Madi Hime is taking a deep drag on a blue vape in the video, her eyes shut, her face flushed with pleasure. The 16-year-old exhales with her head thrown back, collapsing into laughter that causes smoke to billow out of her mouth. The clip is grainy and shaky – as if shot in low light by someone who had zoomed in on Madi’s face – but it was damning. Madi was a cheerleader with the Victory Vipers, a highly competitive “all-star” squad based in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The Vipers had a strict code of conduct; being caught partying and vaping could have got her thrown out of the team. And in July 2020, an anonymous person sent the incriminating video directly to Madi’s coaches.
Eight months later, that footage was the subject of a police news conference. “The police reviewed the video and other photographic images and found them to be what we now know to be called deepfakes,” district attorney Matt Weintraub told the assembled journalists at the Bucks County courthouse on 15 March 2021. Someone was deploying cutting-edge technology to tarnish a teenage cheerleader’s reputation.
But a little over a year later, when Spone finally appeared in court to face the charges against her, she was told the cyberharassment element of the case had been dropped. The police were no longer alleging that she had digitally manipulated anything. Someone had been crying deepfake. A story that generated thousands of headlines around the world was based on teenage lies, after all. When the truth finally came out, it was barely reported – but the videos and images were real.
The issue here is the police having anything to do with digital forensics…this should have been outsourced to a group that knows how to detect these things and not some cop that barely knows the traffic laws in his own state.
Barely?
In my experience ops don’t know shit. It’s all about “gut feelings”. "Well “his feels illegal so I’m gonna arrest them and if I’m wrong I get to sit at my desk all day or go on a paid vacation” is how it is.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stopped by cops for riding my bicycle on the road. Literally to the point where I have a laminated card I keep in my wallet with the relevant laws saying “this bike is illegal on a sidewalk and cars must give way on the road”
I’ve had a few threaten to arrest me “for being a piece of shit” or “for wasting my time” like I’m the one who made them stop…
I’ve been stopped because I “fit a description” multiple times, the “description” being “man on a bike” with nothing else, supposedly.
I’ve been stopped for speeding in a school zone before, and if it wouldn’t have been a waste of time, I’d have let it go to court and showed my helmet camera video that clearly shows my phone GPS as well as cycling computer (glorified speedometer) readout that clearly shows I was well under 25. Granted I’ve gone 49 in a 45 for about 3 seconds before I realized one rock and I’m dead and slowed down, there’s 0 chance of me speeding past 20 on flat ground unless I’m trying to set a personal best.
I’ve been stopped for “being a road hazard”, not having enough reflective things, having “too many lights” (one forward flasher, one steady, and one rear/one steady rear light), not signaling “and hand signals don’t count anymore” lol OK…
Pretty much whatever they feel like stopping you for, they’ll stop you and come up with a half-assed excuse later. They don’t know the laws they enforce, and if they did, they would be considered a liability to other cops and quickly be ejected.
Jesus, where do you live so I can never go there?
Theres a reason so many astronauts come from here… They want to leave so bad, they fled the planet.
Ah, America. Yeah that tracks. ;)
Your state at least has a great air museum in Dayton to encourage more of those Astronauts.No, op is assuming you’re American. They mean Ohio specifically.
Actually, I was assuming more people have heard the joke “more astronauts have come from Ohio because they’re fleeing the state” more than assuming “this person is American”
But yeah, Ohio. People meme on it being boring and full of cow farms and corn fields for a reason.
Also occasionally our rivers catch on fire and trains get a bit tipsy.
I once had a friend turn down an invitation because he “had friends coming in from Cleveland.” I told him he could just say he didn’t want to go.
But at least your roads aren’t so full of pot holes you make Afroman look sober like your neighbour to the north.
Ohio is the SCP state alongside Arkansas.
No, op is assuming you’re American. They mean Ohio specifically.
What color is your skin?
Good gravy. Glad I live in Seattle. They are finally make a few physically separated bike lanes instead of just painting a bike symbol on the side of the road.
Hell, the supreme court codified “gut feeling” into fucking law.
I can’t remember the name of the case, but it was referenced in “Talking to Strangers” by Malcolm Gladwell. A guy was pulled over because the cop believed the lens to his taillight was cracked, which led to an arrest on drug possession charges. Turns out, the state that they were in didn’t have a law about ‘cracked lenses’, but the cop thought they did. Our fucked up SC upheld the probable cause, the resulting search and seizure, and all the rest of the fruit of the poisonous tree by saying: "that the officer thought the activity was illegal was enough basis for a probable cause stop.
