She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all
She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all
The moral panic following Raffaella Spone’s ‘deepfake’ video spread around the world. She talks for the first time about being the centre of a story in which nothing was as it seemed …
Madi Hime is taking a deep drag on a blue vape in the video, her eyes shut, her face flushed with pleasure. The 16-year-old exhales with her head thrown back, collapsing into laughter that causes smoke to billow out of her mouth. The clip is grainy and shaky – as if shot in low light by someone who had zoomed in on Madi’s face – but it was damning. Madi was a cheerleader with the Victory Vipers, a highly competitive “all-star” squad based in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The Vipers had a strict code of conduct; being caught partying and vaping could have got her thrown out of the team. And in July 2020, an anonymous person sent the incriminating video directly to Madi’s coaches.
Eight months later, that footage was the subject of a police news conference. “The police reviewed the video and other photographic images and found them to be what we now know to be called deepfakes,” district attorney Matt Weintraub told the assembled journalists at the Bucks County courthouse on 15 March 2021. Someone was deploying cutting-edge technology to tarnish a teenage cheerleader’s reputation.
But a little over a year later, when Spone finally appeared in court to face the charges against her, she was told the cyberharassment element of the case had been dropped. The police were no longer alleging that she had digitally manipulated anything. Someone had been crying deepfake. A story that generated thousands of headlines around the world was based on teenage lies, after all. When the truth finally came out, it was barely reported – but the videos and images were real.
The issue here is the police having anything to do with digital forensics...this should have been outsourced to a group that knows how to detect these things and not some cop that barely knows the traffic laws in his own state.
227Barely?
In my experience ops don't know shit. It's all about "gut feelings". "Well "his feels illegal so I'm gonna arrest them and if I'm wrong I get to sit at my desk all day or go on a paid vacation" is how it is.
I can't tell you how many times I've been stopped by cops for riding my bicycle on the road. Literally to the point where I have a laminated card I keep in my wallet with the relevant laws saying "this bike is illegal on a sidewalk and cars must give way on the road"
I've had a few threaten to arrest me "for being a piece of shit" or "for wasting my time" like I'm the one who made them stop...
I've been stopped because I "fit a description" multiple times, the "description" being "man on a bike" with nothing else, supposedly.
I've been stopped for speeding in a school zone before, and if it wouldn't have been a waste of time, I'd have let it go to court and showed my helmet camera video that clearly shows my phone GPS as well as cycling computer (glorified speedometer) readout that clearly shows I was well under 25. Granted I've gone 49 in a 45 for about 3 seconds before I realized one rock and I'm dead and slowed down, there's 0 chance of me speeding past 20 on flat ground unless I'm trying to set a personal best.
I've been stopped for "being a road hazard", not having enough reflective things, having "too many lights" (one forward flasher, one steady, and one rear/one steady rear light), not signaling "and hand signals don't count anymore" lol OK...
Pretty much whatever they feel like stopping you for, they'll stop you and come up with a half-assed excuse later. They don't know the laws they enforce, and if they did, they would be considered a liability to other cops and quickly be ejected.
124What color is your skin?
11Good gravy. Glad I live in Seattle. They are finally make a few physically separated bike lanes instead of just painting a bike symbol on the side of the road.
10Hell, the supreme court codified "gut feeling" into fucking law.
I can't remember the name of the case, but it was referenced in "Talking to Strangers" by Malcolm Gladwell. A guy was pulled over because the cop believed the lens to his taillight was cracked, which led to an arrest on drug possession charges. Turns out, the state that they were in didn't have a law about 'cracked lenses', but the cop thought they did. Our fucked up SC upheld the probable cause, the resulting search and seizure, and all the rest of the fruit of the poisonous tree by saying: "that the officer thought the activity was illegal was enough basis for a probable cause stop.
We are truly fucked, ladies and gentlemen.
5I've always thought it was nuts that cyclists are told not to use sidewalks. If a cyclist hits a pedestrian on a sidewalk, it sucks but it isn't that big of a thing. Comparatively, if a car hits a cyclist on the road, then the damage to human health can be far worse. So why put the cyclist in that situation if a sidewalk exists?
3As someone in the more rural bits, I've ridden my bike on 2 lane non marked roads a few times - however, the amount of social media complaining in my town is absolutely appealing when it comes to cars. People complaining about speeding, then complaining about people going 2mph under the speed limit. I do my best to stick to trails or sidewalks because if you happen to inconvenience anyone - they might make it a point for you to have a bad day. And that's sad.
