#FactCheck - "Deepfake Video Falsely Claims Justin Trudeau Endorses Investment Project”
Executive Summary:
A viral online video claims Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promotes an investment project. However, the CyberPeace Research Team has confirmed that the video is a deepfake, created using AI technology to manipulate Trudeau's facial expressions and voice. The original footage has no connection to any investment project. The claim that Justin Trudeau endorses this project is false and misleading.
Claims:
A viral video falsely claims that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is endorsing an investment project.
Fact Check:
Upon receiving the viral posts, we conducted a Google Lens search on the keyframes of the video. The search led us to various legitimate sources featuring Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, none of which included promotion of any investment projects. The viral video exhibited signs of digital manipulation, prompting a deeper investigation.
We used AI detection tools, such as TrueMedia, to analyze the video. The analysis confirmed with 99.8% confidence that the video was a deepfake. The tools identified "substantial evidence of manipulation," particularly in the facial movements and voice, which were found to be artificially generated.
Additionally, an extensive review of official statements and interviews with Prime Minister Trudeau revealed no mention of any such investment project. No credible reports were found linking Trudeau to this promotion, further confirming the video’s inauthenticity.
Conclusion:
The viral video claiming that Justin Trudeau promotes an investment project is a deepfake. The research using various tools such as Google Lens, AI detection tool confirms that the video is manipulated using AI technology. Additionally, there is no information in any official sources. Thus, the CyberPeace Research Team confirms that the video was manipulated using AI technology, making the claim false and misleading.
- Claim: Justin Trudeau promotes an investment project viral on social media.
- Claimed on: Facebook
- Fact Check: False & Misleading
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Introduction
The much-awaited DPDP Rules have now finally been released in the official Gazette on 3rd January 2025 for consultation. The draft Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 (DPDP Rules) invites objections and suggestions from stakeholders that can be submitted on MyGov (https://mygov.in) by 18th February 2025.
DPDP Rules at Glance
- Processing of Children's Data: The draft rules say that ‘A Data Fiduciary shall adopt appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure that verifiable consent of the parent is obtained before the processing of any personal data of a child’. It entails that children below 18 will need parents' consent to create social media accounts.
- The identity of the parents and their age can be verified through reliable details of identity and age available with the Data Fiduciary, voluntarily provided identity proof or virtual token mapped to the same. The data fiduciaries are also required to observe due diligence for checking that the individual identifying themselves as the parent is an adult who is identifiable, if required, in connection with compliance with any law for the time being in force in India. Additionally, the government will also extend exemptions from these specific provisions pertaining to processing of children's data to educational institutions, and child welfare organisations.
- Processing of Personal Data Outside India: The draft rules specify that the transfer of personal data outside India, whether it is processed within the country or outside in connection with offering goods or services to individuals in India, is permitted only if the Data Fiduciary complies with the conditions prescribed by the Central Government through general or specific orders.
- Intimation of Personal Data Breach: On becoming aware of a personal data breach, the Data Fiduciary must promptly notify the affected Data Principals in a clear and concise manner through their user account or registered communication method. This notification should include a description of the breach (nature, extent, timing, and location), potential consequences for the Data Principal, measures taken or planned to mitigate risks, recommended safety actions for the Data Principal, and contact information of a representative to address queries. Additionally, the Data Fiduciary must inform the Board without delay, providing details of the breach, its likely impact, and initial findings. Within 72 hours (or a longer period allowed by the Board upon request), the Data Fiduciary must submit updated information, including the facts and circumstances of the breach, mitigation measures, findings about the cause, steps to prevent recurrence, and a report on notifications given to affected Data Principals.
- Data Protection Board: The draft rules propose establishing the Data Protection Board, which will function as a digital office, enabling remote hearings, and will hold powers to investigate breaches, impose penalties, and perform related regulatory functions.
Journey of Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023
The foundation for the single statute legislation on Data Protection was laid down in 2017, in the famous ‘Puttaswami judgment,’ which is also well recognised as the Aadhar Card judgment. In this case, ‘privacy’ was recognised as intrinsic to the right to life and personal liberty, guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution of India, thus making ‘Right to Privacy’ a fundamental right. In the landmark Puttaswamy ruling, the apex court of India stressed the need for a comprehensive data protection law.