We are truly fucked, ladies and gentlemen.
I’ve always thought it was nuts that cyclists are told not to use sidewalks. If a cyclist hits a pedestrian on a sidewalk, it sucks but it isn’t that big of a thing. Comparatively, if a car hits a cyclist on the road, then the damage to human health can be far worse. So why put the cyclist in that situation if a sidewalk exists?
As someone in the more rural bits, I’ve ridden my bike on 2 lane non marked roads a few times - however, the amount of social media complaining in my town is absolutely appealing when it comes to cars. People complaining about speeding, then complaining about people going 2mph under the speed limit. I do my best to stick to trails or sidewalks because if you happen to inconvenience anyone - they might make it a point for you to have a bad day. And that’s sad.
Some PDs do have their own digital forensics units. It isn’t a task handed to patrolmen
It’s incredibly rare a patrolman has access to DF tools at all.
They aren’t given to patrolmen. They have dedicated and specially trained units. Otherwise the evidence can be nullified.
Source: have worked in digital forensics.
There are several agencies that have some patrolmen doing on-scene digital forensics in the US.
Source: I currently work in digital forensics and have trained patrolmen.
On-scene stuff is a bit different. You’re not doing the actual analytics on scene if you can help it, you’re obtaining the evidence. Of course that still needs specialist training, you can’t simply copy and paste shit, but it’s very different to what goes on in the forensic lab.
Yeah absolutely. We’re on the same page. Just pointing out that they’re slowly rolling more tech out to the knuckle draggers which can be concerning if not done properly (and a lot of the time it isn’t).
Indeed. I’d say the on-site guys really need training. Beyond working directly on the master image and writing to it or reporting false findings, there isn’t as much that can be irrevocably fucked up in the analytics room.
Acquisition is a whole different story. One seemingly small fuck up and the evidence is toast.
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The BIs are usually who handle this stuff, but it sounds like this never was sent up to the state investigation units. This literally sounds like bob came off patrol and said “heard about them deepfakes must be one of them”
Either a woman with no background in digital technology had made a sophisticated deepfake on her iPhone 8, or a 16-year-old had panicked and lied to her mother about vaping, or mother and daughter had decided together to explain away behaviour they knew would get Madi in trouble, with an elaborate story about digital manipulation. The police chose to believe the first explanation.
“They never understood deepfakes, and the implications of giving a press conference scaring people into thinking someone could take an image and turn it into something else so easily,” Birch says. “I don’t think they ever thought this thing would spread like wildfire and become a worldwide phenomenon.”
A small police force made a mistake that became too big to fix. “Once it blew up, the police couldn’t extricate themselves without losing face.”
As always, ACAB.
edit to add
And then there was this …
These would be the last public comments (Officer Matthew) Reiss made about the case. On 26 May 2021 he was arrested on suspicion of possessing images of child sexual abuse. Two images had been uploaded to his Gmail account, and detectives had traced them to his IP address. When they raided his home and seized his electronic devices, they found more than 1,700 images and videos depicting children, including 84 of toddlers and infants. Reiss pleaded guilty in March 2022, and was later sentenced to 11 and a half to 23 months in jail. To use Weintraub’s language, if anyone was “preying on juveniles”, it was the police officer who led the investigation.
Only 1-2 years for possessing literally hundreds of CP images and videos? What the fuck? I mean I guess he didn’t harm anyone directly (as far as we know) but still, come on.
I could of sworn I’ve seen other CSM PDF files getting over a decade in jail. Pays off to be a criminal cop.
Nah that’s a pretty light sentence, he definitely got some leniency because he’s fuzz.
With that number of images he very likely paid for some and thereby directly contributed to abuse of children.
I wonder how much money the Hime family has donated to the Doylestown Police Department.
Deepfake fake news story aside, at the crux of this story is a girl or parent jealous of Madi’s position on the team and was trying to tattle to get her kicked off the team. This story getting ignored was the best result. The girl was 16 and she was caught vaping. Kids are going to do shit they shouldn’t and any hard and fast rule on vices like this is only going to be abused and cause more damage in the long term.
