II
118THCONGRESS
1
STSESSION S. 3504
To establish a course of education and pilot program on authentication
of digital content provenance for certain Department of Defense media
content, and for other purposes.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
DECEMBER13, 2023
Mr. P
ETERSintroduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred
to the Committee on Armed Services
A BILL
To establish a course of education and pilot program on
authentication of digital content provenance for certain
Department of Defense media content, and for other
purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-1
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 2
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 3
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Digital Defense Con-4
tent Provenance Act of 2023’’. 5
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•S 3504 IS
SEC. 2. COURSE OF EDUCATION AND PILOT PROGRAM ON 1
AUTHENTICATION OF DIGITAL CONTENT 2
PROVENANCE FOR CERTAIN DEPARTMENT 3
OF DEFENSE MEDIA CONTENT. 4
(a) C
OURSE OFEDUCATION.— 5
(1) I
N GENERAL.—Not later than one year 6
after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Sec-7
retary of Defense, acting through the Director of the 8
Defense Media Activity, shall establish a course of 9
education at the Defense Information School, the 10
purpose of which shall be to provide instruction on 11
the practical concepts and skills needed by public af-12
fairs, audiovisual, visual information, and records 13
management specialists to understand the following: 14
(A) Digital content provenance for applica-15
ble Department media content. 16
(B) The challenges posed to missions and 17
operations of the Department by a digital con-18
tent forgery. 19
(C) How industry open technical standards 20
may be used to authenticate the digital content 21
provenance of applicable Department media 22
content. 23
(2) M
ATTERS.—The course of education under 24
paragraph (1) shall cover the following matters: 25
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(A) The challenges to missions and oper-1
ations of the Department posed by a digital 2
content forgery. 3
(B) The development of industry open 4
technical standards for authenticating the dig-5
ital content provenance of applicable Depart-6
ment media content. 7
(C) Hands-on training on techniques to 8
record secure and authenticated digital content 9
to document and communicate relevant themes 10
and messages of the Department. 11
(D) Training on— 12
(i) the use of industry open technical 13
standards for authenticating digital con-14
tent provenance in the completion of post- 15
production tasks; and 16
(ii) the transmission of applicable De-17
partment media content in both oper-18
ational and nonoperational environments. 19
(E) Such other matters as the Director of 20
the Defense Media Activity considers appro-21
priate. 22
(3) R
EPORT.—Not later than one year after the 23
date of the establishment of the course of education 24
under paragraph (1), the Director of the Defense 25
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Media Activity shall submit to the Committees on 1
Armed Services of the House of Representatives and 2
the Senate a report on the following: 3
(A) The status of the development of a 4
curriculum for such course of education. 5
(B) The implementation plan of the Direc-6
tor for such course of education, including the 7
following: 8
(i) The expertise and qualifications of 9
the personnel of the Department respon-10
sible for teaching such course of education. 11
(ii) The list of sources consulted or 12
otherwise used to develop the curriculum 13
for such course of education. 14
(iii) A description of the industry open 15
technical standards referred to in para-16
graph (1)(C). 17
(iv) The status of the implementation 18
of such course of education. 19
(C) The resources available to the Director 20
to carry out this subsection and whether the 21
Director requires any additional resources to 22
carry out this subsection. 23
(b) P
ILOTPROGRAM ON IMPLEMENTING DIGITAL 24
C
ONTENTPROVENANCESTANDARDS.— 25
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•S 3504 IS
(1) PILOT PROGRAM.—Not later than one year 1
after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Di-2
rector of the Defense Media Activity shall carry out 3
a pilot program to assess the feasibility and advis-4
ability of implementing industry open technical 5
standards for digital content provenance for official 6
photographs and videos of the Department of De-7
fense publicly released by the Defense Visual Infor-8
mation Distribution Service, or any successor oper-9
ation, and other distribution platforms, systems, and 10
services used by the Department of Defense (in this 11
subsection referred to as the ‘‘pilot program’’). 12
(2) E
LEMENTS.—In carrying out the pilot pro-13
gram, the Director of the Defense Media Activity 14
shall— 15
(A) establish a process for using industry 16
open technical standards to verify the digital 17
content provenance of applicable Department 18
media content; 19
(B) apply technology solutions that com-20
port with industry open technical standard for 21
digital content provenance to photographs and 22
videos of the Department publicly released as 23
described in paragraph (1) after the date of the 24
enactment of this Act; 25
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•S 3504 IS
(C) assess the feasibility and advisability of 1
applying an industry open technical standard 2
for digital content provenance to historical vis-3
ual information records of the Department 4
stored at the Defense Visual Information 5
Records Center; and 6
(D) develop and apply measure of effec-7
tiveness for the implementation of the pilot pro-8
gram. 9
(3) C
ONSULTATION.—In carrying out the pilot 10
program, the Director of the Defense Media Activity 11
may consult with federally funded research and de-12
velopment centers, entities within private industry, 13
institutions of higher education, and such other enti-14
ties as the Director considers appropriate. 15
(4) T
ERMINATION.—The pilot program shall 16
terminate on January 1, 2027. 17
(5) R
EPORT.— 18
(A) I
N GENERAL.—Not later than January 19
1, 2026, the Director of the Defense Media Ac-20
tivity shall submit to the Committees on Armed 21
Services of the House of Representatives and 22
the Senate a report on the pilot program. 23
(B) E
LEMENTS.—The report under sub-24
paragraph (A) shall include the following: 25
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(i) The findings of the Director with 1
respect to the pilot program. 2
(ii) The name of each entity the Di-3
rector consulted with pursuant to para-4
graph (3) in carrying out the pilot pro-5
gram. 6
(iii) An assessment by the Director of 7
the effectiveness of the pilot program. 8
(iv) A recommendation by the Direc-9
tor as to whether the pilot program should 10
be made permanent. 11
(c) D
EFINITIONS.—In this section: 12
(1) The term ‘‘applicable Department media 13
content’’ means any media holding generated, 14
stored, or controlled by the Defense Media Activity. 15
(2) The term ‘‘digital content forgery’’ means 16
the use of emerging technologies, including artificial 17
intelligence and machine learning techniques, to fab-18
ricate or manipulate audio, visual, or text content 19
with the intent to mislead. 20
(3) The term ‘‘digital content provenance’’ 21
means the verifiable chronology of the origin and 22
history of an image, video, audio recording, elec-23
tronic document, or other form of digital content. 24
Æ
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