Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
Was the Photo of JFK's Assassin Faked?
February 16, 2010
Conspiracy theorists have long held that this famous photo of Lee Harvey Oswald, President Kennedy's assassin, was faked. If that were true, the implications would be profound. Not only did the photo show Oswald with two weapons, he is also holding Marxist documents.
Over the years, the conspiracy theorists have pointed to the lighting in this photo to back up their allegations that the photo was faked to cement the case against Oswald. If the police or anyone else had doctored this photograph, it almost certainly would have pointed to a broader conspiracy in JFK's assassination.
Indeed, the lighting is curious to the naked eye. The long shadow of Oswald's figure suggests that the sun was somewhat low in the sky and and coming at him from Oswald's left. Yet there is a shadow under his nose suggesting that the light was above him. There is another across his neck that indicates light coming from another direction.
Enter Dr. Hany Farid, a professor at Dartmouth and probably the country's leading expert on photo alteration/fabrication. He takes a look at the photo in a fascinating video. Dr. Farid himself was struck by what appeared to be inconsistent lighting.
It turns out that our brain doesn't process well what we see in the two dimensional world of a photo. Oswald was in a three dimensional world when the photo was taken and any serious analysis of the photo requires a three dimensional model. Using Oswald's mug shots, Dr. Farid constructed a 3D model of Oswald's head. He also constructed a 3D model of his body. The light was then positioned where it would necessarily have been to create the shadow.
Once that was done, the results were suprising. Not only did Oswald's large nose cast exactly the shadow in the photo, but the dark wells under his eyes and the darkness under his lower lip were also there. Even the shadows across his neck are identical. Conclusion: the shadows in the photo are consistent and the photgraph is genuine.
In 1963, it is almost inconceivable to imagine the technical sophistication that would have allowed this photo to be doctored. Even today, it would be difficult. This video really highlights the human inability to reason about 3D lighting and 3D geometry.
As Dr. Farid says, photo manipulation has a long history. One of the most exiting things about our new technical capabilities is that we can now go back and look at photos that were "suspect" and make a pretty accurate determination of which photos were doctored.
One of the most popular CLEs we teach is The Alteration and Fabrication of Electronic Evidence – we doff our cap to Dr. Farid, who has now given us another slide for our PowerPoint!
Listen to the Podcast
