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Friday, August 9, 2019

Facebook Exchange About 1st And 2nd Amendment Freedoms - And Deep Fake Videography

Image result for deep fake video
Alan: I believe the best parts of this Facebook exchange are my last two replies to Zach.
Where is the conservative jurisprudential doctrine of “original intent” when it could be put to good use?


Linda Robertshaw
August 6 at 12:54 PM
I absolutely support your right
to bear [and even stockpile] 
MUSKETS!
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  • Zach Zimet Does the same logic apply to the 1st Amendment?
    • Alan Archibald The First Amendment is already compromised since the Supreme Court has already limited Freedom of Speech by saying "You can't yeall Fire! in a crowded theater."
    • Zach Zimet Sure, same as how you need a license for a gun and can't own a machinegun.

      You're dodging.
    • Alan Archibald Zach Zimet It didn't even occur to me to dodge. 

      I just said what made the most sense to me in terms of your question. 

      But I'll also say this. 

      The legal principle of "original intent" (as it applies to the constitution) is a favorite guiding light among conservative judges - most notably Antonin Scalia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_intent

      When the framers of the constitution composed the 2nd Amendment, they had nothing in mind but single shot muskets and pistols.

      One can make a strong argument -- a case that satisfies me -- that the framers' original intent was to permit single shot firearms only.

      Then there's this dicey issue. 

      I assume you would agree that it is a good idea not to extend the right to bear arms to nukes in my basement, or your basement, or the Trump Tower basement. 

      Which brings into play the principle (which satisfies me personally) that once a legal system (with the approval of the citizenry) determines that "a line can be drawn somewhere," then I hold that reasonable people can -- by referendum or simply by routine legislation -- draw the line anywhere. 

      I also believe that "original intent" as it applies to the First Amendment vouchsafed three things: the spoken word, the printed word and political cartoons.

      Photographs, film and video are not covered.

      In light of "Deep Fake Videos," I think we would wisely move in the direction of teaching our children -- at every level of our education system -- that photographs and "moving images" are now so subject to total fabrication -- fabrication that cannot be perceived or tracked -- that only irrational crazy people would trust the authenticity of such images.

      I will not dig deep here but will mention my admiration for Judaism and Islam's absolute proscription of "representational images" so that, as I understand the motivation, images don't interpose themselves between human beings and the raw existential experience of reality/God. 

      In any event, there is no such problem with the spoken word, the printed word and cartoons.

      But here we have a problem Houston - a huge and soon to be insurmountable problem unless we take The First Commandment seriously.

      NPR: "Tracking Down Deep-Fake Videos"
      http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/.../npr-tracking-down...

      In the Jewish (and Christian) bibles, The First Commandment takes the following form.

      I am Yahweh your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me, and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Emphasis mine.)

      — Exodus 20:2-6 (WEB)
      A closing note...

      I do not advocate the proscription of hate speech as is commonplace in Europe, and I have long thought the prohibition of "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is also dubious.

      Am I dodging?

      What do you think about these constituional questions?
      Original intent - Wikipedia
      EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
      Original intent - Wikipedia
      Original intent - Wikipedia

    • Zach Zimet I guess I interpreted all of this text as dodging because I thought I was posing a simple question, so let me retry that.

      Given that you seem to think that the 2A only protects the technology of that time, do you think the 1A works the same way? So the government should be free to censor speech on the internet, for example?

      Clearly the Supreme Court has put "reasonable" restrictions on, and added interpretation to, both enumerated rights.
    • Alan Archibald It depends on how we define free speech.

      For me, the rapid development of "Deep Fake Videography" (DFV) is linchpin to any meaningful discussion of "The First Amendment."

      And by considering the likely developmental course of DFV in light of "The First Commandment," I think our best bet for escaping a fathomless fall into a bottomless swamp of imaginary simulacra -- simulacra which would pass "The Authenicity Test" for both you and me -- is to guarantee "free speech" by limiting it to 1.) the spoken word, 1.) the written word and 3.) the representational arts of cartooning, sketching, painting and sculpture, the forms of "speech" that prevailed when The Framers wrote the constitution. 

      If we take this tack, we would (as I see it) simultaneously teach our young (at every stage of their educational process) that all photographs and "movies" are, by the nature of developing technology, hopelessly corruptable and increasingly corrupted.

