[mrandish]

Yep, "chain of custody." Came here hoping to see that concept discussed since it's how the system already deals with cases of potential evidence tampering. If the evidence is of material importance and there's no sufficiently credible chain of custody, then its validity can be questioned. The concept started around purely physical evidence but applies to image, audio and video. The good thing about the ubiquity of deepfake memes on social media is that it familiarizes judges and juries with how easy it now is to create plausible fake media.

[dragonwriter]

Chain of custody only covers from when the evidence came into the hands of the police; the real issue here is original provenance, which chain of custody doesn't solve.

Evidence of provenance is already important, to be sure, but the the ability to have some degree of validation of the contents has itself provided some evidence of provenance; lose that and there is a real challenge.