When anything can be shown on video

Jonathan Wilde at The Distributed Network discusses the increasingly available technology that can be used to show anyone doing anything you can imagine. Examples include a McCain/Obama dance-off and Nike's "what if" ad series.  People have valid concerns about universal surveillance.  Pretty soon, everyone will be on camera every moment they spend outside their home or any other private space.
One point that is raised is that in conjunction with the ability to remake video reality to suit your imagination is:

As Reason magazine showed the true power of ubiquitous surveillance technology on its June cover, the "What if?" commercial holds special significance within the larger context of the societal ramifications of bleeding-edge special effects technology. As the June issue focused on the benefits rather than drawbacks that come with the 'databasification' of society, the "What if?" commercial shows another reason why the future will not be a dystopian world of panopticon horrors. As the power of special effects technology grows, the fraction of verifiable information surveillance technology can produce falls.

"The camera doesn't lie" is no longer a truism.  "Photoshop" is now a verb, and "fauxtography" has made an appearance in newspapers.

One can imagine a hypothetical court trial in which the defendant "caught on tape" provides his own videotape in which the person seen committing the crime is none other than the judge himself. Or even John Kerry. When individuals take full advantage of the tools provided by cutting edge technology, an honest legal system would gain very little from simple video footage. Just as today, the usual forms of evidence will be necessary to make a conviction. The existence of easily falsifiable video evidence makes eyewitness accounts, fingerprints, fiber traces, entry and exit points, tracks, plausibility, and a logical explanatory chain of events all the more important. How can the evidence incriminating you hold up in an equitable court if it can be easily created on Photoshop or a future Pixar for Windows? When the billions of prying eyes produce evidence of guilt, who is going to believe it if just as convincing phony evidence can be created by hand?