2
Some PDs do have their own digital forensics units. It isn't a task handed to patrolmen
19
Either a woman with no background in digital technology had made a sophisticated deepfake on her iPhone 8, or a 16-year-old had panicked and lied to her mother about vaping, or mother and daughter had decided together to explain away behaviour they knew would get Madi in trouble, with an elaborate story about digital manipulation. The police chose to believe the first explanation.
“They never understood deepfakes, and the implications of giving a press conference scaring people into thinking someone could take an image and turn it into something else so easily,” Birch says. “I don’t think they ever thought this thing would spread like wildfire and become a worldwide phenomenon.”
A small police force made a mistake that became too big to fix. “Once it blew up, the police couldn’t extricate themselves without losing face.”
As always, ACAB.
edit to add
And then there was this ...
These would be the last public comments (Officer Matthew) Reiss made about the case. On 26 May 2021 he was arrested on suspicion of possessing images of child sexual abuse. Two images had been uploaded to his Gmail account, and detectives had traced them to his IP address. When they raided his home and seized his electronic devices, they found more than 1,700 images and videos depicting children, including 84 of toddlers and infants. Reiss pleaded guilty in March 2022, and was later sentenced to 11 and a half to 23 months in jail. To use Weintraub’s language, if anyone was “preying on juveniles”, it was the police officer who led the investigation.
123Only 1-2 years for possessing literally hundreds of CP images and videos? What the fuck? I mean I guess he didn't harm anyone directly (as far as we know) but still, come on.
49I could of sworn I've seen other CSM PDF files getting over a decade in jail. Pays off to be a criminal cop.
19Nah that's a pretty light sentence, he definitely got some leniency because he's fuzz.
10With that number of images he very likely paid for some and thereby directly contributed to abuse of children.
7
I wonder how much money the Hime family has donated to the Doylestown Police Department.
5
Deepfake fake news story aside, at the crux of this story is a girl or parent jealous of Madi's position on the team and was trying to tattle to get her kicked off the team. This story getting ignored was the best result. The girl was 16 and she was caught vaping. Kids are going to do shit they shouldn't and any hard and fast rule on vices like this is only going to be abused and cause more damage in the long term.
121I'm more concerned about this loser parent going around stalking 16 year olds being 16 year olds.
This whole story certainly inspires one to despise technology, however.
62For real, that's a story in itself. And then Madi's old man knows some guys on the force so they say it's fake, that's story two. I'm honestly more interested in story one, because some loser is out here stalking this 16-year-old girl so they can screw her shit up, presumably out of jealousy.
My kids will play sports and dance and do whatever. I have no interest in pushing them towards very serious leagues, because time and again the people involved in them have shown they are all losers. My kids will not be professional athletes, we are not particularly tall or strong or fast, but they can do well, be healthy, and make friends, that's about all I want from it.
24Considering the woman: A) is legally barred from discussing the other families, and B) denies having sent anything to anyone, I think you might be making some pretty broad assumptions. What we do know is that the videos and photos weren’t faked, and they were evidence of misconduct by the other girls, who as of yet have experienced zero consequences and in at least one case may have benefited from the case going viral.
7Oh no, a teenager faces zero consequences for vaping. We are doomed! /s
That being said, you are right that the allegations should not be taken as facts, especially considering they came from the same source as those deepfake lies.
18
No no clearly the best thing to do is to ruin her life over vaping just like kids who lose all the scholarships they earned because they got caught smoking weed. How else are they going to find out how dangerous these things are if we don't absolutely destroy them in spite of their accomplishments?
3
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” - Orwell, 1984
83I guess I can see why this is being posted, but if you are entering this era thinking that because you've seen a video of something that it must have happened...well, you haven't been paying much attention and opening yourself up to being easily manipulated.
9
Honestly, this is what I consider to be the clear danger of generative "AI". We've basically gone several steps backward toward a world where we can't prove something happened because recording technology doesn't exist because it can be faked well enough and easily enough to cast doubt on any recording.
Sure, experts can analyze it and deem it legit or not legit but for the average person its becoming harder and harder to tell. Word spreads fast, and it's been demonstrated that lies spread faster than their corrections by orders of magnitude. All it takes is for something to "go viral" or someone with authority to lazily confirm or deny that something is real/fake and the public at large loses touch with reality.
This plus the insane misinformation campaigns and those that cry "fake news" whenever the news contains information they don't like... I feel like truth and reality are becoming unfashionable.
51Sure, experts can analyze it and deem it legit or not legit but for the average person its becoming harder and harder to tell.
Frankly, I think that's exactly what will also be its downfall in such cases. At a certain amount of exposure of such material, people will stop caring, because of how common it will be. The larger issue is not how to tell what's fake, but how to tell what's true. Large players, such as governments or corporations, can and will abuse this tech for whatever narrative they need.