I’m more concerned about this loser parent going around stalking 16 year olds being 16 year olds.
This whole story certainly inspires one to despise technology, however.
Absolutely.
“Helicopter Karen tries to snitch on kids for vaping, but gets fucked by the police instead”.
I sincerely hope everyone involved comes out worse for wear.
She’s gone aerial now?!
Soon she’ll go full tiger
For real, that’s a story in itself. And then Madi’s old man knows some guys on the force so they say it’s fake, that’s story two. I’m honestly more interested in story one, because some loser is out here stalking this 16-year-old girl so they can screw her shit up, presumably out of jealousy.
My kids will play sports and dance and do whatever. I have no interest in pushing them towards very serious leagues, because time and again the people involved in them have shown they are all losers. My kids will not be professional athletes, we are not particularly tall or strong or fast, but they can do well, be healthy, and make friends, that’s about all I want from it.
Considering the woman: A) is legally barred from discussing the other families, and B) denies having sent anything to anyone, I think you might be making some pretty broad assumptions. What we do know is that the videos and photos weren’t faked, and they were evidence of misconduct by the other girls, who as of yet have experienced zero consequences and in at least one case may have benefited from the case going viral.
Oh no, a teenager faces zero consequences for vaping. We are doomed! /s
That being said, you are right that the allegations should not be taken as facts, especially considering they came from the same source as those deepfake lies.
No no clearly the best thing to do is to ruin her life over vaping just like kids who lose all the scholarships they earned because they got caught smoking weed. How else are they going to find out how dangerous these things are if we don’t absolutely destroy them in spite of their accomplishments?
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” - Orwell, 1984
I guess I can see why this is being posted, but if you are entering this era thinking that because you’ve seen a video of something that it must have happened…well, you haven’t been paying much attention and opening yourself up to being easily manipulated.
Honestly, this is what I consider to be the clear danger of generative “AI”. We’ve basically gone several steps backward toward a world where we can’t prove something happened because recording technology doesn’t exist because it can be faked well enough and easily enough to cast doubt on any recording.
Sure, experts can analyze it and deem it legit or not legit but for the average person its becoming harder and harder to tell. Word spreads fast, and it’s been demonstrated that lies spread faster than their corrections by orders of magnitude. All it takes is for something to “go viral” or someone with authority to lazily confirm or deny that something is real/fake and the public at large loses touch with reality.
This plus the insane misinformation campaigns and those that cry “fake news” whenever the news contains information they don’t like… I feel like truth and reality are becoming unfashionable.
Sure, experts can analyze it and deem it legit or not legit but for the average person its becoming harder and harder to tell.
Frankly, I think that’s exactly what will also be its downfall in such cases. At a certain amount of exposure of such material, people will stop caring, because of how common it will be. The larger issue is not how to tell what’s fake, but how to tell what’s true. Large players, such as governments or corporations, can and will abuse this tech for whatever narrative they need.
Confirmation bias just leads people to believe whatever confirms their beliefs. Now we can give anyone anything they need to confirm their beliefs.
This article took way too long to get to the fact that this was a massive police fuckup.
Fuck ups are unintentional. They did this shit on purpose
The laws should have never gotten involved except in the instance with the bathing suit.
Please people, handle your petty grievances about puritanical bullshit without involving the violent gang known as police officers.
Did that guy who got arrested for making deep fakes that implicated a school official in corription get out yet or will he have to languish for years before it gets overturned?
They have logs of him using the school’s network to visit ai audio generators, so that case will probably stick…
Ah yeah. I see they found evidence he was stealing money and the principle was investigating so he tried to get him canceled by fabricating racism.
Taking the video and sending to the coaches is still a cunt move. Deepfake or not.
And also, extracurricular groups forcing a code of conduct akin to purity tests need to go the fuck away. If they want to exploit the talent and hard work of kids for personal monetary gain, you’d think they’d be less of a dick about it.
She apparently did send the texts she was guilty of sending. Which was a misdemeanor and for which she paid restitution. But, as was already said, the videos were on social media and that doesn’t give the pedophile cop the right to make up some deepfake bullshit, which results in a public press conference accusing her of it, and that results in things like her neighbor threatening to kill her because he thought she was a pedophile.
