images turn out to be?
Were they the threat they were claimed to be?
Just curious.
What incredible timing! Ever since the incident that I'm not supposed to discuss on here anymore, I've been specifically interested in the psychology of providing photographs with stories.
It really is strange how a photograph not only lends credibility to events which the photograph depicts, but also to most other surrounding arguments, which may or may not be directly supported by the photo.
#12 theMage:
''...we should give the UN another 10 years to confirm if it is accurate!''
I think there's about 4,000 families would say ''Yeah.''
who needs photos?
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Tape_Top_CIA_officer_confesses_order_0808.html
#12, #15: You're right, they undoubtedly have higher resolution pictures of the site in question. So why base their propaganda on a blurry image?
Did you read the article? Morris addresses this, specifically, saying that blurry photos are more easily manipulated than sharp ones, with his main examples being photos of Nessie, Bigfoot, or UFOs. If I showed you a nice, crisp, high resolution photo of an IHOP, it would be a lot harder to pass off as a chemical weapons depot.
I'll speak for myself here: I'm definitely not an expert at interpreting aerial photography, but I have every reason to be skeptical of an administration that has yet to back up their pretense for war.
Are you suggesting that Powell deliberately selected some of the crappiest available pictures for making a sales pitch to the entire UN?
You wouldn't do that for a 6th grade school project, for crying out loud.
Exactly. It's no secret at all that far, far better pictures can be made. So why show us these terrible ones?
Two possible explanations are: 1) they really were the best available and 2) the crappy ones are in some way better at supporting the case for war.
#22 (and any other loon)
If we have the capability of taking sat-photos that can read a newspaper at ground level (or infra-red, ultra-violet, thermal, radiation, spectral imaging, ground penetrating radar), the last thing we would want to do is ADVERTISE TO EVERY POTENTIAL ENEMY OUR BEST CAPABILITY.
theMage #23: You don't have to resort to name-calling; I suppose I'm a loon for agreeing with Lagged2Death #22? I'm not sure what you find so loony, and instead you seem to be buying into the idea that iomatic #11 floated, about trusting the government.
We're not asking for satellite photos that demonstrate our cutting-edge capabilities, but there's a huge gulf between the blurry propaganda photo and our unadvertised capabilities, with the quality available to anyone via Google Earth lying somewhere in between. It's easy to imagine there being a better photo of the site in question that does not give away our super-sekrit capabilities; on the other hand, it's hard to imagine a crappier photo.
hey! What if you made a map showing oil deposits?
#24 nprnncbl, are you saying my comment means 'trusting the governement'?
No.
If you mean to say I floated the idea that people/commenters trusting the government based on shaky evidence is ludicrous, then,
Yes.
#26 Iomatic: the latter; I meant that #23 theMage seems to be exhibiting the "blind trust" that you mentioned.
I can see some problems with this line of thinking.
First of all, satellite reconnaissance isn't "our best capability," no matter how high-quality the pictures are. Satellites are limited by both weather and daylight, and more seriously, they can be easily tracked, even by amateurs with inexpensive, low-tech tools. Even a poor nation, doomsday cult, or terrorist group can hide from satellites if they want to. This is one reason the US military has increasingly turned to UAVs, which are cheap, impossible to predict, much more difficult to hide from, and which have a vantage point far closer to their targets. In principle, at least, their photos should be far, far better than satellite photos. Everyone who counts knows all of this already. There aren't any secrets involved here.
Secondly, it's utterly trivial to down-res a super-high-quality surveillance photo, hiding the true capability of the camera that took it, without turning the image to the utter mush that Powell proudly presented to the entire planet. If one were interested in honestly making a genuine case for war without giving away any precious secrets about just how good our cameras were, that would be an entirely reasonable course of action.
Third, I think the notion that the US employs secret satellites that can “read a newspaper at ground level,” while common enough, is silly. Because satellites can't be scheduled or maneuvered, there's a limit to how much extra information one can glean from extra resolution. It would be little use photographing people's faces, for example, because it's not possible to plan to photograph specific people at all. Satellites are useful for photographing things that don't move much, like buildings, construction sites, terrain features, roads, car parks, etc., and you simply don't need “read a newspaper” grade resolution for those subjects. Repeated observations of the same target can tell you something about traffic patterns (see point one, though - you can hide your traffic), but it's not like you can plan in advance to photograph a particular supply convoy. Would it help you at all to be able to read the license plates? Probably not. Better to spend the money on something else than on bandwidth-hogging, crazy-high resolution images that don't tell you anything extra.
Finally, why not advertise our very best capability? Do you think our “potential enemies” are somehow able to hide nuclear reactors and missile silos from a camera that can read billboards from orbit, but not from a camera that can read newspapers? How do you suppose our “potential enemies” would adjust their behavior if it were revealed that the US has access to ultra-high-resolution reconnaissance photos? How can our “very best capability” function as a deterrent if we keep it entirely secret?
Here's one possible answer to these conundrums that has the advantage of simplicity: Perhaps the rumored capabilities of US reconnaissance satellites are exaggerated. Perhaps the agencies involved do nothing whatsoever to discourage that exaggeration, because they believe bogeyman stories of US omniscience serve US interests. Perhaps the photos Powell showed really were the best available. Perhaps the Bush administration has clumsily destroyed the myth of American reconnaissance super-powers by showing the world that our best reconnaissance images aren't really all that.
"Those are balls, this close, they always look like landscape. Nope, you’re looking at balls"
At the time I and my friends all believed they took the screendumps from Red Alert?!
Actually I think Bush was inspired from video violence when he attacked Iraq. The scene in Monty Python and the quest for the holy grail where Lancelot fights and kills his way through innocent servants up to the castle tower just to find that there was no lady in distress to begin with.
Related scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l61JVSFhrKY