12Confirmation bias just leads people to believe whatever confirms their beliefs. Now we can give anyone anything they need to confirm their beliefs.
6
This article took way too long to get to the fact that this was a massive police fuckup.
50Fuck ups are unintentional. They did this shit on purpose
23
imagine caring this much about what teens do.
Jesus christ your life must be so boring. I get wanting to be a good influence and stuff but like holy shit dude.
26If you don't care about what teenagers do, you end up with a country full of twats.
12Care about something useful.
0Yeah The vape's going to fucking brain rot them right?
I think the original comment was saying nobody should give a fuck what teens do when it comes to stuff like that, because you can't prevent it, teens do drugs (nicotine is a drug)
I will add that the only person that should care is the child's parents, but the same principles apply. They can't stop them, but they should educate them on the potential downsides of consuming certain things at their age.
-2
The laws should have never gotten involved except in the instance with the bathing suit.
Please people, handle your petty grievances about puritanical bullshit without involving the violent gang known as police officers.
18Taking the video and sending to the coaches is still a cunt move. Deepfake or not.
13And also, extracurricular groups forcing a code of conduct akin to purity tests need to go the fuck away. If they want to exploit the talent and hard work of kids for personal monetary gain, you'd think they'd be less of a dick about it.
31She apparently did send the texts she was guilty of sending. Which was a misdemeanor and for which she paid restitution. But, as was already said, the videos were on social media and that doesn't give the pedophile cop the right to make up some deepfake bullshit, which results in a public press conference accusing her of it, and that results in things like her neighbor threatening to kill her because he thought she was a pedophile.
18The vaping video was just one of many disturbing communications brought to the attention of Hilltown Township police department, Weintraub said. Madi had been receiving messages telling her she should kill herself. Her mother, Jennifer Hime, had told officers someone had been taking images from Madi’s social media and manipulating them “to make her appear to be drinking”. A photograph of Madi in swimwear had been altered: “Her bathing suit was edited out.”
Madi wasn’t the only member of the Victory Vipers cheer team to have been victimised. In August 2020, Sherri Ratel had been sent anonymous texts accusing her teenage daughter, Kayla, of drinking and smoking pot. Noelle Nero had been sent images of her 17-year-old daughter in a bikini with captions about “toxic traits, revenge, dating boys and smoking”. These, too, were “all altered and shown as deepfakes”, Weintraub added.
The anonymous sender had used “spoofing” software to disguise their identity behind an unknown number. The police had managed to trace it to the IP address of Raffaella Spone, a 50-year-old woman with no previous criminal record.
That's some heinous shit. I don't see why anyone has any sympathy for this woman regardless of police incompetence.
0
She didn't take the videos. They were on social media.
8I interpreted "taking" here as getting it from one place and moving it to another. Although it's certainly not clear.
1
Right? She tried to ruin a young person's life over vaping. I said that above and got downvoted.
-3
Did that guy who got arrested for making deep fakes that implicated a school official in corription get out yet or will he have to languish for years before it gets overturned?
13They have logs of him using the school’s network to visit ai audio generators, so that case will probably stick…
6Ah yeah. I see they found evidence he was stealing money and the principle was investigating so he tried to get him canceled by fabricating racism.
1
What the fuck kind of narc sent it to her coaches.
10I used to have a coworker whose daughter was in competitive cheer. It's like any youth competition -- the parents can lose their goddamn minds over it. If there was a chance somebody could DQ a competing team, or perhaps open up a spot on a team by narcing on one of the current members, somebody is gonna do it.
19
The accusations are the punishment. It's used all over the place.
10Great digital forensic team. Dipshits.
9I dont get what the issue was with the video in the first place. And why would someone send something like this? Who gives as if kids party? Code of conduct rules for school clubs shouldnt be a thing either.
4Yeah, IMO that the clip was real is only marginally better than a deep fake being used. As long as no one is pressured to do anything they don't want to do and they aren't using intoxication to justify actual shitty behavior, who cares?
1
Who gives a shit, let the teen have fun for fucks sake, cops here actually did a good thing for the girl by saying it was a deepfake.
-4Snitches get stitches.
-18One of the dumbest social standards taught to kids that empowers bullies and bolsters peer pressure.
22It's suppose to take power away from authorities but yes, it isn't idea and abuse runs rampant.
8I agree in general but think it fits here. Involve authorities to help someone that needs help (and I don't mean from themselves). Don't involve them when a rule is being broken but no non-consensual harm is resulting. Especially if they are otherwise able to meet their responsibilities.
1Whatever, bootlicker.
-8