Eight years on and several draft bills later, the Union Cabinet approved the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (DPDP) on 5th July 2023. The bill was tabled in the Lok Sabha on 3rd August 2023, and It was passed by Lok Sabha on 7th August, and the bill passed by Rajya Sabha on 9th August and got the president's assent on 11th August 2023; and India finally came up with the ‘Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. This is a significant development that has the potential to bring about major improvements to online privacy and the handling of digital personal data by the platforms.
The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, is a newly-enacted legislation designed to protect individuals' digital personal data. It aims to ensure compliance by Data Fiduciaries and imposes specific obligations on both Data Principals and Data Fiduciaries. The Act promotes consent-based data collection practices and establishes the Data Protection Board to oversee compliance and address grievances. Additionally, it includes provisions for penalties of up to ₹250 crores in the event of a data breach. However, despite the DPDP Act being passed by parliament last year, the Act has not yet taken effect since its rules and regulations are still not finalised.
Conclusion
It is heartening to see that the Ministry of Electronics and Technology (MeitY) has finally released the draft of the much-awaited DPDP rules for consultation from stakeholders. Though noting certain positive aspects, there is still room for addressing certain gaps and multiple aspects under the draft rules that require attention. The public consultation, including the inputs from the tech platforms, is likely to see critical inputs on multiple aspects under the proposed rules. One such key area of interest will be the requirement of verifiable parental consent, which will likely include recommendations for a balanced approach which maintains children’s safety and mechanisms for the requirement of verifiable consent. The Provisions permitting government access to personal data on grounds of national security are also expected to face scrutiny. The proposed rules, after the consultation process, will be taken into consideration for finalisation after 18th February 2025. The move towards establishing a robust data protection law in India signals a significant step toward enhancing trust and accountability in the digital ecosystem. However, its success will hinge on effective implementation, clear compliance mechanisms, and the adaptability of stakeholders to this evolving regulatory landscape.
References
SVIMS Director and Vice-Chancellor B. Vengamma lighting a lamp to formally launch the cybercrime awareness programme conducted by the police department for the medical students in Tirupati on Wednesday.
An awareness meet on safe Internet practices was held for the students of Sri Venkateswara University University (SVU) and Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences (SVIMS) here on Wednesday.
“Cyber criminals on the prowl can easily track our digital footprint, steal our identity and resort to impersonation,” cyber expert I.L. Narasimha Rao cautioned the college students.
Addressing the students in two sessions, Mr. Narasimha Rao, who is a Senior Manager with CyberPeace Foundation, said seemingly common acts like browsing a website, and liking and commenting on posts on social media platforms could be used by impersonators to recreate an account in our name.
Turning to the youth, Mr. Narasimha Rao said the incognito mode and Virtual Private Network (VPN) used as a protected network connection do not ensure total privacy as third parties could still snoop over the websites being visited by the users. He also cautioned them tactics like ‘phishing’, ‘vishing’ and ‘smishing’ being used by cybercriminals to steal our passwords and gain access to our accounts.
“After cracking the whip on websites and apps that could potentially compromise our security, the Government of India has recently banned 232 more apps,” he noted.
Additional Superintendent of Police (Crime) B.H. Vimala Kumari appealed to cyber victims to call 1930 or the Cyber Mitra’s helpline 9121211100. SVIMS Director B. Vengamma stressed the need for caution with smartphones becoming an indispensable tool for students, be it for online education, seeking information, entertainment or for conducting digital transactions.
Over the last decade, battlefields have percolated from mountains, deserts, jungles, seas, and the skies into the invisible networks of code and cables. Cyberwarfare is no longer a distant possibility but today’s reality. The cyberattacks of Estonia in 2007, the crippling of Iran’s nuclear program by the Stuxnet virus, the SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline breaches in recent years have proved one thing: that nations can now paralyze economies and infrastructures without firing a bullet. Cyber operations now fall beyond the traditional threshold of war, allowing aggressors to exploit the grey zone where full-scale retaliation may be unlikely.
At the same time, this ambiguity has also given rise to the concept of cyber deterrence. It is a concept that has been borrowed from the nuclear strategies during the Cold War era and has been adapted to the digital age. At the core, cyber deterrence seeks to alter the adversary’s cost-benefit calculation that makes attacks either too costly or pointless to pursue. While power blocs like the US, Russia, and China continue to build up their cyber arsenals, smaller nations can hold unique advantages, most importantly in terms of their resilience, if not firepower.
