Improvements to time bracketed authentication

Abstract

We describe a collection of techniques whereby audiovisual or other recordings of significant events can be made in a way that hinders falsification, pre-dating, or post-dating by interested parties, even by the makers and operators of the recording equipment. A central feature of these techniques is the interplay between private information, which by its nature is untrustworthy and susceptible to suppression or manipulation by interested parties, and public information, which is too widely known to be manipulated by anyone. While authenticated recordings may be infeasible to falsify, they can be abused in other ways, such as being used for blackmail or harassment; but susceptibility to these abuses can be reduced by encryption and secret sharing.