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Welcome to the Forensic Multimedia Analysis blog (formerly the Forensic Photoshop blog). With the latest developments in the analysis of m...

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Training Update

Amped Software has released the order form for their training session in Ft. Worth, Tx.

Intermediate Forensic Multimedia Analysis with Amped FIVE Professional is being presented in Ft. Worth, Tx (home of the #1 downtown in the US in 2014), May 5-9, 2014.

I hope to see you there.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

FIVE in the news

Click here to check out the Gendarmerie on FranceTV using Amped FIVE to calculate the height of suspects (begins about 17:00). How cool is that?!

Friday, March 14, 2014

Training Opportunity In Texas

Course: Intermediate Forensic Multimedia Analysis

Instructor: Jim Hoerricks

Location: Ft. Worth, Tx.

Dates: May 5-9, 2014 (40 Hours)

Expectations and Goals: Graduates will acquire intermediate level training in the techniques and skills necessary to perform examinations, clarifications, and analyses on digital multimedia evidence in a “forensic science” setting as well as to package, deliver, and present those findings in their local court room context.

Sponsors: Amped Software North America and GP SIFT.

Skill Level: Intermediate. It is assumed that the student will have a basic knowledge of Forensic Multimedia Analysis and be able to navigate comfortably within the Windows computer environment.


While the registration page is being put together, click here to send your contact information to Amped Software. The registration page should be up in a few days and will contain information about the venue, host agency, costs, and hotel recommendations. I just wanted to get the word out about the opportunity as quick as possible. Also, you'll note that the class is oriented towards a Friday travel day with an afternoon departure time.

See y'all there.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

An interesting use of crowd sourcing

Please consider taking a few minutes on March 28th to participate in the LEEDIR Operational Test!

What: LEEDIR (Large Emergency Event Digital Information Repository) Operational Test
When: Friday, March 28, 2014 - 9:00am - Noon PDT
How: Simply upload a random 1-3 minute video or still images shot with your cell phone. The video can be of anything, but we encourage video of people in public places, malls, shopping centers, convenience stores, vehicle traffic, etc.

The LEEDIR Eyewitness Platform INVITES YOUR PARTICIPATION!

The LEEDIR technology enables law enforcement and relief agencies to receive and rapidly analyze eyewitness videos and photos submitted by citizens during large emergency events.

Your participation in this exercise is being requested to help simulate a level of eyewitness photo and video submissions that would be expected during a major emergency event.

Law enforcement agencies around the nation have been invited to submit photos and videos to the LEEDIR platform through the LEEDIR website (leedir.us), iPhone app (available now at the App Store)
or the Android app (available March 23rd at the Google Play Store).

As submissions are uploaded, investigators at the LASD Cyber Investigations Center (CIC) will review, manage, analyze and distribute the photos and videos as they would during a real major emergency event, to better inform their emergency response teams and gather evidence. During the event, analytics and statistics will be published, followed by a press conference at SHB to broadcast the results.

More info at: http://www.leedir.us/about

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Get the original

This just in from George Reis, "The March 2014 issue of California Lawyer magazine includes an article I wrote, titled, "Images: Get the Original." The original version I submitted had to go through quite a bit of editing (I wrote it before checking for length requirements, so it was too long). The points I tried to make are that when an attorney is provided with photographs or video evidence from opposing counsel, the best evidence is a bit-for-bit copy of the original, in it's original format. And, that when providing images to opposing counsel, providing bit-for-bit copies of the originals can result in fewer claims of file manipulation. The article is on page 24 of the on-line edition (link) and page 13 of the printed version."


Well done, George.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Cell phone with a camera, or camera with a phone?

John Riddell's Data Recovery Blog poses this curious question, how do you view your mobile device and how to you maintain it?

"With the increasing popularity of built in cameras with our cell phones today, it’s no longer a question as to whether you’ll use it at all but how often you’ll use it. It seems as though there is as much emphasis on the cameras in the phones today as there is memory, battery length and amount of apps we can store. I recently saw a TV commercial for a phone with a camera and the only thing they talked about were the features of the camera, nothing else."

That being said, how are you processing video/image evidence retrieved from mobile devices? Do you have the ability to safely acquire the images? Do you use your own iTunes account? With the cost of "forensic" software being relatively high, folks are "just doing what they can" to get images from phones and tablets. Some are even e-mailing images off the evidence to their own e-mail account.

Whatever you are doing, have a sound policy / practice document … and follow it.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Traditional Finger Printing Could Be A Thing Of The Past

This just in, "Computer scientists at Michigan State University have built the first three-dimensional model of a human fingerprint.

They say it will not only help today’s fingerprint matching technology do its job better, but could eventually lead to improvements in security.

The method, developed by Anil Jain, his MSU colleagues and research collaborator Nick Paulter at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, takes a two dimensional image of a fingerprint and maps it to a 3-D finger surface.

The 3-D finger surface, complete with all the ridges and valleys that make up the human fingerprint, is then made using a 3-D printer.

It creates what Jain’s team called a fingerprint "phantom."

They say that tools like this would help improve the overall accuracy of fingerprint matching systems, which eventually leads to better security in applications ranging from law enforcement to mobile phone unlock."

Saturday, March 8, 2014

RIP LAPD Officer Nicholas Lee

LAPD Police Officer III Nicholas Lee, Serial No. 34980.
A man of greatness and selflessness. Nick was a great cop.
May he rest in peace. #EOW 3/7/14
- LAPD Chief Charlie Beck

Friday, March 7, 2014

Send images from Amped FIVE to Word and PowerPoint

This just in from the folks at Amped Software:

"We just released an update to FIVE with a lot of improvements, bug corrections and customer requested features.

Despite FIVE having very advanced and automated reporting capabilities, it’s undeniable that most of us use very often Word, PowerPoint and other programs to show our results to courts, customers and colleagues. They could be simple investigative reports or some tutorials for explaining how to work with images and video.

I do it daily and I was sick of saving pictures and importing them in other various applications, so we added a very convenient way to interact with third party programs.

In the latest version of Amped FIVE (release 5989), if you right click on the Save Snapshot button in the Player Panel of FIVE you will have access to new settings for the Save Snapshot button.

These are the available options:
  • Save Image (Automatic Filename): the displayed image is saved in the default path, along with the current project file needed to recreate the image from scratch.
  • Save Image (Selected By The User): like above, but the user can select the filename and folder of the file.
  • Send Image To Clipboard: the displayed image is copied to the system clipboard to be pasted in other applications.
  • Send Image To Word: the displayed image is copied in the currently opened Word document.
  • Send Image to PowerPoint: the displayed image is copied in the currently opened PowerPoint document.
Additionally, there’s another new option. Sometimes you don’t want only the current image but the whole FIVE interface showing the working environment. We’ve also got this covered with the following options that can be combined with the above saving mode.

  • Current Image: saves the currently displayed image alone.
  • Current Window: saves the full Amped FIVE interface.
  • Full Screen: saves the whole screen.

The last selection is kept in memory so the next time you simply click the button Save Snapshot it will be reapplied.

Imagine how useful it is the combination of these features: you can show and explain step by step in a document or presentation, all the operations done with FIVE."

It's amazing to have a company respond to suggestions by implementing changes in such a speedy fashion. For those agencies with pre-made report templates in MS Word, or who use MS PowerPoint extensively, this is a huge time saver.