Understanding the concept of Cyber Deterrence
Deterrence, in its classic sense, is about preventing action through the fear of consequences. It usually manifests in four mechanisms as follows:
- Punishment by threatening to impose costs on attackers, whether by counter-attacks, economic sanctions, or even conventional forces.
- Denial of attacks by making them futile through hardened defences, and ensuring the systems to resist, recover, and continue to function.
- Entanglement by leveraging interdependence in trade, finance, and technology to make attacks costly for both attackers and defenders.
- Norms can also help shape behaviour by stigmatizing reckless cyber actions by imposing reputational costs that can exceed any gains.
However, great powers have always emphasized the importance of punishment as a tool to showcase their power by employing offensive cyber arsenals to instill psychological pressure on their rivals. Yet in cyberspace, punishment has inherent flaws.
The Advantage of Asymmetry
For small states, smaller geographical size can be utilised as a benefit. Three advantages of this exist, such as:
- With fewer critical infrastructures to protect, resources can be concentrated. For example, Denmark, with a modest population of $40 million cyber budget, is considered to be among the most cyber-secure nations, despite receiving billions of US spending.
- Smaller bureaucracies enable faster response. The centralised cyber command of Singapore allows it to ensure a rapid coordination between the government and the private sector.
- Smaller countries with lesser populations can foster a higher public awareness and participation in cyber hygiene by amplifying national resilience.
In short, defending a small digital fortress can be easier than securing a sprawling empire of interconnected systems.
Lessons from Estonia and Singapore
The 2007 crisis of Estonia remains a case study of cyber resilience. Although its government, bank, and media were targeted in offline mode, Estonia emerged stronger by investing heavily in cyber defense mechanisms. Another effort in this case stood was with the hosting of NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence to build one of the world’s most resilient e-governance models.
Singapore is another case. Where, recognising its vulnerability as a global financial hub, it has adopted a defense-centric deterrence strategy by focusing on redundancy, cyber education, and international partnership rather than offensive capacity. These approaches can also showcase that deterrence is not always about scaring attackers with retaliation, it is about making the attacks meaningless.
Cyber deterrence and Asymmetric Warfare
Cyber conflict is understood through the lens of asymmetric warfare, where weaker actors exploit the unconventional and stronger foes. As guerrillas get outmanoeuvred by superpowers in Vietnam or Afghanistan, small states hold the capability to frustrate the cyber giants by turning their size into a shield. The essence of asymmetric cyber defence also lies in three principles, which can be mentioned as;
- Resilience over retaliation by ensuring a rapid recovery to neutralise the goals of the attackers.
- Undertaking smart investments focusing on limited budgets over critical assets, not sprawling infrastructures.
- Leveraging norms to shape the international opinions to stigmatize the aggressors and increase the reputational costs.
This also helps to transform the levels of cyber deterrence into a game of endurance rather than escalating it into a domain where small states can excel.
There remain challenges as well, as attribution problems persist, the smaller nations still depend on foreign technology, which the adversaries have sought to exploit. Issues over the shortage of talent have plagued the small states, as cyber professionals have migrated to get lucrative jobs abroad. Moreover, building deterrence capability through norms requires active multilateral cooperation, which may not be possible for all small nations to sustain.
Conclusion
Cyberwarfare represents a new frontier of asymmetric conflict where size does not guarantee safety or supremacy. Great powers have often dominated the offensive cyber arsenals, where small states have carved their own path towards security by focusing on defence, resilience, and international collaboration. The examples of Singapore and Estonia demonstrate the fact that the small size of a state can be its identity of a hidden strength in capabilities like cyberspace, allowing nimbleness, concentration of resources and societal cohesion. In the long run, cyber deterrence for small states will not rest on fearsome retaliation but on making attacks futile and recovery inevitable.
References
- https://bluegoatcyber.com/blog/asymmetric-warfare/
- https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2268&context=jss
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rising-tide-cyberwarfare-battle-between-superpowers-hussain/
- https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1243&context=gpis_etds
- https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=141708
- https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1243&context=gpis_etds
