Hello...

If you download some piece of software it will often have a security key
that you can use to check the integrity of your download.."is all the code
there"...."have any viruses sneaked in ?"

I find it extraordinary that in the "Space Age" with all the controversy
that an image can produce...("is there life there ?", "But Black holes don't
do that!"..."It's a face...it's a face!"...)...that the space agencies, or observatories
don't provide a security key with the image that you can use to check the
integrity of the original image (tif, etc....).

Of course...most people wouldn't use them...but if you're a researcher
with some ground breaking theory that some other researcher MIGHT
feed you false data on ? Not that anyone would. But no one is supposed
to introduce viruses into software!

DJBarney

well as far as iknow most images that are used for scientific research are in the FITS format which has the infomation about were it was taking and othe infomation also, are is a wiki article on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FITS

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The kind of security key you are advocating doesn't give you any protection from falsified or manipulated data from the source. At best, it only allows you to determine that the data was not modified by a third party. A nefarious researcher could falsify data and then digitally sign the falsified data. There is no way for you to know that this was done.

A security signature lets you know that the data you received from the researcher is what the researcher had published, but it doesn't allow you to detect manipulation before the signature was generated.

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here is another website that might help you about this.
http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/fits_intro.html

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If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

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As far as data direct from instruments goes, I'm pretty sure that they usually do encrypt the data before sending, but not with something like PGP. The idea is that data from satellites/probes can easily be scrambled before reaching Earth. Therefore, it's a good idea to include some error correcting facilities in the data stream. In addition, because the data sent back is often huge, compression utilities (which are a form of encryption) are used.

I don't know of any specific space-based examples offhand, but I'm sure if you looked in, for instance, the LIGO documentation, you'd find this. I think I first read about it regarding SOHO, actually.

PGP would be really unwieldy for scientific data. Heck, it's barely useable for Internet transactions. Slow, slow, slow. (Or maybe that's just me living in the early '90s....)

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The reason that there arent watermarks and whatnot to check the integrity of 'original' space images is that there is no such thing. The instruments on our shuttles, probes, and astronaut's 'cameras' do not just snap an image on to some film or even something as simple as your digital camera. Lots and lots of data is captured by instruments observing space, and it takes months of work to collaborate all the data into a context that creates an image depicting what the scene would have looked like to human eyes. We're talking teraquads of data. Just ask Phil Plait, he goes into this well in his BadAstronomy website.

Another reason there aren't security key's, and Phil goes over this too (but not for this reason) is that it would go against the spirit of the NASA version of an open information act, which declares that after one year, all the data from a particular project on Hubble (or whatever instrument) is open business to the public. Watermarking 'original' images would be serious trouble.

The FITS format has a header were all the infomation is stored.

__________________
If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

http://davidsuniverse.wordpress.com/

NASA/JPL: WEDDS: The WITS encrypted Data Delivery System (PDF)

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Hamlet...

> The kind of security key you are advocating doesn't give you any
> protection from falsified or manipulated data from the source.

Sure! There's no such thing as absolute protection. But it would at least
prove that some image was originally produced by ESA or Nasa.

Aerik....

> Another reason there aren't security key's, and Phil goes over this too
> (but not for this reason) is that it would go against the spirit of the
> NASA version of an open information act, which declares that after one
> year, all the data from a particular project on Hubble (or whatever
> instrument) is open business to the public. Watermarking 'original'
> images would be serious trouble.

I'm not talking about a watermark.

Think Open Source software or GPL GNU licenses.

Many of those software projects have SHA to protect their work.

A space image could be compared to a piece of software...as you say
it often goes through a long development life cycle...passing through
many pieces of software and human hands. So why not protect that
work just in case someone alters the image and uses it to make a
false claim. Why not have the capability to verify the data with the
source that produced it ?

~~~

FITS....Obviously a usefull format...but no SHA's!

WITS....secure, yes...but this is for inter agency communications.

I'm talking about a way for a scientist/researcher/member of the public
to confirm and image. For example.


Scenario: An "independent researcher" says that an image was "leaked"
to him from ESA. He uses this image to claim that it shows an artifact
predicted to appear in Islam (for example). The image catches on and
starts causing a serous religious disruption. ESA claims it never released
the image. Without a key to verify the image against nothing can be
proven.


Scenario: A group produces a satellite image of the Iran/Iraq border
"proving" that the Iranians have started an invasion. The satellite
administrator denies that the image is from their sat and has been doctored for political purposes. If the sat administrator could produce
a key that he can prove was generated before the event (this assumes
that one of their images was actually used but doctored) then it
can be proved that the image is a fake. An unnecessary international
crisis is avoided :-)

Actually maybe the spy sats do this all the time.


Snarkophilus...

Yes....I saw it in the Mars Global Surveyor (RIP :-( ....) specs. It has error
correction/compression. I don't think it could be used to prove the
worth of an image though (unless any MGS MOC experts say otherwise).

I was actually looking into this after claims in the "anomalist" community
that NASA were "airbrushing" images. I was attempting to compare
their "examples of tampering" with the original raw data...and checking
the error correction.

DJBarney

Hamlet...

> The kind of security key you are advocating doesn't give you any
> protection from falsified or manipulated data from the source.

Sure! There's no such thing as absolute protection. But it would at least
prove that some image was originally produced by ESA or Nasa.

Aerik....

> Another reason there aren't security key's, and Phil goes over this too
> (but not for this reason) is that it would go against the spirit of the
> NASA version of an open information act, which declares that after one
> year, all the data from a particular project on Hubble (or whatever
> instrument) is open business to the public. Watermarking 'original'
> images would be serious trouble.

I'm not talking about a watermark.

Think Open Source software or GPL GNU licenses.

Many of those software projects have SHA to protect their work.

A space image could be compared to a piece of software...as you say
it often goes through a long development life cycle...passing through
many pieces of software and human hands. So why not protect that
work just in case someone alters the image and uses it to make a
false claim. Why not have the capability to verify the data with the
source that produced it ?

~~~

FITS....Obviously a usefull format...but no SHA's!

WITS....secure, yes...but this is for inter agency communications.

I'm talking about a way for a scientist/researcher/member of the public
to confirm an image. For example.


Scenario: An "independent researcher" says that an image was "leaked"
to him from ESA. He uses this image to claim that it shows an artifact
predicted to appear in Islam (for example). The image catches on and
starts causing a serous religious disruption. ESA claims it never released
the image. Without a key to verify the image against, nothing can be
proven.


Scenario: A group produces a satellite image of the Iran/Iraq border
"proving" that the Iranians have started an invasion. The satellite
administrator denies that the image is from their sat and has been doctored
for political purposes. If the sat administrator could produce
a key that he can prove was generated before the event (this assumes
that one of their images was actually used but doctored) then it
can be proved that the image is a fake. An unnecessary international
crisis is avoided :-)

Actually maybe the spy sats do this all the time.


Snarkophilus...

Yes....I saw it in the Mars Global Surveyor (RIP :-( ....) specs. It has error
correction/compression. I don't think it could be used to prove the
worth of an image though (unless any MGS MOC experts say otherwise).

I was actually looking into this after claims in the "anomalist" community
that NASA were "airbrushing" images. I was attempting to compare
their "examples of tampering" with the original raw data...and checking
the error correction.

DJBarney

Well...the "MER Analyst Notebook" publishes images with MD5 and SHA
checksums!

http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/

So there you go :-) Didn't know about that.

DJBarney

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