Digital Discovery Week - The Blockchain: creating trusted sources of information

The Blockchain: creating trusted sources of information

Using Blockchain to Engender Trust in Public Digital Archives

Alex Green, The National Archives

Blockchain is at the peak of the hype cycle – but it has the potential to transform the exchange and stewardship of information. The National Archives ARCHANGEL project is exploring how tamper-resistant and decentralised blockchain technology might be used to ensure that digital records are verifiable, and can be trusted as authentic -- so that no individual institution could attempt to rewrite history.

Fake News - a Technological Approach to Proving Provenance Using Blockchains

Steve Huckle, University of Sussex

In an era of fake news, when someone shows us a video or picture of some event, how can we trust its authenticity? It seems the public no longer believe that traditional media is a reliable reference of fact, perhaps due, in part, to the onset of many diverse sources of conflicting information, via social media. Indeed, the issue of 'fake' reached a crescendo during the 2016 US Presidential Election, when the winner, Donald Trump, claimed that the New York Times was trying to discredit him by pushing disinformation. Current research into overcoming the problem of fake news does not focus on establishing the ownership of media resources used in such stories - the blockchain-based application introduced in the article is technology that is capable of indicating the authenticity of digital media. Put simply; by using the trust mechanisms of blockchain technology, the tool can show, beyond doubt, the provenance of any source of digital media, including images used out of context in attempts to mislead.

In my paper Fake News - a Technological Approach to Proving Provenance Using Blockchains, I introduce a prototype of an innovative technology for proving the origins of captured digital media. In this talk, I will give a brief overview of that prototype.