while we don't do it every time here at virginia tech, we do video defenses often enough. we do phone defenses too. the defense, here, though is mostly certificatory, as by that point everything should be pretty solid. I do not recall anyone ever failing or having to do anything other than minor revisions. the point of failure is earlier. In any case, we've never had much issue with any of the questions you mention. Identification is fairly easy if you have been working closely with the student even remotely. I don't think anyone really wants to cheat on a defense, but even if they did, it would be pretty obvious to the camera. we don't require the examiners to be all present in one room, though it does eliminate certain possible problems, fewer things to break.
lag is a factor, downtime as failure could be a factor. but we basically have a tier approach, we start with video and if video fails we go to phone.
granted, i'm mostly talking about the political science program that's been running since '96 and oriented to master's degrees.
I don't think there is an official policy on it, there are policies that affect it.
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