Indelible traces - 78 days of US election traced back on Filecoin

Recently, the Starling Data Integrity Framework released a trusted image archive. The archive is a collection of pictures taken by Reuters photographers, recording the 78 days of the US presidential election from November 2020 to January 2021. These photos will be uploaded and maintained on the Filecoin network, including unchangeable metadata such as location, time, and verification information to ensure that the real record exists for a long time and cannot be tampered with to spread false information.

Welcome to the Starling archives:

https://www.starlinglab.org/78days/

The archive project is a collaboration between Reuters, Filecoin, and Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI). Using technologies such as Hedera Hashgraph and Numbers Protocol, the collaboration will be a proof of concept for using distributed technology to build an authentic and verifiable record of information amid the growing prevalence of false and ambiguous information in the media.

The Starling data integrity framework uses distributed storage technology based on Filecoin. Initiated by USC's Shoah Foundation and Stanford's Department of Electrical Engineering, Starling is a set of tools and principles that allow organizations to securely access, store, and verify human history.

The Content Authenticity Initiative ( CAI) was founded in 2019 by Adobe, The New York Times, and Twitter to develop industry standards for content attribution and increase trust and transparency in online activity. CAI is building a simple way for creators to attach important attribution data to images by adding a secure, tamper-proof layer of data to them, including names, locations, and edit histories.

To create a trusted image archive, Reuters journalists take photos using the Numbers Protocol, so that each photo has a unique digital fingerprint. In this process, each photo is first cryptographically hashed to generate a content identifier (CID). Next, the pictures are uploaded and stored on the Filecoin network, which continuously proves the security of the files and ensures that they have not been tampered with, as this is long-term cold storage. At the same time, these files will be aggregated on IPFS for fast retrieval. Finally, the metadata of each image (including the stored hash value) is recorded in a Hyperledger Fabric database that requires permission to access.

A cache of these transactions is published to the GUN network database and on-chain using the Hedera Consensus Service (HCS). This creates an immutable and verifiable record of messages. Using CAI, a new standard for image attribution, anyone can browse the image archive (https://www.starlinglab.org/78days/) and check the provenance, timestamps, storage data, and verify the editing history of each image. The result of this work is a collection of more than 250 photos taken during the US election in November 2020 and the presidential inauguration in January 2021. Click here to learn more about the authentication process of the images in the archive (https://www.starlinglab.org/image-authentication/).

The archive is open to everyone and provides a proof of concept for preserving and verifying digital media using blockchain technology. The archive aims not only to record these 78 key days in American history, but also to provide a framework for future media verification initiatives. By establishing transparent standards based on verification technology and blockchain implementations, Starling and CAI aim to promote a collaborative ecosystem of media verification solutions.