rest and recreation

One of the most important things to consider, if you are in this business or are considering entering this field, is to take care of your mind and body. You must un-plug once and a while and get out in the fresh air. Take up a hobby and enjoy life. To that end, I'm spending the week up on the ranch getting a little exercise.

Enjoy.

The flip book gets a new home

His just in from The Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office:

"The Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO) has updated their website and I just wanted to let everyone know because if your looking for the electronic version of the Best Practices for the Retrieval of Video Evidence from Digital CCTV Systems (the little red flip book), it has moved to this website. http://www.cttso.gov/

In the upper right hand corner is a link to publications and software.

Take some time to check out this website, its a valuable resource for LEO."

Ed. note: ViPR is also listed on this site.

Digital Automotive Image System has been updated

The commission of crimes and terrorist acts frequently involve a motor vehicle. Having photos or images quickly available of all known vehicles with their accompanying data improves the chances of successful eye witness identification. Southwest Research Institute has updated and improved its last version of the Digital Automotive Image System (DAIS) that provided a front, side, and rear-view image of nearly every make and model of motor vehicle commercially manufactured in the last 20 years. The new system includes those cars made since the last version was produced three years ago. Investigators can search the database by vehicle category, body style, number of doors, and other traits besides the make and model. DAIS can produce photo lineups and “Be on the Lookout” type posters. DAIS, which was produced with the assistance of the FBI, fits on one DVD and is easily downloaded to a computer hard drive. In 2012, Southwest Research Institute distributed one DAIS DVD to each law enforcement agency in the United States. In the past, DAIS has played a significant role in a number of major cases. Law enforcement agencies may seek further information about DAIS by contacting DAIS@leo.gov.

Creative Cloud apps are now available

The CC apps are finally here. If you are a Creative Cloud member, all of these new apps and services are available to you today, available on a completely redesigned app center on the Creative Cloud website. For enterprise and education customers, Adobe expects to make everything available on June 21 and government customers will see the updates in July. To learn more about Creative Cloud for enterprise, go here.

6 Persistent Challenges with Smartphone Forensics

Here's a Cellebrite-centric piece on the challenges with Smartphone Forensics. I say Cellebrite-centric as those processes not directly supported by Cellebrite hardware/software (like JTAG and chip-off) are declared suspect.

Enjoy.

Closed Captioning in Premiere Pro CC

Here's a link to the new workflow for using closed captioning in the new Premiere Pro CC.

You now have the ability to work with closed captioning directly in Premiere Pro CC. The Captions tab in Premiere Pro CC lets you make word-level edits of the closed caption clips. You can also make changes to the timing and formatting, text alignment, text color, and etc ...

License, registration, and cell phone

This just in from NJ.com: "License, registration and cell phone, please.

Police officers across New Jersey could be saying that to motorists at the scenes of car crashes if new legislation introduced in the state Senate becomes law.

The measure would allow cops — without a warrant — to thumb through a cell phone to determine if a driver was talking or texting when an accident occurred. It requires officers to have "reasonable grounds" to believe the law was broken.

Supporters say it could be an important tool for cops investigating crashes in a state where distracted driving causes lots of accidents and driving while using hand-held cell phones is illegal.

Opponents say it could touch off a contentious legal debate over whether giving officers such access violates a motorist’s right to privacy or protections against unreasonable search and seizure."

The question that it brings to mind is this, if the person has a locked phone, and refuses to unlock the phone, what will be LE's response? Even if the phone is later seized and given to a mobile forensics crew, not all the available tools can crack locked phones. While civil liberties folks will likely focus on the 4th Amendment issues - it's the 5th Amendment that will bring the most fireworks when people refuse to help and divulge their pass codes.

Speaker recognition on trial in Florida.

Dr. Hirotake Nakasone, of the FBI, testifies in the Zimmerman trial.

A rather interesting turn of events, I would think.

See what's coming in Premiere Pro CC

Adobe's Jennifer Kremer shares 10 tips to help you get the most out of the new version of Premiere Pro. Check them out by clicking here.

Create a time lapse movie from a bunch of still images in Premiere Pro

I know many LE photographers who set up automated camera installations to take surveillance photos. As cool as this is, assembling them into a video can sometimes be a pain. Here's a handy step-by-step guide to creating a time lapse video in Premiere Pro.

Enjoy.

What are you missing?

As I head home from an amazing conference (Techno Security / Mobile Forensics World), I'm still thinking about one of the presentations given there - "What are you missing?"

The topic was technology neutral - but asked a simple question of the audience, do you know what your chosen tools don't get, aren't doing, and other weak points? Essentially, part of knowing your tools is knowing what your tools don't do or when it's not appropriate to use them. The presenter took a specific case, involving a specific mobile phone, and used the many tools available to show which tools fell short and which shined. If you don't know what you're missing, how will you prepare a case and how well will you defend your findings against a better prepared opponent.

Unspoken, but known to users based on screen-shots, the star of the talk was FINALData's FINALMobile Forensics. Where FINALData beats their competition, hands down, is by not attacking the mobile handset - but by focussing on the chips that are common to all phones. It does either a logical or physical download, parses the data accurately, and displays the results in an easy to understand format. Better still, it'll parse the physical downloads from the competition, often finding more information than their competition. Best yet, it's about a third of the cost of it's next nearest competitor. It was the real star of the Mobile Forensics World show.

But, no matter the discipline, do you know what your tools miss? Do you know where it's not appropriate to use them? If you don't, does it worry you that your opposing expert does? It should.

Photoshop updates

This just in from Adobe's John Nack: "The Photoshop team has just made a Photoshop CS6 update (13.0.5 for Mac, 13.0.1.2 for Win) available for perpetual-license customer (non-Creative Cloud subscribers). It addresses a small number of bugs on each platform. CC members can sit tight: Photoshop CC will be released on June 17th and will include any fixes that aren’t already in the current version (13.1.2) along along with all the new features.

About Those Audio Forensic Experts…

Dan Linehan attempts to unravel the truth behind the "expert" analysis of the recordings in the George Zimmerman case in Florida. His review of the work is far from complimentary. "I’m sure we’ll hear more about this in the upcoming weeks, since both of these “experts” have sparked a lot of controversy with their statements and placed their reputations on the line."

He also calls into question the American College Forensic Examiners Institute, a now famous "credential mill," "Sadly, it turns out there is an entire suite of these “American Forensic Board” sites, on almost any topic you can think of, which all seem to be ran by the same person, a gentleman named Dr. O’Block who claims to have nearly a dozen degrees himself."