The Department of Justice has declared that it cannot release audio recordings of President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur due to fears of artificial intelligence or “deep fakes” being used to tamper with the material, but one legal scholar has slammed the department’s request as “legally unreasonable” and “dangerous”.
In a 49-page document released Friday, the Justice Department defended its decision not to make public its interviews with Biden’s special counsel. POLITICO.
“With the passage of time and advances in audio, artificial intelligence, and ‘deepfake’ technology, concerns about malicious manipulation of audio files will only grow,” the lawsuit states.
“It is readily foreseeable that, if the audio recordings were made public, they could be improperly altered, and the altered files could be passed off as genuine recordings and widely distributed,” the Justice Department said.
Politico noted that the administration has taken various steps to “quash multiple legal challenges filed under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the recordings.”
Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer said: Affidavit On Friday night, they made it clear that releasing the audio would carry “significant risks” and “would amount to an unjustified invasion of personal privacy.”
“If the audio recording were made public, the public would know that an audio recording of the interview was available, which could allow a bad actor to create an audio deepfake and program a fake voice of President Biden to say whatever the deepfake creator wanted,” Weinsheimer argued. “That deepfake could then be circulated as a genuine copy of the recording and potentially distributed widely.”
Weinsheimer said that because Biden is an “unindicted private individual,” releasing the interview through a Freedom of Information Act request would be “unprecedented and extremely damaging.”
Referring to the widespread and easy availability of thousands of hours of audio of Biden, Weinsheimer argued that the release of the special counsel’s interviews “will make it much easier for bad actors to pass off deep fakes as real recordings.”
They also argued that releasing the audio of the interview “will do little to deepen the public’s understanding of Special Prosecutor Heo’s activities, given the vast amount of information already in the public record.”
“This allegation is logically and legally absurd. It is also dangerous.”
Jonathan Turley Hit He criticized the allegations as “logically and legally absurd and dangerous.”
“This argument ignores that if the audio tapes were made public it would be much harder to pass off fakes as the real thing,” Turley countered. “As it stands, the actors could argue that the tapes were leaked or that they got them from other sources. Without the official tapes, it would be hard to refute that argument.”
The legal experts continued, “The fact that Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is making this false allegation is another unfortunate sign that he has abandoned his pledge to stay out of politics while in office. This lawsuit is clearly designed with one overriding goal: to delay his release until after the election, when it will not damage the president.”
Special Counsel Hoare’s 388-page report found that Biden knowingly retained classified documents he had obtained while he was vice president, but the special counsel did not indict Biden due to his declining cognitive capacity, describing him as a “caring, well-meaning elderly man with a limited memory.”
Do you like Blaze News? Bypass censorship and sign up for our newsletter to get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up here!
