the Dartmouth Algorithm

a couple of uber nerds at Dartmouth college have been working on a way to detect whether an image has been tampered with in photoshop or the like. from Dartmouth News:

Farid [Hany] and Dartmouth graduate student Alin Popescu have developed a mathematical technique to tell the difference between a "real" image and one that's been fiddled with. Consider a photo of two competing CEOs talking over a document labeled "confidential - merger," or a photo of Saddam Hussein shaking hands with Osama bin Laden. The Dartmouth algorithm, presented recently at the 6th International Workshop on Information Hiding, in Toronto, Canada, can determine if someone has manipulated the photos, like blending two photos into one, or adding or taking away objects or people in an image.

I understand why a tool like this would be useful, but quite frankly, i think it takes the fun out of guessing.

on the other hand, it'd be really cool if the algorithm went a step further and stripped the layers of digital manipulation from the image, one by one.