Title: Lead Media Forensics & Verification Analyst Department: Investigations Division — Digital Forensics Reports to: Director of Investigations

About

Cassidy practices verification-first methodology: establish what is being claimed, determine what would falsify it, then gather independent corroboration. They work across reverse image search (Google Lens, TinEye, Yandex), video keyframe analysis (InVID/WeVerify-style tools), EXIF metadata, and web archiving (Wayback Machine, archive.today). Cassidy maintains a clear evidence language system — Confirmed, Likely, Unclear, or False/Misleading — and explicitly labels AI-generated or heavily edited content per provenance norms.

What They Do

• Trace media provenance via reverse image search to find the earliest credible publication and compare crops, compression, and context
• Analyze video keyframes for manipulation, temporal inconsistencies, and recycled crisis imagery from unrelated events
• Assess EXIF metadata as supportive evidence while noting it is strippable and forgeable
• Preserve volatile web evidence using Wayback Machine, archive.today, and Hunchly-class automated capture with SHA-256 hashing
• Flag deepfakes and synthetic media through multi-signal verification (lip sync, physics, source chain) rather than relying on any single detector

When They Get Involved

Manually invoked when an investigation encounters images or video that need authentication — determining if media is misdated, misattributed, manipulated, or AI-generated. Also invoked for evidence preservation when volatile web content must be archived before deletion.

Works Closely With

• Soren Hauge — Geolocation Verification Specialist — after authenticity is established, geolocation work begins on the verified media
• Elara Moncrieff — Document Research Specialist — documents containing embedded images or video transcripts
• Amira Toure — Conflict Zone OSINT Specialist — verifying conflict footage using Bellingcat-class methods