The poster neither said nor implied that this justified what the cops did, only pointed out that what this lady did was still still incredibly petty. It’s a story of all bad guys.
That’s not how things seemed to me at all. She wasn’t trying to get the other girl kicked off the team. The other girl was potentially putting her daughter at risk, and she was just trying to keep her daughter safe.
Whether or not some teenage partying is actually a significant risk, I don’t really have a strong view on, but I can certainly understand the thought process.
If your concern is about safety, why are you trying to mask who you’re sending it from and complaining about them posting pictures in revealing clothing?
Maybe she was worried that raising those concern’s could potentially have her daughter sidelined?
I missed that part about the revealing clothing. Maybe you’re right, and it’s just unchecked puritanism. Perhaps I’m giving this lady too much benefit of the doubt.
The vaping video was just one of many disturbing communications brought to the attention of Hilltown Township police department, Weintraub said. Madi had been receiving messages telling her she should kill herself. Her mother, Jennifer Hime, had told officers someone had been taking images from Madi’s social media and manipulating them “to make her appear to be drinking”. A photograph of Madi in swimwear had been altered: “Her bathing suit was edited out.”
Madi wasn’t the only member of the Victory Vipers cheer team to have been victimised. In August 2020, Sherri Ratel had been sent anonymous texts accusing her teenage daughter, Kayla, of drinking and smoking pot. Noelle Nero had been sent images of her 17-year-old daughter in a bikini with captions about “toxic traits, revenge, dating boys and smoking”. These, too, were “all altered and shown as deepfakes”, Weintraub added.
The anonymous sender had used “spoofing” software to disguise their identity behind an unknown number. The police had managed to trace it to the IP address of Raffaella Spone, a 50-year-old woman with no previous criminal record.
That’s some heinous shit. I don’t see why anyone has any sympathy for this woman regardless of police incompetence.
Because the only thing Spone was convicted of was sending five texts. Apparently the texts weren’t threatening, they were sent to the moms so they would be aware of what their daughters were doing. We don’t even know if the intent of sending the texts was malicious or of concern. Spone didn’t create a deepfake video; the video was real.
The kids receiving death threats is horrible, but who shared the video or texts outside of the group of kids and moms? Who put it online? The kids lied about what happened over and over again. The girls may not have meant to, but they and the police ruined Spone’s life.
Unless I am misunderstanding something from the article?
Spone may not manipulate videos and images, but she definitely collects them. Still, she says she never sent them. “The charges were that she directly sent messages to the minors,” Birch adds. “That never happened. That’s the point.”
But did she send messages to the gym and the parents? There is a long pause. “No,” Spone eventually says.
I’m surprised to hear her say this, given Birch told the Washington Post Spone messaged the parents out of concern for what their daughters had put online. When I point this out, there’s another long pause. “If I said that, I said it,” Birch says, with a shrug. “It is what it is.”
It sounds like this woman isn’t very truthful either. It seems like one of those cases where everyone involved is a shitty person.
She didn’t take the videos. They were on social media.
I interpreted “taking” here as getting it from one place and moving it to another. Although it’s certainly not clear.
Right? She tried to ruin a young person’s life over vaping. I said that above and got downvoted.
What the fuck kind of narc sent it to her coaches.
I used to have a coworker whose daughter was in competitive cheer. It’s like any youth competition – the parents can lose their goddamn minds over it. If there was a chance somebody could DQ a competing team, or perhaps open up a spot on a team by narcing on one of the current members, somebody is gonna do it.
Great digital forensic team. Dipshits.
The accusations are the punishment. It’s used all over the place.
Who gives a shit, let the teen have fun for fucks sake, cops here actually did a good thing for the girl by saying it was a deepfake.
So this lady wanted to get a cheerleaders life ruined for vaping?
Her lifes not ruined. Get out with the slippery slope shit.
Only because it didn’t stick.
Only because it’s trivial bullshit and life goes on.
Snitches get stitches.
One of the dumbest social standards taught to kids that empowers bullies and bolsters peer pressure.
It’s suppose to take power away from authorities but yes, it isn’t idea and abuse runs rampant.
I agree in general but think it fits here. Involve authorities to help someone that needs help (and I don’t mean from themselves). Don’t involve them when a rule is being broken but no non-consensual harm is resulting. Especially if they are otherwise able to meet their responsibilities.
Whatever, bootlicker.