      Of course, on the face of it, this proposal is so ridiculous that I expect no traction until "deep fake videography" becomes indistinguishable from videos of Reality Itself. 

      NPR: "Tracking Down Deep-Fake Videos"
      http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/.../npr-tracking-down...

      Realizing that most intelligent people will scoff at my proposition (not to mention the disdain that would inflame anti-elite dimwits), I am content to let things play out along the current "free speech" trajectory until each "situational particular" presents itself in the living context of Deep Fake Videography.

      It won't be long -- a decade at most -- until video-and-photographic falsification will be able to fool both you and me, as well as any "experts" we might employ to determine "authenticity." 

      I do not sense much awareness in you concerning our perilous proximity to a post-Orwellian "takeover" by well-financed plutocratic forces. 

      For several years now Oxfam has said that only 8 families control 50% of the world's resources. 

      Notably, "The Ungodly Rich" are so emboldened by their larcenous success that they now have "one of their own" in The Oval Office - cutting out the middle man... going straight for the jugular.

      What's "new" now is that technology -- specificallly "Deep Fake Videography" -- can not only manipulate "the masses" into believing its version of reality, it can actually Generate Reality Itself -- at least to the extent that: "In politics, perception IS reality." 

      Even now, in the nascent phase of "Deep Fake Videography," many experts believe that it is impossible according to the technical nature of video -- and the fact that it is currently possible to create "Absolutely Convincing Reality" pixel-by-pixel with no "tracing markers" to indicate that a good "deep fake" is a falsification devised by human technicians. 

      Looked at from the flip side of this coin, "DFV" results in "raw footage" that experts will find indistinguishable from routine video of Real World events like you eating breakfast tomorrow. 

      During the 2016 election, a friend of mine who was also a Hillary supporter watched a video "pushed" at her from the margin of her Facebook screen. 

      In that video, Hillary Clinton was so abusive to an aide that my friend decided it was impossible for her - in conscience - to vote for Hillary. (In the end, Mary did not vote for either Hillary of "His Satanic Majesty," but "staid home" on Election Day.)

      For the better part of the last three years, I have pondered my friend Mary's account, and at 3-6 month intervals I have scoured the internet in an attempt to locate the very video that caused Mary to "sit it out" in 2016 - a vote that Hillary certainly lost.

      But despite my persistent search, I found nothing. 

      Nada. Niente. Zilch. Nihil. 

      Truth be told, I did locate one video of Hillary jabbing her finger in the general direction of someone - I think a journalist who was dunning Clinton with right-wing "noise machine" nonsense, but this footage was in no way abusive, just animated and gutsy.

      Then, as I started to learn more about Russian hacking and Cambridge Analytica's shenanigans out of London, I realized -- with the force of epiphany -- that Hillary lost Mary's vote because some malfeasant "troll" had created, de novo, a video of "Hillary" excoriating "someone" as if "Hillary" were a mythic Fury come to life.

      Although I did not intend to say what I just said, I believe that is exactly what happened: a "being" who did not exist in the same way that you and I exist, "came to life," and Mary's perception of that "living being" (who "came to life") was enough to cost Hillary a vote.

      Just 80,000 such votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Donald won, not Hillary.

      If you have not seen the new Netflix documentary "The Great Hack," I strongly encourage you to watch.

      Netflix' New Documentary "The Great Hack" Reveals The Inner Workings Of "1984" In 2019
      http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/.../netflix-newly...

      Also, if you are unaware of Duke historian Nancy McLean's new book, "Democracy In Chains," I encourage you to undertake exploration.

      "Duke Historian Discovers Trove Of Papers Revealing The Far Right's Plan For America"
      https://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/.../duke-historian...
      Pax on both houses
      PAXONBOTHHOUSES.BLOGSPOT.COM
      Pax on both houses
      Pax on both houses

    • Alan Archibald Sorry for the glitch. Here is the correct link. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/.../npr-tracking-down...
      NPR: "Tracking Down Deep-Fake Videos"
      PAXONBOTHHOUSES.BLOGSPOT.COM
      NPR: "Tracking Down Deep-Fake Videos"
      NPR: "Tracking Down Deep-Fake Videos"

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