Near the end of 2019, the UK’s BBC iPlayer released an incredible TV series called The Capture – and I missed it entirely.
It was only recently, when series 2 was launched, that I stumbled across the television show, and I’m glad I did. I recently wrote an article about the privacy risks of facial recognition technology (FRT), so when I saw the show, the topic grabbed my attention immediately.
The Capture is a not-too-unrealistic look into the potential abuses of FRT that should terrify us all. The show follows a DCI (a UK police detective) as she investigates an assault and kidnapping. The crime is caught clearly on surveillance cameras, and it’s seemingly an easy win for her.
However, she suspects the evidence has been tampered with, and so begins our protagonist’s journey into the rabbit hole that is FRT and deepfaking. It’s a great show, and I’d recommend it to anyone. You can check out the Season 1 trailer below!
Going into the show, I knew it was about deepfaking, so I had some idea of what to expect. Still, The Capture held my attention from beginning to end.
And it left me wondering: could The Capture really happen?
Spoilers ahead!
This post discusses the plot of The Capture, so expect minor spoilers! If you haven’t seen the TV show yet, I recommend giving it a try before reading on.
Could The Capture Really Happen?
One of the things I enjoy most about movies and TV shows that depict future or near-future technology is the excitement of new technology. I find myself imagining how or when we might see that kind of tech in real life. I was born in the 1980s, so Back to the Future had me desperate for my own hoverboard. Sadly, almost forty years later, that hoverboard fantasy seems less likely than ever.
But how about the events depicted in The Capture? Are they realistic, or just a fantasy? Turns out, most of it is already feasible with existing tech. FRT is already being used in both law enforcement and the private sector, among other places. Collectively, the nations of the world have more than 1 billion surveillance cameras pointed at us on a daily basis! So, how might that footage get used?
Are companies using data captured by surveillance cameras?
Earlier this year, Madison Square Garden denied a woman entry because FRT software had identified her as being on a list of banned guests. Her crime? Working for a law firm that was engaged in litigation against Madison Square Garden’s parent company. That’s it. She wasn’t even assigned to the case.
Meanwhile, law enforcement firms are using FRT to identify potential suspects – often with disastrous and supposedly life-changing results when the software gets it wrong. In the linked example, a man spent time in jail when FRT mistakenly identified him as a criminal. Yet, despite the software’s accuracy being heavily influenced by ethnicity, it’s still being used within and outside of the US.
In The Capture, the government heavily leans on CCTV and FRT to identify suspects. So, the show nails this part entirely. The technology exists already, and it can identify you so that organizations can deny you entry to an event or even prosecute you. It just doesn’t appear to be too reliable as of yet.
Can your image really be deepfaked in a video?
In Season 2 of The Capture, a Member of Parliament (MP) appears on national television, taking a shocking stance on controversial topics. In reality, the entire broadcast has been hijacked and turned into a deepfake. The MP was actually giving an entirely different interview and had very different opinions.
Deepfakes can be created with software that already exists, though the software is far from perfect. For example, most deepfake technology struggles when a subject moves their head around, which is pretty much anybody in a video ever.
I watched a few deepfake videos, and the results were hilarious. There are loads of them on YouTube, but if you check out our article on deepfakes, you’ll find some telling examples with Tom Cruise and Elon Musk.
Anyway, the TV show appears ahead of its time in this aspect. With the current state of deepfake technology, it is possible to create a fairly convincing television interview of a public figure if you put in the hours and money. However, it isn’t (yet) possible to do so in real-time, on live television.
In general, though, the consensus on forums across the internet seems to be that we are in the early days of deepfaking. We can probably expect the tech to become much more capable in the future – not to mention more available to the public, which is worrying.
Can surveillance camera footage be altered?
As the show develops, we learn that those responsible are hijacking a live CCTV feed to insert their fake footage into the feed. But can live CCTV really be altered in this way?
This one was slightly trickier to answer. There isn’t much in the way of information online, and besides, in the TV show, it turns out that the criminals are introducing a video delay, then inserting their own footage. So, they aren’t really changing the live footage directly.
However, both scenarios seem unrealistic given the current technology. Most of the CCTV providers I researched use watermarks to prove their legitimacy. If the footage is altered, the watermark is broken. There’s also technology that can be used to look at the metadata in a video and work out whether it has been tampered with, which is used in court cases.
So, from what I could find, this aspect of the TV show is, again, ahead of its time – or potentially fantastical. From what I’ve gathered, you can’t alter live CCTV footage or even insert new footage into an artificial stream delay without being caught out.
Keeping Your Face Safe
No, we’re not talking about COVID masks here. In light of FRT technology spreading rapidly, you might be wondering how you can protect your identity. After all, your face is part of your biometric data, just like your fingerprints. And like those, your passwords, and your financial data, you probably don’t want that data being used without your knowledge.
On top of that, there are other worrying breaches of privacy going on with regard to deepfakes. Just recently, a content creator was caught watching deepfake pornographic videos of victims who definitely had not consented. This content is going rampant online and takes advantage of the footage public figures, from famous actors to Twitch streamers, post online.
There are a few steps you can take to protect yourself against FRT. Unfortunately, you can’t always prevent a camera from capturing and storing your image. And of course, as in the TV show, you can’t stop law enforcement agencies from using that data to identify potential suspects.
What you can do, however, is stay up to date on recent developments. After all, you can’t protect yourself from a danger you know nothing about. While The Capture might be taking some creative shortcuts and looking into the future, it succeeds in spreading the message of the dangers of deepfakes to its audiences. I, for one, am now hyper-aware of every security camera I pass on my way to the grocery store.
Will There Be a Third Series of The Capture?
The second series of The Capture ended in September 2022. As yet, there’s no announcement of a third series from the BBC. If the timeline of the first two series continues, we might expect to see DCI Rachel Carey return to the screens sometime in 2024.
For now, if you haven’t seen the first two series, I highly recommend checking them out on BBC iPlayer. Even if you’re based outside the UK, you can access BBC iPlayer via a VPN (virtual private network). Aside from being an ominous prediction about the future of facial recognition technology, it’s also one of the best thriller TV series I’ve watched in years!
