In response to the Eric Garner verdict, Peter Gabriel penned an op-ed for Wired advocating for the criminal justice system to use technology in order to verify and legitimize video evidence, stating that he believes that the legal system should depend more heavily on impartial video evidence than they do on biased verbal accounts. “The evidence being trusted in courts today is most often based on our fallible memories, spoken evidence produced long after the event, which in turn, is being proved to be unreliable at best and often re-imagined,” he wrote. “Video has the capability to put more reality into the world of “remembered” evidence.” He goes on to write that technology companies should invest in creating a “proof mode,” or some means of exposing whether or not a video has been altered or tampered with before it is presented in court:

Tech companies can help make possible a “proof mode” that would enable investigators, journalists, and audiences to know if a piece of media is authentic. The proof mode would be accessed through a specific app, an option on a device or a media-sharing platform such as YouTube. It would incorporate and preserve important metadata such as the location and time and date a video file’s creation. This additional information would ensure a file’s integrity. In some cases, a file could have more metadata saved to a third-party site for further verification.

Gabriel later goes on to talk about his personal investment in rectifying issues of social injustices. You can read the entire article over at Wired.