The timestamp system seems like it provides more benefit than signing the image data itself, at least in terms of difficulty to fake. As long as rolling back the stored timestamp token is prevented, I would have to find a phone that never updated its timestamp after the time I want to fake. Of course you could potentially find a phone that last connected to Apple's servers with a plausible timestamp. Even then the upper bound of when it signs the photo after reconnecting to the internet will raise eyebrows if you take too long to find the phone and fake the photo, so it effectively raises the bar to having to take the fake photo roughly simultaneously with the time the event purportedly took place anyway.

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