"Digitally Counterfeit, Forge, Utter & Publish

Counterfeiting, forgery, and uttering & publishing have been around as long as there have been artifacts worth faking. An especially industrious early forger, Onomacrtitus, operated around 500 BC reportedly faking Homeric poems, aspects of Titan mythology, and pronouncements by oracles.¹ The advent of digital data changes the practices’ potential scope and scale.

Art, currency, literary works, philatelic labels, political documents, identity documents, and financial records and instruments have all been targets. Annual losses from commercial fraud are measured in hundreds of billions. Losses from music, video, and identity theft have been especially publicized. Potential sociological and epistemological consequences, however, are less considered.

Political forgeries can change government by lending creditability to propaganda and disinformation. Baldwin’s Conservative Party toppled McDonald’s Labour Party in 1924, largely as a result of the Zinoviev forgery. President Bush could arguably have lost the 2004 election as a result of unauthenticated documents CBS used in a 60 Minutes broadcast.² They can also cause war.

Bismarck allegedly doctored an account of a meeting between Prussia’s King and France’s ambassador. The inflammatory language incited the French and is credited with triggering the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.³ Forged documents depicting attempts by Iraq to purchase yellowcake helped to pass a UN resolution authorizing military force against Iraq.⁴

Literary fraud takes numerous forms: plagiarism, hoax, forgery, fabrication, and pseudepigrapha.

A Davy Crockett autobiography was fabricated by Richard Smith. Best selling author, Clifford Irving, did time for perpetrating an elaborate literary hoax: he forged letters that convinced his publisher to accept a fake Howard Hughes autobiography Irving fabricated. The "pre-Columbian" Vinland map describing America being visited in the 11th century – which was validated by British Museum and Yale University librarians – has been shown to contain a 20th century pigment. Margaret Jones recently fabricated an account of growing up in LA as a member of the Bloods.⁵

Financial dangers inherent in the ongoing conversion to digital data are obvious. Implications about potential threats to the integrity of humanity’s collective knowledge are perhaps less obvious. The internet’s redundancy and rigorous back-up features make a repeat of losing the Alexandria Library unlikely. Counterfeit "knowledge," however, is another matter. What are the implications for a society if its knowledge can be easily forged or fabricated?

Millions of American school children were falsely taught Columbus had to overcome a prevailing belief the earth was flat. Several generations accepted the fiction as truth because of a historical accident: Washington Irving's romanticized The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, was mistaken as a scholarly work.⁶ Today’s technology multiplies the potential for misleading future students.

What if iPad textbooks and Phoenix courseware can be subtly tweaked? Consider a controversial example. Are NRA and District of Columbia Second Amendment positions affected if the following phrase were electronically snipped from Essay No. 29 of The Federalist?

“ ... if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form any army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow citizens."

There have always been those who would forge history or science. Discovery Institute’s botched use of digital data led to the detection of its fabrication of evidence supporting Intelligent Design in Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. Dover is a portent of things that can be expected to come. The defendent used relativist arguments of fairness, balance, and political correctness to indirectly attack the scientific method as merely one possible belief-justification system.⁷

address comments and suggestions to...

Danielle Miller-Coe
info@sybergroup.com

The point is that truth is not always fair, balanced, political correct, or beautiful. (There was nothing beautiful about the Holocaust.) Revealing truth is hard work. Although the scientific method does not enable propositions or theories (except, possibly, pure math propositions) to be proven (only disproven), it is the most productive epistemological system yet devised for pursuing truth. To the extent that humanity’s collective memory and information data base are subject to tampering, confidence in the concept of human independent truth, society’s methods for seeking and testing truth, and the impetus to pursue more truth are undermined.

1. Smith, Philip "Onomacritus" Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (editor: William Smith) London: Little & Brown 1849 Vol III pp 30, 31 Onomacrtitus was a Greek chresmologue, a consultant who helped oracles’ clients interpret the prophesies and advice that oracles handed-out. For a balanced introduction to the “oracle business,” see... The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute Curriculum Unit 84.02.02.

2. Howard Kurtz, Michael Dobbs and James V. Grimaldi "In Rush to Air, CBS Quashed Memo Worries" The Washington Post September 19, 2004

3. Taylor, A. J. P. Bismarck, The Man and the Statesman New York: Vintage Books 1967 pp 120, 121

5. Margaret Jones' memoir, Love and Consequences, about growing up as a half Native American foster child in Los Angles’ drug and gang culture was published by Reiverhead Books and received positive reviews. It was later exposed as a fabrication. Rich, Motoko “ Gang Memoir, Turning Page, Is Pure Fiction“ The New York Times March 4, 2008

When flogging her book on WBUR and NPR radio, Jones (who is actually an upper class WASP) spoke a credible AAVE as she talked about her homies.

6. Russell, Jeffrey Burton Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians Santa Barbara: Praeger 1997

7. Dover marked a transitional trend in epistemological debate in that, although it was at heart a classical dispute about fact and justification-system, the defendant used post-classical relativist arguments. For a comprehensive account written from the prevailing party's viewpoint, see Miller, Kenneth R. Only a Theory New York: Viking 2008

The Syber Group project has both public policy and commercial implications potentially impacting such matters as education policy, national productivity, intellectual property and technology transfer.

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