It was discussed extensively in the Rittenhouse court case today that the prosecution provided the defense with a much lower quality of a particular video file (one that was also possibly cropped) than what the prosecution possessed. The prosecution contends this was an accident and the transcoding occurred when they AirDropped it from one phone to another and then emailed it from their personal Gmail account.
Internet sleuths then spotted Handbrake on the prosecutor's laptop as he was preparing to show one of the videos. Those same sleuths are now speculating that the prosecutors deliberately transcoded/cropped the video that they provided to the defense, as Handbrake could possibly be used for that purpose.
What really shocked me was the carelessness in handling critical digital evidence in such an important trial - lots of discussion of Airdropping, emailing, Dropboxing, etc. You'd think critical video evidence would be controlled and only played back in an appropriately-vetted player without any software scaling (or at least only with known scaling) on approved devices. Checksums would be checked to ensure videos were unmodified, etc.
Instead, they're using random laptops, Windows Media Player at times, VLC at others, personal phones, 4K TVs that apparently the defense brought in, etc. And none of the lawyers in that courtroom understand that every single one of those can and will affect the way the video is presented.
Neither do some 'expert' witnesses.
how is there not some kind of startup centered around this specific use case?
And I have bridge to sell. It is tampering with the evidence. If prosecution was ever criminally charged for their misdeeds and fucking up person's lives as the result they would straighten out in no time. Meanwhile they keep abusing their position with no recourse.
On the contrary, this is exactly how it works. The biggest pain point in sharing high quality photo or video content in 2021 is that every single service insists on quietly compressing or transcoding your content. Some, like iMessage, even do it inconsistently depending on things like current format and file size. To make matters worse, Gmail, iMessage, and friends will often show you, the sender, the original quality, so you don't even know that the content has been butchered.
I'm not familiar with all email clients, I mostly use Thunderbird, but almost all messaging clients, social media and similar service do compression when you upload media to them today. It's not super far off that an email client would do the same.
Even here, in this incredible high-profile case, they apparently felt confident enough to give it a try.
Imagine now how easy it must be for them to do it to poor, mostly Black defendants who are relying on a public defender, when they don't have a (for better or worse) rabid political wing watching their every move, and when there are no screenshots of their laptop circulating the internet.
This is a concentrated drop of shame in the already shameful lake of fake justice.
It's an amazing example of how rotted justice in America is. But since it doesn't fit into the racial-power narrative it's ignored. This is the case that could teach middle America that their justice system is broken and needs reform.
Guilty or innocent, the DA has done so much BS that the case should have been thrown out w/ prejudice [1] a long time ago.
[1] mistrial w/ prejudice means Rittenhouse get's off. The argument for prejudice is that the prosecution is making too many serious violations for the mistakes to be innocent. And if they're not innocent mistakes, then prejudice attaches.