This is a question and / or suggestion for any of you blockchain experts out there. Is it possible to build a photo app, or an actual digital camera, that is connected to a blockchain in order to timestamp digital photos such that they could be verified as unmodified? It seems like this could be quite useful for court cases where photo evidence is involved, to prove they haven't been photoshopped or anything. Or, just in general with photos on the web, UFO sightings or other dubious photos could at least be verified as unmodified, even if the identities of the objects in the photos are debatable.
If it isn't possible, why not?
Yes it's possible.
You can probably even use steem to do it. The idea is that you can embed a hash value of a given file ( photo or whatever) in the blockchain. I.e. you could just hash a photo and post the value on steem.
How do you know it wasn't modified before the hash?
Yeah, that's what I was getting at. The hash would have to be embedded at the time the photo is taken. So maybe the app itself would have to be connected to a blockchain in such a way that any modification to it, i.e. trying to hack it so as to embed a hash in a pre existing photo, just wouldn't work.
The only thing this technique guarantees is that the photo has been taken before the time of the timestamp. Whether the photo is "real" or not is a different question.
I guess you could try to build an app that does everything automatically and that tries to prevent modification of a photo but that would most likely fail. (You can always take a photo of a photoshopped image, so yeah.)
True, didn't think of taking a photo of a photo. I guess it might have to have built in AI that can tell the difference.
I upvoted you.