Authentication
Definition
The evidentiary process of establishing that a digital exhibit is what it purports to be, including both provenance authentication (where did it come from) and content authentication (was it generated or manipulated).
Related terms
- Chain of custody
- The unbroken documentary trail of who held a sealed exhibit, when, and under what seal, from the moment of collection through analysis...
- DEFIANCE Act
- Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act, signed into US federal law in 2024. Creates a civil cause of action...
- EU AI Act
- The European Union's comprehensive AI regulation, fully effective from 2026. Classifies deep-fake generators used for impersonation as high-risk; requires that AI-generated content...
- NIST MIDAS
- Media Integrity and Data Authenticity System. A NIST research programme providing benchmark datasets and standardised evaluation metrics for media integrity and deepfake...
- OSINT
- Open-Source Intelligence. Investigation using publicly available sources: social media, satellite imagery, news archives, public databases. In deepfake casework, OSINT corroborates or contradicts...
Explained in
- Synthetic Media in Casework and Legal ProceedingsThe evidentiary process of establishing that a digital exhibit is what it purports to be, including both provenance authentication (where did it come from) and...