Leaking data online is not something new specially for a politician. It’s just another incident of a political leader’s audio being leaked in Pakistan.
Recently, the audio of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz got leaked in which Maryam Nawaz advised PM Shehbaz Sharif to increase the prices of petroleum products, saying that it is inevitable to do so, the prices will have to be increased. She also asked him to import machinery for a power plant from India for her son-in-law Raheel – husband of Mehrunnisa.
Earlier, in another leaked audio highlighted a conversation held in the meeting of the leaders of the ruling political party Muslim League (N) and the federal ministers in the Prime Minister House, in which Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Speaker National Assembly Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, Federal Interior Minister was also revealed. Rana Sanaullah, Federal Defense Minister Khawaja Asif, Federal Law Minister Nazir Tarar, and Federal Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal can be recognized. In this audio leak, the discussion on PTI’s resignations was revealed.
Read more: Hacker threatens to leak more audios of politicians
However, today, once again new audio got leaked and this time it was of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan, now the concern is who leaked it?
Audio leak of Imran Khan
Today, the audio clip of former prime minister Imran Khan’s conversation with his personal secretary Azam Khan has gone viral on social media. In the audio allegedly featuring Khan, a man can be heard talking about the cypher which Khan time and again has claimed mentions the ‘threat’ to remove his government.
Khan allegedly told Azam in the audio the date of which cannot be ascertained at the moment that ‘let’s just play’ with the cypher and not mention America’s name.
How to tell if audio is real or fabricated?
Leaked audio of political leaders often raises the question of how audio can be proven to be genuine or fake. According to experts, global analysis of an audio or video recording can tell whether the recording has been edited or not, while local analysis shows where the edits have been made in the recording.
The audio stream is evaluated to know whether the audio is real or fake. Its phases, energy, pressure level, and long-term spectrum averages are estimated. Finally, the file container i.e. the box on the computer that contains the video file is analyzed. It examines file structure, attributes, EXIF data, and file headers and footers. When all the analyzes are completed, their results are compared with each other and only then the analyst can give his opinion.
Experts also said that analysis of the file container can reveal traces of software used to edit the audio left behind. Likewise, examining the audio stream separately It is checked whether it has compatibility in frequency, bandwidth, compression limits, and codec.
PM’s announcement to conduct an inquiry on leaked audio
The prime minister had announced an inquiry on the leaked audio of the Prime Minister’s House. Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said that PM Shehbaz Sharif had taken notice.
According to the experts, it will be very interesting to see whether the government will also discuss the leaked audio of Imran Khan in the audio leak inquiry or not.
