David Osborn

Politics, media, information security & how they relate. Russia, C Asia, M East for many years, now in France.

[cje @caseyjohnellis]

yeh so anyways this is is a thing now (this is from yesterday, fwiw)

[David Osborn @david_osborn]

There are minor visual giveaways. AI won’t keep making these mistakes for much longer. The other giveaways - time of posting after the content it was based on, the fact the original content was posted - are both things that smart disinfo operations could overcome easily.

[David Osborn @david_osborn]

Now seems this video is being confirmed as fake. This is the best fake I’ve seen in any conflict. It’s extended from a real video so it’s verifiable in the traditional sense, geo/ chronolocatable. Cc @Shayan86

[David Osborn @david_osborn]

Shocking video from Afghanistan, purportedly showing a woman getting shot against a wall in protests in Herat. Now, it’s clear the TB did use violence & gunshots to disperse protests yesterday. But there are some issues with this specific footage
https://t.co/3c4jfqJAvm

[افغانستان اینترنشنال @AFIntlBrk]

در پی سرکوب اعتراض‌های مدنی در هرات، در کنار ویدیوهای اصلی و تایید شده از برخوردهای طالبان، شماری عکس و ویدیوی ساخته شده با هوش مصنوعی هم در شبکه‌های اجتماعی دست به‌دست می‌شود. برخی از این ویدیوها را حتی شماری از چهره‌های سرشناس هم باور کرده و بازنشر کرده‌اند. پخش عکس‌ها و ویدیوهای ساخته شده با هوش مصنوعی، می‌تواند روایت اصلی را زیر سوال ببرد و تاثیر تصاویر واقعی را کمرنگ کند.

[David Osborn @david_osborn]

[other thoughts: not clear if video is continuous, but is audio? I haven’t put in a tool, but it appears to be. Audio in possibly manufactured segment is also slightly suspicious, possibly repeating audio from 0:07 in clip. Vid is 18 secs. Kling AI produces 18 secs.]

[David Osborn @david_osborn]

Shocking video from Afghanistan, purportedly showing a woman getting shot against a wall in protests in Herat. Now, it’s clear the TB did use violence & gunshots to disperse protests yesterday. But there are some issues with this specific footage
https://t.co/3c4jfqJAvm

[Soviet -Afghan War Samurai 1980 @Samurai19801]

An innocent Afghan woman stood in shock against a wall before being executed in front of onlookers by a masked Taliban terrorist in Herat Province today. Time for people of Afghanistan 🇦🇫 to start upraising once again like in 1979 against the communists.

[David Osborn @david_osborn]

The shooting may be real. There is no doubting women in Afghanistan are abused, disappeared & killed under the TB. But there is also huge amount of disinfo on AFG from all sides so one has to be careful. If fake, this would be the best fake I’ve seen to date, from any conflict.

[David Osborn @david_osborn]

*** Conor McGregor slams Trump admin for USAID defunding ***

[Conor McGregor @TheNotoriousMMA]

Ban immigration from the 3rd World now.

Help them from where they are. As we have done over the years so many times beautifully, and nobly.

They cannot come here any longer.

[Alex Wickham @alexwickham]

NEW: The UK has announced new powers to jail criminals who carry out hostile activity on behalf of foreign proxy groups for 14 years, following a spate of anti-Semitic attacks linked to Iran.

The laws announced by Keir Starmer today make it a criminal offence to assist or receive payment from a designated organisation. The government says the legislation will target hostile foreign states who outsource the soliciting of hybrid warfare attacks to proxy groups.

A group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin has claimed responsibility for some of the recent attacks on Jews in Britain. It is believed to be a proxy group working on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to pay local criminals to carry out attacks on Jews.

The new legislation mirrors Britain’s 2023 National Security Act, which imposed heavy sentences on criminals carrying out harmful activity on behalf of foreign intelligence services and has been fundamental to combating Russian hybrid attacks.

It effectively expands it to include criminals working for proxy groups acting on behalf of foreign states, reflecting the evolving nature of the threat. Hostile states like Iran are increasingly using state-linked proxy groups to solicit hybrid attacks to hide their tracks and give them plausible deniability.

[David Osborn @david_osborn]

A much more sensible and straightforward approach than Keir Starmer’s edicts…

[Afghan Analyst @AfghanAnalyst2]

𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗯𝗮𝗻 𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗦𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗽𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗢𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻
As a demonstration of obedience to the supreme leader, Taliban members in several provinces have reportedly begun a campaign of breaking their smartphones. In the video below, said to be from a police station in the Logar Province, Taliban are seen destroying their phones to register compliance with the order.

[Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz]

Let's check in on how this product is going! (thread)

[David Osborn @david_osborn]

What’s odd is I think the public would support treating smartphones like cigarettes, eg under 16s can have dumb phones from the early 2000s, not smartphones. So it seems the most politically easy route is being avoided, which makes no sense unless there’s another agenda.

[BBC Breaking News @BBCBreaking]

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer says tech firms must stop children sending or receiving sexually explicit images or face new legislation - follow live https://t.co/lbxxtiNrmT

[David Osborn @david_osborn]

Oh, err, great…

[Channel 4 News @Channel4News]

Divers have recorded what they believe is the first underwater footage of a great white shark in the Mediterranean in waters between Sicily and Tunisia.

The divers were at the site of a ship wreck removing discarded fishing which trap marine life, when they spotted the shark. Marine experts have described the sighting as highly unusual and scientifically valuable.

[David Osborn @david_osborn]

I said this 3 months ago. It was known Iran’s surveillance system was compromised, even before Khamenei assassination. The internet restrictions in Russia were a panic over ability of foreign intel to see into Moscow/ Kremlin.

[Ruslan Trad @ruslantrad]

“Russia’s security services shut parts of a special surveillance system protecting President Vladimir Putin and his closest aides in the wake of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s assassination in Tehran, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The system — which is separate from the nearly 300,000 cameras that surveil Moscow’s citizens — was only turned back on after engineers combed through it in an attempt to hermetically seal it off from the internet, said one of the people.”

https://t.co/sQh71IJbYP

[David Osborn @david_osborn]

@ta_mills It was partly because they never did the planned extension of the motorway, right? That’s what I remember from a GCSE case study